MARY: THE PERFECT SERVANT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.”

Luke 1:38

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Note: Today, I want to share with you a sermon I delivered several years ago on Mary and her remarkable display of faith and trust in accepting God’s proposition to bear and give birth to His son, despite the challenges it would bring. I hope you will be inspired and blessed by these words.

I pray you will be instructed and blessed by the word of God as we look at the matter of being a servant and God’s call of servitude as we look at this message God has given to me, a message titled, “The Perfect Servant”.

Please turn with me in your bibles to the first chapter in the Gospel of Luke. I’ll be reading verses 26 through 38 as we look at the encounter between Gabriel, an angel of God, and Mary, a young betrothed virgin who is about to have her life drastically changed through divine intervention. Hear now the word of the Lord:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Then the angel left her.

Here ends the reading of God’s holy word.

Let us pray.

Come Lord Jesus, come into our presence we pray. As we study the scriptures, we ask that You enter into our hearts and do something fresh and new this morning. Open our minds so that Your Holy Spirit can enter in and fill our thoughts. Bless us with Your guidance and instruction and lead us to trust and grow in You, obediently answering your call to serve to the glory of God our Father.  I particularly pray that the words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

As I prepared today’s message, I wondered how I would best introduce myself. I mean, I’m not an ordained minister but I am a bible teacher with 20 years experience and currently teach the Tweeners class here at Bayside Baptist. I could say that I am a writer with nearly 1,000 writings online, writings straight from the word of God and posted every day on my ministry, The Christian Walk. But I decided that it would be best in regard to today’s sermon to just introduce myself as Mark Cummings, a servant of the Lord Most High, a man who submits himself to the Lord as an instrument of His will, and an ordinary person that God uses for extraordinary purposes even though I am a sinner.  

I pray that you are seeking to define yourself the same way today because at the very heart of being Christian is Christ and when we look at Jesus…and it doesn’t take much looking…we find the heart of a perfect servant, a man who was perfectly God and perfectly like you and me at the same time. Jesus was always about His Father’s business…He said as much and testified that He came to serve and not be served. This humility was expressed fully in His actions…actions that put His love and compassion on full display…a perfect, unconditional agape love that was willing to go all the way, even to death…it was the purest kind of love…a love that would lead Him to be falsely accused, and hauled into court where the scales were tipped against Him. He was derided by the very people He came to love and save, and then beaten and flogged before being nailed to a cross and placed on public display to die.

Yes, Jesus more than any other person in the Scriptures showed us by example…that serving others involves sacrifice…a willingness to go above and beyond the norm…even to death if need be. And the important thing we need to remember is that He called us to do likewise.

Indeed, there’s no doubt we were created for service and the scriptures affirm this. Consider these words from 1st Peter:

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 4:10-11

Friends, God has imparted gifts on us all to be used for His service and I can say with confidence today that all of you have gifts inside that you have not even tapped into yet. Some of them have not been explored…while others are dormant and waiting for the Lord to activate them for His service at His appointed time.

We’re expected to be good stewards of these gifts and that means putting them to use to the glory of the One who provided them…the One who will grant us the strength to carry out whatever tasks He gives us so that in all things God may be praised through our Savior, and service role model, Jesus.

You see, Jesus said what He meant and meant what He said. There was no double standard in Him. The way He lived reflected the divine attitude of His heart…a heart that was never too busy for someone in need…never too preoccupied to love, care, teach, and heal. Jesus didn’t put people on hold. No, He promptly answered the call to make a difference in their lives and, in doing so, gave us a blueprint for service to follow.

As Christians, Jesus is trying to lead us to live like Him through the Holy Spirit…to make us servants, ever seeking to glorify the Father through using the gifts He has given to care for the needs of others and standing for causes greater than ourselves.  

So we know we are to serve self sacrificially because Jesus served. But how will the Lord use us? In what ways does He want us to serve?

As we ponder the answers to these questions, praying over them and asking God to reveal His calling, we should remember one key point that is illuminated by the scriptures:

Never underestimate what God can do in and through you in accordance with His plan.

Let me say that again and listen carefully to this point because it’s critical to us being the servants that God wants us to be.  

Never underestimate what God can do in and through you in accordance with His plan.

You see, it’s not about my plan or your plan but it’s all about His plan.

I say this because it’s where we usually get in trouble when it comes to service. We too often want to shape the Lord’s will to look like ours. We want to remain in our nice little comfort zones…to do the things we feel most comfortable with. We reject anything we’re asked to do that might be outside of what we think our abilities are. And we wrongly assume that God will only call us to do things that we want to do.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking is not anywhere near the truth we find in the Bible regarding service and God’s call to it. For the reality of being in the Lord’s service requires us to understand two key things:

First, God’s plan is usually completely counter to ours.

and

Second, He will call us out of our comfort zone into something we have never done before.

Consider these examples:

In Genesis, Chapter 12, we find Abraham who at the time was named Abram and was seventy five years old. He was living comfortably with his family in Haran on land he had inherited. Life was good.

And then God entered in one day and said:

“Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Wow. Pull up your roots and leave everything behind to go to an unknown place? So much for the retired life.

So how did Abram respond to this? How would you respond to it if God called for you to pull up your roots and travel somewhere, not being sure where “somewhere” was, but assured by God that He would eventually reveal your destination?

Well, we see in the scriptures that Abram didn’t reject God and come up with a multitude of reasons why he and his family couldn’t go. Instead, he just went, as the Lord had told him, taking his wife Sarai (later to be Sarah), his nephew Lot, and all the possessions they had accumulated in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan.

Abraham didn’t know where God was leading him. And he had no idea what God wanted him to do. All he knew was that God had made a promise to him and called him to go and that’s exactly what he did in obedience.

Moses (Exodus 3) was another figure called out of his comfort zone. I mean, he was minding his own business tending to the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, when at Horeb he encountered an odd scene: a bush that was burning, but not being consumed by the flames. He curiously went to look at the bush and found out it had one other strange feature…it talked…and the voice was none other than the Lord Almighty who was calling Moses from shepherding sheep to shepherding the Israelites away from the oppression of Pharoah and the Egyptians.

Now that was going to be a change don’t you think? Minding sheep was one thing. Opposing the powerful Pharoah was quite another.

So how did Moses handle the Lord’s request? Did he see himself as being able to do this?

Well, God’s word tells us that Moses was not quite as compliant as Abraham. In fact, Moses doubted he was the right guy for the job saying, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Maybe you and I would feel the same way. But God assured Moses that he was up to the task because He would be with him and deliver him to victory. And that’s exactly what happened.

And then there was Jonah (Jonah 1), a man called to serve who reacted differently than either Abraham or Moses. You may remember how God called him out of his comfort zone…He told Jonah to “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because of its wickedness”, a harrowing task given the incredible power and might of the Assyrian empire.

Well, after receiving this tasking, Jonah didn’t question God, wondering whether He had selected the right man. This is because he was too busy running away from God’s plan all together. The Bible tells us that he got underway on a ship destined for Tarshish thinking he would flee the Lord. But instead, Jonah ended up overboard and swallowed up by a great fish where he would spend three days and nights weighing his poor decision to defy God and choosing whether he would change his mind and trust and obey God or be digested by the fish. Facing that set of choices has a way of bring a person to their senses and the Scriptures tell us that Jonah, in the midst of his dilemma, turned to the Lord in prayer and said:

“I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you.”

And as God saw his change of heart, He had the fish spit Jonah onto dry land before ordering Jonah again to go to Nineveh and deliver the news of their impending doom. And as you might have guessed, this time he went.

Wouldn’t it have been so much easier if Jonah would have just obeyed God from the start? There’s a definite lesson for all of us as we are called to serve in ways that we might not want.

Well, the examples of biblical figures who were faced with responding to the word of God were not limited to the Old Testament.

Consider the first disciples called by Jesus…Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and brothers James and John. They were doing well fishing the Sea of Galilee when Jesus walked into their lives and promised to make them fishers of men (Mark 1:14-20). And in response to the call, the four fisherman immediately left their nets to follow Him. They had no idea what fishing for men really meant but they had faith enough in Jesus to follow Him and find out. Sometimes we just need to go as Christ commands and trust that he will show us the way He wants us to serve as we walk with Him.

Then there was Paul. You see, Paul had no idea what the Lord had in store for him to include a name change from Saul, the name he bore as he persecuted and murdered Christians. You’ll remember one instance where he presided over the stoning of Stephen, one of the seven chosen to support the disciples after Christ’s ascension (Acts 8:1).  Saul had no interest in Christ except killing those who he found following Him. He was on the road to Damascus to continue doing just that when he met Jesus, and not in a pleasant way I might add, but it was an encounter that changed Paul’s life forever as well as the lives of countless others who would come to find salvation through his passionate evangelistic work.

You remember the encounter on the road to Damascus, don’t you?

As Saul walked with his entourage, he was struck down blind before having dialogue with what was to him at that moment…an unseen, unknown force.

““Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” the voice asked.

“Who are you, Lord?” replied Saul.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” He replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” And with the help of others to get him to Damascus, Paul did what Jesus commanded.

Now given his own devices, Saul probably would have never changed and become Paul, the greatest apostle ever. He needed Christ to intervene in a powerful way on that Damascus road. And maybe you’re a lot like Saul. Maybe you have rejected Christ’s call to serve and advance the Gospel, a call all Christians have received, and are doing nothing productive for His cause and the cause of others. You aren’t running from the call as much as you are just ignoring it and don’t doubt that Jesus can and will initiate a Damascus moment in your life, a time when He’ll powerfully strike you at the core of your soul to draw you to Him and His work. The truth is that Jesus Christ is more than ready to do what it takes to win you over for His purpose.

You see, Jesus could have destroyed Saul for how he murdered Christians but He didn’t. Instead, He made Saul blind to the sinful way he was living only to allow him to open his eyes to new possibilities of service that would bring people to life…and not just any life but life eternal…instead of death. Indeed, Paul’s identity changed after his Damascus moment and as he wrote letters to the Christian churches he helped Jesus sow, he would begin by identifying himself as Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. Indeed, he had come a long way from the murderous Saul he once was.

So what should you learn from this?

If you wish to change today, know Jesus is ready to receive you and put you to work. If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your personal Savior, then today is the day He can and will change your life forever. Or maybe you are a Christian but have decided to turn away from your obligation to serve Him and others. Again, today you can change all that and make a renewed commitment to partner with Christ in powerful ways in the new year and beyond. Whatever the case, I pray that you’ll come forward during our invitation after this message to affirm your willingness to sacrifice yourself in service as Christ sacrificed Himself for you.

So we’ve talked about Abraham and Moses and Jonah…and the first disciples and Paul. Now let’s talk about Mary, the mother of Jesus and the focus of today’s scripture passage. She too faced a daunting task from the Lord, one that would definitely take her out of her comfort zone, placing her under public shame and scorn.

As Pastor Nixon highlighted a few Sundays ago, Mary was a virgin who was pledged to be married to Joseph but it was far different than our modern day engagements. A Jewish betrothal period was definitely a more stringent, binding agreement. There was to be no sexual relations during this period…in fact the two future mates couldn’t even live together…and the engagement could only be broken by divorce. It was as if the couple was quasi-married before they actually were.

So imagine all this now as you consider the scene in our scripture passage. 

The angel Gabriel, sent by God, suddenly enters into Mary’s life one day. Now I’m sure she had a routine she followed like any of us do. She had an idea of what she would be doing that day, what she would be doing in the coming days, and through her betrothal, she knew what the future was holding for her. But her plans…and her life were about to be changed in a big way.

Gabriel detailed it all for her. Mary had found God’s favor and would soon conceive, giving birth to a son who would be great and called the Son of the Most High…a son who would reign over Israel and the rest of God’s kingdom forever…A son who was to bear the name Jesus.

Imagine if you were Mary. How would you feel at that point? I mean, wouldn’t you feel like she did…afraid and confused? It was all so hard to believe and Mary’s words underscore that…as she asks Gabriel how what he said could ever happen as she was a virgin, unmarried, and forbidden to have sexual relations. How would she ever be able to conceive?

Gabriel explains starting in verse 36…for Mary would not be impregnated naturally but supernaturally through the power of the Most High and the Holy Spirit. And just in case Mary doubted that miracles like this could happen, Gabriel reminds her that Elizabeth, Mary’s relative, was going to have a child even though she was in her latter years with conception believed to be an impossibility. The angel of the Lord used this to assure Mary that God’s word was true and would never fail. We need to remember this in our own lives when God calls us to do something out of our comfort zone.

So God’s plan for Mary had been revealed. She was going to become pregnant although she would not be intimate with any man. I think any ordinary person in Mary’s time would resist this notion. I mean…think of the enormous social ramifications it would bring.

Everyone knew Mary was betrothed to Joseph and was not yet married. And now, she starts to show as Jesus is growing inside her. There would be no doubt she was with child and there would be no doubt the questions and criticism would come.

Who is the father of your child? Did you and Joseph get together before the marriage or is it someone else’s baby? Either way, you knew what you were supposed to do. You have sinned before God and should be cursed. You’ve disgraced your family and are a disgrace to our community.

The pregnancy could and did take its toll on Joseph too. From the Gospel of Matthew, we know Joseph would have His own personal struggle with the matter and planned to quietly divorce Mary so to try and minimize the disdain she would already be experiencing. In order to resolve the matter with Joseph, it took another intervention by Gabriel to explain to him about the divine conception that was in progress.

Yes, there were a multitude of things that could have led Mary to resist and even reject this special calling…a unique form of service unto her God. But she didn’t and this is what makes Mary one of the more amazing people in the Bible.

For despite everything that could and would happen to her through the conception to come, Mary simply said:

“I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.”

Her words inspire us because they display an incredible faith and trust in God that defies our human reasoning. It would have been easy for Mary to say “no” but she didn’t because above all things, she was the Lord’s servant. 

Yes, God’s plan definitely brings us to unexpected places with purposes different from our own. And He can and will take us from our comfort zones…places where we can easily reason His call away. But God doesn’t just call us into His plan but He instructs us and empowers us to carry that plan out.

Think about it. Would the Lord call you into His service for you NOT to succeed?

No…the Lord executes plans that will end up just the way He wants them to. And He will instruct and empower us as He uses us to ensure His will is done on earth just as He did with everyone we have talked about this morning.   

God told Abraham to go and become the Father of Israel. And then He went with Abraham to see it through.

Moses was directed to lead and deliver Israel from oppression, pointing them toward the Promised Land. And God divided the seas so they could escape on dry land and then helped them through their wilderness journey to Canaan.

Jonah was told to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s message…the word that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days. And although Jonah ran at first, he realized that following God’s plan and going to Nineveh was better than being fish food. As a result, God showed Jonah that He will see His plans through to fruition as Nineveh’s people repented and changed their hearts, turned from their evil ways, and experienced God’s grace and mercy as He relented from their punishment.

As for Saul, well Ananias would be sent by the Lord to go to him and relay the message that he would be the Lord’s chosen instrument to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. And after Ananias touched Saul’s eyes enabling him to see again, Saul would become Paul and would do just that, fully realizing along the way that there is sometimes suffering and hardship attached to fully committing yourself to the cause of Christ.

Friends, maybe today the Lord is removing the blindness from your eyes and is revealing His purposes to you. Maybe He’s ready to change your life forever, bringing you to adopt an attitude like Mary, a humble attitude that responds to the Lord’s call to service by simply saying, “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word be fulfilled in my heart and my life now and forever.”

Yes, God’s word calls us from our comfort zone and He does so with no notion of failure. Rather, He is fully ready to instruct and empower us by way of the Holy Spirit, ensuring His plans will ALWAYS succeed. Remember that He can do all things…and so can we when we submit to Him and His will and His strength. Then and only then, will we discover, like the changed Paul did, that we can do all things through the power of the living Christ living and abiding within us.

So what’s left?

We know we’re called and will be called to do things we never imagined we might do…and we know God will give us everything we need to answer and fulfill that call.

Well, the only thing needed now to put things in motion is our obedience.

You see, God can call us to a plan, ready to instruct and empower us toward success, but things only move forward when we respond to His calling in action through faith. There’s no doubt that God expects this from us…to not doubt what He’s calling us to do but rather to go when called, obedient to whatever He wants us to do.

Abraham, Moses, Jonah (and we could even add Noah here)…the first disciples, Paul and Mary, the mother of our beloved Savior Jesus, were all examples of ordinary people like you and me who were called by God for extraordinary purposes and they responded in obedience, even if it had to be coaxed or even forced in some circumstances.

Going back to Mary…She never questioned what was about to happen to her or choose to debate God through Gabriel about what He was asking her to do.

No…Mary submitted fully despite knowing the road ahead would not be an easy one. She didn’t opt to remain a virgin but instead freely received the divine conception of the Holy Spirit, and in doing so, she changed the course of mankind forever.  

Now…I’m not saying the Lord is ready to call you to do something to change mankind but then again maybe He is because you can never underestimate what God is doing in and through you. Stranger things have happened in the history of creation, that’s for sure.

But one thing is certain…being a Christian equals being like Christ. This babe…soon to be born of Mary in Bethlehem’s manger…is no ordinary child. For He would grow up to be a servant King and not just any servant but a perfect servant…One who never hesitated to put others ahead of Himself…One who willingly was crucified for us, dying so we might live.

After all, it was His destiny…remember that He was always about His Father’s business…and it was His Father’s plan for Him to live and die and then rise on the third day, ascending to sit at His right hand and, in doing so, pave the way for all those who believe and trust in Him to follow someday. I pray you are counted in that number.

And so I close with a few questions:

How will you respond to this message from the Lord today?

If you’re not currently serving, will you continue to not do so, serving your own desires instead of the Lord’s and shunning the magnitude of help needed here at Bayside Baptist? The list we looked at highlights how much this church needs your help. 

Or will you freely give of your time and talent self sacrificially toward the good of others just as Mary did and then as her Son would do, the perfect Servant from whom we draw our identity as Christians.

Brothers and sisters, as we get set to receive Jesus, the perfect Servant, into our world and our hearts once again, let’s all move forward to the new year with a reinvigorated sense of service, following the lead of Mary and so many others in the Bible who were just like you and me…ordinary people who God chose to use in extraordinary ways, all because they were willing to serve.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, as we prepare to celebrate Your birth, we thank you for the sacrifices You made on our behalf and the way You humbly served others before Yourself. We pray that we can serve like you did and commit ourselves to Your will and calling…for You are truly the Way and the Truth and the Life…and THE only way to the Father. Reveal Your purpose to us now and in the new year…and guide us to make a difference in the lives of others as we seek to glorify the Father by helping all to know and trust in You. Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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