I. Introduction

A. Illustration – Classical Composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) said: Often when I was wrestling with obstacles of every kind, when my physical and mental strength alike were running low and it was hard for me to persevere in the path on which I had set my feet, a secret feeling within me whispered: 'There are so few happy and contented people here below. Sorrow and anxiety pursue them everywhere. Perhaps your work may, some day, become a spring from which the careworn may draw a few moments rest and refreshment (as cited on PreachingToday.com). That’s likely part of what Paul had in mind when he wrote in Galatians 5 about serving one another. So let’s read verses thirteen and fourteen together and I’m reading from the New Living.

B. Galatians 5:13-14 from the New Living - For you have been called to live in freedom, not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

C. Oswald Chambers wrote, There are no such things as prominent service and obscure service; it is all the same with God (as cited on PreachingToday.com). Chambers understood that service and freedom are really two sides of the same coin, and hopefully we’ll grab hold of that truth as well.

II. Being Bondslaves to One Another

A. When I first started studying this passage, I assumed that the Greek word for “serve” was a variant of diakonos, which is frequently translated “minister” and is the root of our word deacon. But I was wrong. The root of the Greek word translated is doulos. Doulos means bondslave – the property of another person with no rights whatsoever. Now when I hear that, I don’t like it. I’ve talked before about how virtually every boss and authority figure I’ve ever had in my life has abused that authority. So you could say I have issues. But I’ve chosen to lay those issues down at the feet of Jesus because I’m learning more and more the implications of being His doulos in my life. Let me explain.

B. Jesus never ever abuses His authority. Isaiah 42:3 says about Jesus, A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. Isn’t that great news?! I often don’t understand why He puts me through the things He puts me through, but I know that He never heaps more on me than I can take. It seems like it’s going to be too much a lot of the time, but He always helps me to make it through. He never abuses His authority, but uses it to use me for His glory and to transform me to be like Him.

C. Jesus holds me responsible for obedience, not results. John 14:23 says, Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.” If I am obedient results will happen – often not what I had in mind – but good spiritual fruit will be produced in my life. John 15:5 – “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” My responsibility is to obey Him out of love for Him and do everything I can to stay in close personal relationship with Him. When I remember that as His doulos I am only responsible for obedience and not results, it takes a lot of pressure off. But me being the worrier I tend to be, I keep the pressure on myself. We all do, don’t we? But Jesus holds me responsible for obedience, not results. If I am obedient, His results will follow.

D. Jesus meets my needs, so I don’t have to worry about them. A slave-owner was responsible for providing food, shelter, clothing and other basic needs for their bondslaves. Most of them took good care of their slaves because good slaves were hard to come by. Now if a human slave-owner was concerned enough to take good care of his slaves, how much better care will Jesus take care of His slaves? Jesus tells us, “You focus on knowing me and doing my will, and I’ll take care of your needs.” Isn’t that exactly what He says in Matthew 6:33? “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” All these things are what we need to live from day to day. When your Jesus’ bondslave, you don’t have to worry about your needs being met.

E. Jesus is my focus, so my life can become much less complicated. When I remember that I am Jesus’ bondslave and that knowing and obeying Him is the absolute focus of my life, it simplifies things dramatically. Basically in anything I do, I just have to ask myself if Jesus wants me to do it, and in the absence of strong direction, if he wouldn’t want me to do it. It all goes back to seeking His kingdom and His righteousness, His will and His character, first and foremost in my life. God created me to bring Him glory by worshipping Him, fellowshipping with other believers, reaching others with the good news of Jesus Christ, growing up in Him, and serving others because I love Him. Everything else I do falls under one of those purposes. My focus is on Christ alone. When I remember that, it makes a huge difference in my life.

F. Jesus freed me from slavery to sin, which is much more destructive to me than slavery to Christ. As a slave to sin, everything I do contributes to the destruction of the image of God within me. Sin corrupts me completely and will keep corrupting me as long as I am slave to it. But as a slave to Christ, my soul is remade and renewed instead of being corrupted and destroyed. Sin is a heartless master, because it is evil. Satan wants us to be slaves to sin so that we will be destroyed. Satan is heartless and evil, so slavery to him is death. Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Freedom means I can choose not to sin, to do things God’s way, to be His truly devoted slave. Jesus freed me from slavery to sin.

G. What does all this have to do with serving one another? Slavery to Christ frees us to serve one another with His strength and His help and His love. Think about it. Since Jesus never abuses His authority, we are free to lovingly serve one another instead of abuse one another. That’s kind of fun to try to get across to our kids, isn’t it? If there are any siblings in the house, they seem to think that it’s there duty to abuse one another. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, so we are free to serve one another, to be one another’s slaves. Tennis pro Arthur Ashe wrote, True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost (as cited on PreachingToday.com). We know that God will never call us to abuse one another, so we are free to be heroes in serving one another in love.

H. Since Jesus holds us responsible for obedience and not results, we are free to help one another walk in obedience and not pressure each other for results. This is a tough one in our competitive society, but with God’s help it’s doable. We are freed to recognize that as long as we obey, we will bear fruit for Christ so we don’t have to pressure one another to get the results we think should be coming. God is responsible for the results, not us. That doesn’t take away our need for accountability with each other for walking in obedience, but it does free us to extend grace to one another when things aren’t going the way we think they should. God keeps calling us to higher and higher levels of obedience, to take greater and greater risks in response to His call, so we can’t just sit and try to be safe and comfortable. Our only safety is in Christ and obeying Him. Corrie Ten Boom wrote, A missionary wrote me: "Sometimes adversity tempts me to discouragement in the face of seeming failure. But I take courage and press on anew, as I remember that God does not hold me responsible for success, but for faithfulness." Jesus never said, "Well done, you successful servant" (as cited on PreachingToday.com). We are free to help one another walk in obedience by serving one another and not pressuring each other for results because Jesus holds us responsible for obedience, not results.

I. Jesus meets our needs, so we can serve and give to one another without worrying if our needs will be met. As long as we obey Him, and part of that obedience is serving one another, He’ll take care of us. That is a very freeing truth, because if we’re on our own then we’ve got to spend every minute of every day protecting what we have and trying to get more of it. That is a cruel form of slavery. We think we’re free to protect and hoard and run after money, only to find out that we’ve enslaved ourselves to sin and Satan once again. Jesus frees us from the responsibility of taking care of those needs by freeing us to become like Him and to obey Him. I’m not saying we don’t need to work – providing for ourselves and our families is part of His will. But when that providing becomes an obsession, we’ve crossed the line and enslaved ourselves to sin once again. Missionary David Livingstone wrote, Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. ... The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give (as cited on PreachingToday.com). When we obey Him and serve one another out of love for Him, Jesus meets our needs.

J. Jesus is our focus, so we are freed from distractions and can serve one another as slaves. We are very talented at complicating our lives, aren’t we? We’re very good at filling our lives with so much stuff and so many commitments that have nothing to do with Him that we lose our focus. Our focus as a church is on Christ, to love Him and obey Him and to serve one another out of love for Him. That focus frees us to reach out and minister to needs all around us, so that not only will needs within the church be met, but unchurched folks will come to Christ because we’ve reached out and served them. Knute Larson writes, In the early 1990s when President George Bush had fiery John Sununu as his White House chief of staff, a reporter asked Sununu if his job was difficult. He quickly answered, "No." The reporter thought Sununu had misunderstood the question, so he asked again, and got the same reply. Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire, then explained why he felt his job was easy: "I have only one constituent." He knew his job was to please the President (as cited on PreachingToday.com). Our job is to please God by focusing on serving one another and Him. There is great freedom in focusing on Christ and His will for us – freedom from distractions and freedom to serve.

K. Jesus freed us from slavery to sin, so we can build positive and healthy relationships with one another instead of destructive ones. When our relationships are slaves to sin, we see Galatians 5:15 come into being – If you keep on biting and devouring one another, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. We see mountains of evidence of this truth in our society. Our society is enslaved by sin, so it’s natural that destructive relationships between family members, friends, coworkers, and others would be the norm. But Jesus died and rose again so we can have a different norm – loving one another with the same love that Jesus showed us by dying for us and demonstrating that love by serving one another. That’s an incredibly powerful truth! Slavery to Christ frees us from those destructive relationships so we can truly serve one another in love. Because the dysfunctionality so prevalent in our world no longer has to rule our relationships, we can be slaves to one another without worrying about being used or abused or destroyed. I know this probably sounds a bit idealistic, but when we’re in the kind of intimate relationship with Jesus Christ that He calls us to, it’ll happen. The only times we really run into problems is when we’re not in close personal relationship with Jesus, but have deluded ourselves into believing that we are. Focusing on serving God and others out of love for Him will help us stay in close relationship with Him. Author Warren Wiersbe wrote, If life is to have meaning, and if God's will is to be done, all of us have to accept who we are and what we are, give it back to God, and thank Him for the way He made us. What I am is God's gift to me; what I do with it is my gift to Him (as cited on PreachingToday.com). We are God’s gift to each other to love and serve one another. And in serving one another out of love for Him, we are serving Him, and that keeps our relationships on the right track. Jesus freed us from slavery to sin so that we can be free from destructive relationships and serve one another with God’s love.

L. This truth of being free to serve one another in love is incredibly liberating! We don’t have to put performance pressure on ourselves. We only have to love and obey Christ. In Galatians 5:1, Paul writes, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Paul is referring to slavery to sin. Christ has set us free to love Him and to serve one another out of that love. Let’s do whatever we can to put this truth into practice, because truth not applied is just interesting knowledge. Let’s serve one another in love because Christ has set us free!

M. I got this by email the other day, and those I’ve read it before, I though it would be appropriate for us today. The next time you feel like GOD can't use you, just remember...Noah was a drunk. Abraham was too old. Isaac was a daydreamer. Jacob was a liar. Leah was ugly. Joseph was abused. Moses had a stuttering problem. Gideon was afraid. Samson had long hair and was a womanizer. Rahab was a prostitute. Jeremiah and Timothy were too young. David had an affair and was a murderer. Elijah was suicidal. Isaiah preached naked. Jonah ran from God. Naomi was a widow. Job went bankrupt. John the Baptist ate bugs. Peter denied Christ. The Disciples fell asleep while praying. Martha worried about everything. The Samaritan woman was divorced, more than once. Zacchaeus was too small. Paul was too religious. Timothy had an ulcer...AND Lazarus was dead!

N. All of us can serve one another out of love for Christ because He has set us free!

III. Conclusion

A. We’re going to close a little differently than usual today. In your bulletin insert there are three numbered lines. Take a few moments to ask God to speak to your heart three acts of service He would have you do in the next ten days. Then write those three down in the spaces. Then ask Him to guide you and help you to do them. Now take a few minutes to share with someone the three things you’ve written down. Then be sure to pray for the person who shared with you over the next ten days.

B. Let’s pray together.