Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Jesus Served | My Favorite Verses | Luke 22.27

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

Jesus was both a leader and a servant. Hear how he humbled himself and served humanity from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) as he continues our series on My Favorite Verses with https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+22.25-27&version=ESV (Luke 22.27). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-pride-looks-like-mark-mark-10-32-45/ (What Pride Looks Like) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/why-god-chooses-the-humble-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-146-55/ (Why God Chooses the Humble). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. I love to spice up dinner conversations by asking people questions. Sometimes I like to ask questions that are maybe a little bit awkward,

that make people feel a little bit uncomfortable without being completely inappropriate. Sometimes I like to ask questions that just get people to think a little bit deeper than we are normally prone to at dinner. One of the questions I like to ask, especially of Christians, is this. If you were to discover five or ten years from now that you had drifted away from Jesus, maybe just a little bit so that you're not as close to Jesus then in the future as you are now, or maybe a lot to the point that you have completely walked away from Jesus. But either way, what do you think would have led to that condition? In other words, what I'm really asking is, do you know yourself well enough to know your weaknesses?

Do you know yourself well enough to know those areas that you are spiritually vulnerable? Now, if I was going to turn that question back on myself and make myself answer it, I think I'd answer pride. Pride manifests itself so many ways, but I think one thing pride always shares in common is a lack of dependence upon God. And I have always been susceptible to pride. I don't know if it's just my own sinful nature. I don't know if it's partly the family I grew up in or trying to prove myself or thinking more highly of myself than I ought.

I'm not exactly sure. Maybe none of us are exactly sure why we struggle with the story. certain sins that we do, but I know that pride is a spiritual danger in my life and that what God wants for me is to fight against the sin of pride and to cultivate a humble life, to grow in humility. Now, humility is admired, at least inside churches, but it wasn't always considered an admirable virtue in our culture. There's this university in Australia, and they did a research project tracing humility back in history, and they found that humility wasn't always admired. This public university in Australia concluded that humility was rooted in Christianity.

In the early years after Jesus' death and resurrection, the church really flourished in Rome. In Rome, not unlike our own country, it was a status-obsessed culture. For example, one Roman author named Plutarch wrote a self-help book. It was called this, How to Praise Yourself Inoffensively. It's a crazy title. How to Praise Yourself Inoffensively? It's like how to do a humble brag. So Jesus steps into this world of status and rank and privilege and competition and comparison

and self-importance. In other words, a culture much like ours. And he says this, in this world, the kings and great, men lord it over their people, yet they are called friends of the people. But among you, it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant. Who is more important, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course, but not here, for I am among you as one who serves. That passage is out of the gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 22.

And that last verse, Luke 22, 27. It's one of my favorite verses. Not because it doesn't sting, because to be honest, it does. I've already told you that I struggle with pride. But this verse is one of my favorites because it paints a picture of a humble savior, a humble king that I want to learn to be like. I follow a humble king, and therefore I need to grow. and humility. Let me read that last verse again, Luke 2227. Who is more important? The one who sits at the table

or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course, but not here. For I am among you as one who serves. Jesus says, look, I don't sit at the head table with the important people who are being served and catered to. No, I'm the bus boy serving everyone else. If I were to ask, people you know, people who you work with, people in your family, your friend group, whoever, if I were to ask people who know you to describe you, just to throw out words that describe your character or what you're like to be around, I wonder how long it would take them to get to the word servant. Does anybody describe you as a servant? I think you could go on for hours and hours, maybe days, weeks, months, years, and no one who knows me well would throw out the word servant

to describe me. And that's a problem because Luke 2227 says that Jesus is the one who serves. Jesus is the one at your office who would go around and pick up other people's trash or who would stay late to take a project even though it was inconvenient. Jesus, if he were in your family, he would be the one who serves. If Jesus were in your family, he would be the one who did the dishes or whatever odd jobs around the house that nobody ever really wanted to do. He would do the thankless tasks. He would give of his time, of his money, of his heart, of his resources, of his emotional

energy. I want to be more like Jesus. because into our status-obsessed world, Jesus says, look, I'm a servant, and so are all my followers. So I guess his slogan is, come serve the servant. I'm not sure that's a great PR slogan. I'm not sure that campaign is going to be successful in 21st century America. But Jesus wasn't trying to please the culture. He wasn't trying to blend into the culture. He wasn't trying to adapt to the culture. In this sense, he punched the culture in the face.

He refused to play the status game. He blows up the status game. So let's just take a couple minutes and think about the humility of Jesus. Jesus displayed humility when he became a man. Philippians 2. Who being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself.

nothing. Catch that? Jesus made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness. Jesus was in very nature God. Think about all that it means to be God. All things were created by him and for him. Or as he says in Matthew 28, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. And yet he made himself nothing to become like one of us. servant made in human likeness, Jesus is a humble king. He gave up his glory to become a human baby. Imagine the kind of humility that took. For the king of the universe, not to become the king of a nation or emperor or president or a billionaire. No, that would take enough humility in itself. How much more humility that Jesus, the king of all things, became a helpless infant. Jesus's humility is seen and that he chose to become part of a poor family to be born in poor

circumstances. If you could be born in any family, what family would you choose? Maybe a wealthy one, maybe a famous one? Not Jesus. Jesus chose. Remember, he was God. He chose to be born, not to parents who are wealthy or connected or powerful, but to a poor engaged couple who couldn't even afford the standard sacrifices offered in the temple. He chose to be born to a young unwed mother. He chose to be born into a family that was part of a small unknown community. He rejected all the capitals, all the cities of higher learning of his day to be born in Bethlehem, a town so small and insignificant that it's not even listed in the records of Judah. Jesus' humility was displayed when he was respectful to his earthly parents. We know that Jesus was sinless, meaning he never broke one of

God's commands, including the Fifth Commandment, to honor your father and mother. Now, Mary and Joseph, they were not perfect parents. They weren't all-knowing or all-wise. They weren't sinless. So there must have been times when they had hard days and yelled at Jesus unfairly or out of anger or frustration. but Jesus was sinless, which means he was perfectly obedient, not only to God, but also to his earthly parents. He had to obey them, respect them, even when he knew they were wrong, even when his parents were acting foolishly or sinfully. Here's a question for you. Have you ever had to submit to someone in authority who you were convinced was your inferior? Like, did you ever have a time of your life where you had to submit to your parents even though you knew they were wrong,

or a supervisor at work who had been promoted beyond his or her ability, or a police officer or judge who seemed extremely incompetent. Well, Jesus did. Everyone Jesus came into contact with was truly his inferior, including his own parents. Yet he didn't grumble or complain or rebel. instead he humbled himself and willingly yielded to their authority over him. By his power, we can show respect and honor to those in authority over us, even when they don't deserve it, even when we're convinced they're wrong. Jesus' humility was seen in that he lived his life as a servant. Mark 1045, 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. Jesus took the low road, the humble road. He became a servant. Nobody notices a servant. Nobody sends thank you notes to servants. But that's what Jesus is always doing. He's always turning our expectations upside down. If Jesus was a servant, well, then shouldn't we be servants?

We're not greater than Jesus, are we? Finally, Jesus's humility extended. ended to his death. Back to Philippians 2. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Jesus died a shameful death, hanging between two common criminals for a crime that he did not commit. Jesus died to free people like me, maybe people like you who are in bondage to self-exaltation and self-absorption. As our faith in Jesus grows deeper, we are changed so that we can begin to follow the humble king on the low road of humility and believe his promise that the last will be first,

that the only way to go up is first to go down. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.