Dr. Rodney Plunket

He Came to Serve

Personal Bible study is so much richer when we come to it with a keen appetite, an appetite which compels us to desire the fullness of the message. A superficial reading will just not do. Instead, we read and reread and meditate and meditate some more. We never tire of it, because we are fed by it; we are drawn into the presence of God by it. We could no more tire of Bible study than we could tire of eating the physical food that sustains and nourishes our bodies. We love to study the Bible because it feeds our faith, restores our souls, and gives meaning and direction to our lives.

So let’s say we are reading through the Gospel of Matthew, the first book in the New Testament. We have gotten over 2/3rds of the way through when we come to Matthew 20:28. There we read, "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

If our appetite is keen we stop and realize that this is a statement of purpose from the lips of Jesus, a statement of His purpose. We know that Jesus is talking about His purpose because Jesus uses the phrase, "the Son of Man," to refer to Himself. "The Son of Man," Jesus says, "[came] . . . to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

This purpose is quite surprising. It is surprising that Jesus says He has come not to be served but to serve because the Gospel of Matthew, in its very first chapter and from then on, reveals how special Jesus is. The Gospel of Matthew tells us about Jesus’ supernatural birth to a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. It tells us that one of Jesus’ names is Immanuel, a Hebrew name meaning "God is with us" and a name which connects to a prophecy spoken by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 7. In Mathew 3:13-17 we read of the baptism of Jesus and the voice of God saying of Jesus that "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is divine. The text could hardly be clearer.

That is what makes Matthew 20:28 so surprising. How can it be that this Jesus, this divine Son, this person born of a miraculous birth––how can it be that this Jesus has come to serve? Surely, surely, Jesus should have been served. But His own words are very clear. Jesus did not even come with the intention of being served; Jesus came with the purpose of serving humanity by giving His life as "a ransom for many."

Reflection upon this statement in Matthew 20:28 will force the hungry reader of Scripture to look back and see how this purpose enunciated by Jesus is revealed in the Gospel as a whole. So we look back at material previously read; and we indeed see how the life of Jesus was, from the beginning, packed with active deeds of service. We realize that Jesus’ statement of purpose is lived out throughout this book. Hearing Jesus say it makes us aware of something we should have realized already. This glorious Son of God truly did come "not to be served but to serve."

Let me give you a quick run-through of some of the relevant stories that the Gospel of Matthew tells. Matthew 1-3 tells the birth stories and tells of the early ministry of John the Baptist. But as soon as the ministry of Jesus begins, notice what happens. In Matthew 4:23ff Jesus is serving the sick by healing them. In chapters 5-7 Jesus is serving people by teaching them about the lifestyle which God desires. In Matthew 8 Jesus serves by healing people––a leper, a centurion’s son, the mother-in-law of Peter, and two demon possessed men; and the humble lifestyle in which His servant role placed Him is described in verse 20 where Jesus says, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

In Matthew 9 Jesus heals a paralytic, shows his love for some of the untouchables of His day, raises the twelve year old daughter of Jairus from the dead, heals a sick woman and two blind men, and drives out a demon. In Matthew 10 Jesus sends out the twelve apostles on a special mission, a mission characterized by service. Jesus tells the twelve to "heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received," Jesus says, "freely give."

In Matthew 11:28-30 we encounter one of the most poignant passages ever written. Jesus describes the way He serves all people when He says,

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

In Matthew 12 Jesus heals a man with a shriveled hand, and Jesus does so on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees are very angry with him. Please turn with me to that story. Look at Matthew 12:13-21 and follow along as I read. I will be reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

When Jesus became aware of this, he departed. Many crowds followed him, and he cured all of them, and he ordered them not to make him known. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: "Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope."

Notice the first few words of the quotation from Isaiah 42. The Lord says, "Here is my servant." Yes indeed, Jesus was a servant. Yes indeed, He came not to be served but to serve.

It goes on and on. Jesus constantly serves. He heals. He teaches, and He teaches the very attitude that leads to the kind of service which Jesus exemplifies.

Now let’s think back to our Scripture reading. Our Scripture reading this morning was made up of two passages from Matthew. The first one was Matthew 23:1-12; the second was Matthew 20:24-28. In that second passage Jesus talks to his disciples and explains to them the difference between leadership among the Gentiles and leadership within the kingdom of heaven. He makes clear that the kingdom model is not one of power nor authority. It is a model of service. The way to greatness/the way up is the way down, down to the humble service that is characteristic of our Lord Jesus Christ, down to the humble service of the One who gave "his life as a ransom for many."

Immediately after Matthew reports these words from Jesus about service, he tells of two blind men that Jesus healed; and then Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem and begins the final week before His death by crucifixion. In Matthew 23, Jesus, right in the middle of this final week, turns the heat up. He attacks his harshest critics, the scribes and Pharisees; and in Matthew 23:1ff Jesus talks about how much the scribes and Pharisees love honor and how they love to command others to do things they would not think of doing themselves. And in verse 12 Jesus says, "The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted."

Jesus "came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many." What a stark contrast with the lifestyle of those whom Jesus attacks in Matthew 23. They sought glory not humble service, while Jesus will save by humbly serving to the point of death in order to ransom people from the power of sin.

What I want you to realize is that in both passages of our Scripture reading Jesus is addressing the issue of leadership. In Matthew 20:24-28 Jesus is addressing the corrupt leadership model of Jesus’ own apostles. And in Matthew 23:1ff Jesus is addressing the corrupt leadership model of the scribes and Pharisees. And Jesus addresses them both in much the same way. He counters them with a model of humble service. The Christ-like leader is the leader who humbly serves.

We might have a difficult time seeing ourselves as scribes and Pharisees, but maybe we can identify with the apostles and bring ourselves to admit that their attitudes are alive within our own hearts. Maybe we can see the same hunger for honor and status in our hearts and minds that we see in the apostles. The apostles had lived with Jesus. They had seen the model of leadership that Jesus lived out. But they really had not seen it all. They had still not seen that Jesus was all about humble service and that they should be as well.

Most of us have read the Gospel of Matthew as well as the other three Gospels. We have lived with Jesus through what has been written. Have we seen that Jesus was all about humble service? Have we heard and actualized Jesus’ words that "whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave"?

I read a story a couple of years ago that has stuck in my mind. It is relevant to our lesson for several reasons. One reason is that the heroine in the story was a servant, a servant to a feudal landlord in what today is Pakistan. The descendants of that feudal landlord are still alive today, and the story those descendants tell is that that there was a war in the late 1850’s and all the male members of their family were killed but one young boy, and his life was in grave danger. This female servant smuggled that boy to safety by dressing him up as a girl in a veil. But that is not all. She tricked the enemies of her master’s family into thinking that they had, in fact, killed the last male heir. She did that by dressing her very own son as the son of her feudal lord. He was taken to the enemy camp, and there he was killed. This servant gave the life of her own son so that the family of her master would not be wiped out (National Geographic, October 1997, pp. 67-68). Whatever else you may think of the actions of this servant and her compliant son, one thing is clear; these actions are highly reminiscent of the actions of God in sending Jesus to die and of Jesus in being willing to die as "a ransom for many."

Are we willing to lay down our lives in service? Are we willing to receive the model of our Savior and Lord? Are we willing to receive the heart of a servant from our God? Are we willing to ask God to "make me a servant; make me like you"?

As the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 we have been "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." Let’s live what we have been recreated by God to be. We are to be about "good works" patterned after the works of service that characterized the life of Jesus. "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

If God is calling you to receive the ransoming power of Christ’s blood, please say "yes" to that call. Please come to Jesus. Come, ready to surrender your life to the Lord. Please come ready to be baptized into the saving death of the Son of God. Come now as we stand and sing.