ROMANS 1:1-7
A young boy was in front of the
sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously.
Gordon inquired, "Son, where did you
get those birds?" The boy replied, "I trapped them out in the field." "What are you going to do with them?" "I'm going to play with them, and then I
guess I'll just feed them to an old cat we have at home." When Gordon
offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, "Mister, you don't want them, they're just little old wild birds and
can't sing very well." Gordon replied, "I'll give you $2 for the cage and the birds." "Okay, it's a deal, but you're making a bad
bargain." The exchange was made and the boy went away whistling, happy
with his shiny coins. Gordon went to the back of the church, opened the door of
the cage, and let the birds soar into the sky. The next Sunday he used the cage
to illustrate his sermon about Christ's coming to seek and to save the lost.
"That boy told me the birds were not
good singers," said Gordon, "but
when I released them and they winged their way heavenward, it seemed to me they
were singing [beautifully]!"
This story
illustrates what happens when God claims us through faith in Christ. I hope this
morning that you will see that if you are in Christ, he is your eternal
master. I will share with you three acts by which God makes us his
possessions. God purchases us – God calls us to specific positions of
service, and God calls us to a purpose.
If you believe on Christ, you belong to God. 1 Corinthians
Paul describes himself here as a servant of his master,
Jesus Christ. To be a servant of Christ means to have been purchased by God
for a love relationship with God.[2]
It means to be free from slavery to sin and to belong to our loving God. It
means I no longer have to do what my
sin nature tells me to do. I can, by the power of God, freely choose, without
the prohibition of sin’s power, to live as God, my master, wants me to.
You have
encountered situations in which you had a choice to make. You had to choose
whether to obey your sin nature or to obey the convictions of God within - your
new nature. You weighed the options: “What do I do?” Do I indulge in
immoral sex or do I wait for marriage? Do I allow drugs or alcohol to control
my life or do I seek the help I need? Do I cheat on my taxes or do I pay what I
owe? Do I betray my marriage relationship or do I remain faithful no matter
what? Do I engage in gossip or do I remain faithful?
You have
encountered such points of decision. Henry T. Blackaby calls these points of
decision crises of belief .[3]
It’s in these crises of belief that my claim that I belong to God is
validated or shown to be false.[4]
It’s in these crises that I discover whether I am truly a servant to Christ or
am I actually still enslaved to sin.
For in
these crises of belief, I have to decide: Do I believe God to be who God
says he is? Do I believe that God will do what God says he will do? Do I trust
that God will demonstrate himself to be who he says he is?
The crucial
question is this: “Do I believe?”
which can be translated, “Will I obey God or will I go my own way?”
Will I embrace Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior? Or will I embrace his
saving grace, but live like I think I can have eternal life with Christ as
Savior, but deny him as Lord? There could be no greater contradiction! There is
no such thing as a Christian who persistently fails to follow Jesus Christ as
Lord. Writing to Titus, Paul said this about people who claimed to be
Christians, but who lived disobedient lives, “They claim to know God, but by
their actions they deny him.”
Are you a servant of Jesus Christ? Do
you love your master? God purchases us for a love relationship in which we
seek, by the power of God, to obey our master out of love for him. God purchases
us and makes us his servants.
God also calls us to specific positions of service. Paul says he
was called to be an Apostle, which is simply a messenger of God. All who belong
to Christ are called to positions of service, but not all are called to be Apostles.
1 Corinthians
Each of you
who belong to God has a specific position of service to which you are called.
It is part of what it means to be a servant of Christ. To what position of
service have you been called? Henry Blackaby says, that you cannot discover
your God-given position of service until you identify where God is at work
around you and then choose to join God in what you see God doing.[6]
But, we
don’t usually do that do we? In our insecurity, we want to eliminate all
possibilities of failure and embarrassment before we step out in faith. Of
course, that is no faith at all for by definition, “faith is being sure of
what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” If I have to see where
God might lead me before I choose to join him in his work, I am not living by
faith. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:7, “We live by faith, not by
sight.”
Over the
years, as I have had many a meal with a child at the table, I have often heard
children say, “Ooh, I don’t like that.” And more times than not we
adults say something like, “How do you know you don’t like it until you have
tried it?”
Likewise, many who profess Christ as
Lord, refuse to join God in his work saying, “No, I’m not gifted in that
area. That’s not the position of service of service that God has called me to.”
Some refuse, but haven’t even tried to let God reveal their service to
them. Such folks sit on the sidelines thinking that they honor God by
showing up in worship on Sunday morning, while belonging to God means, in part,
to discover and to embrace the service to which they are called.
I can
testify that it is exciting to discover your God-given position of service. Not
many years ago I was a member of
God has not
assigned all of you to be pastors, but whatever your God-given position of
service, it is every bit as important to you, to the church and to God. It is
important because it is part of what it means to belong to God.
You have
heard the saying, “You missed your calling.” I am convinced that some of
you are missing your calling and that is a far more serious matter than you
might think. For, failure to identify your God-given position of service might
mean that you are faking it, just like I was. God has an assignment that is
uniquely tailored and waiting for you. God purchases us and calls us to specific
positions of services.
God also calls us to positions of
purpose. When you discover your position of
service - whether prophet, teacher, workers of miracles, healing, helping,
administration, or speaking in tongues - you can know that the purpose of your
call is the same as that of any other person’s call. The purpose of every
service to God is proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:20, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” So, you see, in a sense we all become apostles, messengers of God.
But, what is the message we are to convey? Our message is not one devised by human minds, but the one originated in the mind of God and given to us through God’s messengers. It is a message that stands the test of time, a message rooted and grounded in the eternal Word of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. It is a message of God’s intervention on behalf of humanity given before the act took place. It is the same message for all time, for every place, and for every person. It is the message whom God has sent to humanity – the message is Jesus Christ himself, the human who was declared by his resurrection to be the Son of God. Every true child of God in this and every other church is called to be a minister of the gospel of Christ.
In
NT times, the people in
No matter what your God-given position of service, if you are not proclaiming the gospel of Christ through it, then you have missed your calling. I would paraphrase Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13 like this, “If I implement my position of service of service with great faithfulness, eagerness and enthusiasm. If I give up my very life for the accomplish of my assignment and I do so without love, I have failed.” If you discover your God-given assignment and work at it, diligently seeking to accomplish the task set before you, but you do so without love you are spinning your wheels. If you teach, preach, help those in need, heal the sick or whatever else you might be called to do and you do so without love, you are a servant of God in name only.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, let me ask, “Are you a servant of Jesus Christ? Do you belong to him? Do you love your master? Does your life reflect love for Christ through a life of obedient service to him?”
Have you sought, discovered and embraced the position of service to which God has called you? Or are you still hung up in crises of belief trying to figure out how to avoid God’s call.
If you have discovered your God-given position of service, are you now willing to conduct it in such a way as to proclaim the gospel of Christ?
To be a true servant of Jesus Christ, one has to belong to God and to live a life of loving service to all people. Amen.
[1] All scripture quotes are from the The New
International Version, (
[2] In the context of Ex. 21, the bond-servant had a
choice, but when dealing with sin and its death-grip over the human will, God
takes the initiative to declare one an eternal possession. Just as the ear was
pierced to guarantee that the person remained the possession of his master, so
God, marks believers“…in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, …
guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s
possession A true master-bond-servant relationship in Paul’s view is a
relationship characterized by love. There is far more than this footnote can
convey, for the matter is tied up in God’s eternal choice and sovereign reign
over the affairs of humanity.
[3] Henry T.
Blackaby and Claude V. King, Experiencing God: Broadman and Holman
Publishers, 1994 – “Crises of belief”
[4] Ibid.,
p.155, Selected statements from the page paraphrased in the following paragraph
related to “For in these crises of belief, I have to decide…”
[5] This passage is not claimed to contain an exhaustive
list of the positions of service/gift/assignment to which God calls humans, but
I believe that all other gifts can be categorized in one of these groups.
[6] Blackaby, paraphrased “…you cannot discover your God-given position of service … until you identify where God is at work around you and then choose to step out and join God in what you see God doing.”