Be a Sacrificial Servant — Atlee Yoder

Greetings to you all, in the name of Jesus, our precious Lord. Just very thankful for this opportunity to worship the Lord, and the beauty of holiness, like we were singing. It's just such a good thing.

Can everyone hear me? Is the speaker turned up just right? Is there any special prayer requests? Stand, those that can or want to. Oh God, we pray to you and come to you through your dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, this morning.

And we just express our thankfulness for your mercy, your tender mercies and your kind lovingness. Just how you, in some miraculous way, have brought us to you, and you've brought us out of this dark world, helped us to make good decisions that would continue to build up our lives in you.

And all foolishness and all vanity could be put away from us, and that we could be more and more perfected in your image, in your likeness and in your spirit. We just want to lift up these men that different brothers have been reaching out to, just pray for conviction on their hearts.

James and Tyler, Chris and Jacob and John. Men that are in the world, they might be seeking you, but might be in a bad situation. Just show them what their next step is and how they might draw closer to you.

Pray for the continuation of this day, that it can be pleasing to you in all things, and that we can edify one another and just be a pure spotless light for you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I'd just like to have a little something that would draw our attention to the important things of life.

The Least Becoming the Greatest

It's not going to be anything new that any of you haven't thought of, but I just find some of the things that Jesus taught, I find them refreshing and then I find them challenging. And so completely against the nature of man, it seems like we can just learn of them every day.

The one I'm speaking of is in Matthew 23. It's that whole concept, that idea of the least becoming the greatest, the last becoming the first, things of that nature. Verse 11 says,. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Christ's Humility as the Pattern for Servanthood

And what had originally got me on that thought was when I was reading Philippians chapter 2, and that's where I intend to read a little more. I believe this would be Philippians chapter 2, especially like verses 6 and 7, would be a pretty prime example of the completeness of that thought in Jesus' own life.

I know he was speaking to us in these terms, but it was not just some empty talk without anything to back it. It was completely backed with a surrendered life, sacrificial servanthood. I mean, anything that you would find along those lines, Jesus not only taught it, but he lived it in his own life.

So, Philippians chapter 2, I'll read a few verses there, starting with verse 1. If there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels of mercy, fulfill my joy that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind.

Let nothing be done through strife and vainglory, but in lowliness of mind. Let each esteem other better than themselves. Let not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And then these next verses is, yes, what I would think would be the... I mean, you can just read through what he did there in the Gospels, and you can see these verses being fulfilled over and over.

In the form of God, thought it not... King James uses the word robbery, but it's more like, thought it not, something of pressure to be called equal with God. I have another version here that makes it a little more clear in my mind.

It says, though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. And it seems like that thought gets expressed a lot when we read through the Gospels. There in John, when he was teaching the disciples, he said that he'll go to his father, and then he made this phrase, like his father is greater than him.

And it just, over and over, he puts himself at a position of lowliness and of servanthood. He had all the rights of the Son of the Creator, and being a part of that Godhead, he still became like us. And that's just such an encouraging thing for me to see how he reached out to us.

So verse 7 says,. But made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of his servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

And then it doesn't stop there and leave us without the end of it. It says, I'll just read it,. Wherefore God also has exalted him, highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and of things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And there's just so many verses that go with that, so many things that Jesus did that just, you can just see that the Apostle Paul writing this was fully convinced that Jesus did these things. And so am I.

I'm fully convinced that he was not a man of high reputation. He didn't desire that. He was one that would lead out in servanthood and self-denial. In 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 it says,. For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

And those are not new verses, right? We've all read them, or probably most of us here are very familiar with that, but I just want to bring them out this morning in light of a, oh, it seemed like it's something that I needed throughout this week, and then when I came across it, it was something like a strong reminder or something like a breakthrough, you might say.

Applying Sacrificial Service in Relationships

And I think that's a good thing. I think of our lines of head in those kind of moments. It could be called something else, like just such a fresh reminder of God and what he did, and then he teaches us these kind of things, and then we're left with making a decision the right way or the wrong way.

When I read it this week, I had just gone through, well, I guess it's not wrong to be pretty open about child training and stuff, but still there's things I wouldn't just share all the way, but sometimes you get to these places where it just kind of gets you to where you just don't know.

You don't know sometimes, and then you get these breakthroughs of restoring relationships or coming through, you might say, to your child or something of that nature, and I think God does that with us sometimes where if we take the Word and exercise ourselves in the Word and we exercise ourselves in good servanthood and sacrificial things, I think God can have those breakthroughs with us where relationships are restored and relationships are built up between us and him.

Matthew 20 -28 says,. Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. Hebrews 2 -17 -18 says,. Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made likened to his brethren, that he might be a merciful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for sins of the people.

For that he suffered being tempted. He is able to help us that are also tempted. Now it's a beautiful thing just to think of that, the Godhead and then the role that trickles all the way down to humanity and how beautiful it is when those things are just in tune and they're understood and they're being worked out in families, they're being worked out in all kinds of relationships that we have.

Coworkers or families is what I'm ultimately thinking about. It's kind of been on my mind as I was reading through this and how He became one of us so that He can win all of us back to the Father. And I think in that way, at least to some extent, we're in such a position if we have children.

And these children are born in just about utter ignorance in things of God, and they have to be taught. And here we are with this responsibility in some ways like Jesus is for us. And so we need to ponder on those things and make them a reality in our lives.

Then in verse 17, I'll read that yet. And if I be offered unto the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all. For the same cause also do you joy and rejoice with me. Let me just read that in a version that's maybe a little more clear.

The thought being that there's rejoicing in having offered like a pleasing offering to God. But I will rejoice if I lose my life pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God.

That's a phrase that I liked. Our faithful service, like our self-denial and not looking every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others, those things are actually a pleasing offering to God.

The Sacrificial Example of Arlen Williams

It's a good service. There's this story I came across too. I had to look it up again, but sometime in my past I had remembered this and then I looked it up again. A story of a sacrificial act. Someone that was in an airplane crash and maybe some of you know about this man.

Arlen Williams was a passenger on flight. Air flight 90 going. They left some airport close to Washington, D .C. on a cold winter morning in 1982. They just did not reach altitude probably because of ice.

It was very icy morning. Came down, crashed onto a bridge on 14th Street there in Washington somewhere. Of course hit motorists, slid off the bridge, went into the Potomac River and there it was. People were quickly pulling off trying to see what they can do to help.

Out of the 79 people aboard, 74 of them died. There was a few that escaped and were up on the wing of the plane. Quite quick there was a helicopter there with the rope in the basket and there was this man always passing off the rope to the next person.

The helicopter made five trips to the land and came back the sixth time for the last and the sixth man, but he was dead. His name was Arlen Williams and of course like the world does they renamed that bridge.

It's the bridge of Arlen Williams. There's a monument there. He did this thing that's very profound, that's very self-sacrificing. It's one of those things that I question myself. I never was in a place like that, just exactly what I would do.

Our first man wants to live, right? We want to live and be happy and live a long life and be prosperous in the Lord. Then we're faced with this moment like is it our life or are these men strangers to him that he would hand the rope off to?

They were all just passengers on a plane. Those stories are fascinating to me. I'm challenged by them. Anyhow, there's many more examples. I didn't intend to make a long speech on it, but just something to draw our minds to just to realize how Jesus, He had all the riches of heaven but He became poor here on this earth so that we can have that.

That's a greater sacrifice than passing the rope on to the next person if you're drowning in ice water. He did anything and everything beyond that. So that's the one that we want to be like. That's the one that we want to follow.

Christ's Humble Kingship and the Separate Kingdom

We want to take courage in that He let out like that. We just have to think of Him as being Lord and King. Yet He humbled Himself. You might say like the day of His establishment of His kingdom or at least kind of how I see it the day that He rode into Jerusalem on His humble animal.

You might call it the day of His inauguration. How different that is than the world has that day. When that day rolls around in January there's this big ado about this new guy going to now sit on the throne of this earthly kingdom.

And so it's a complete separate kingdom. It's separate from this world. It's very obvious in His teachings, in His lifestyle. It's very separate. And that's why the kingdoms of that time and the kings and the kingdoms up through age just could not just could not co-mingle through wicked men and stuff.

Things did seem to co-mingle then after a couple hundred years but that was not how it started out. Let us fervently strive after that kingdom. So God bless you all. Feel free to make comments or corrections.

Amen. I want to say amen to the message.

Putting Others First in Practical Sacrifice

The point was when is it acceptable to make the necessary sacrifice so that someone else may live? It seems like a topic that a very big problem with is the discussion of food. And when is it acceptable to deny yourself?

And when is it not? What is God willing to allow? If we would actually see the need I don't know if anybody's actually like truly just been hungry. If we had that last piece of bread in our hand and we saw somebody else next to us dying of hunger or thirst or whatever would we find it acceptable to give it to them or to keep it for ourselves?

I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of people in this country that probably has experienced a lot of that. Kind of like handing the rope off so that someone may live. Because I appreciated the message that God will give us wisdom on how to handle those things in that time.

Really have any comments or anything to add? I was just blessed by it. Brother Attlee, thank you. I think at the beginning you summed it up well. I found it both refreshing and challenging and good to think about how to focus on putting others first.

Amen.

Thank you, Brother Attlee. You know that servitude the greatest among you is the least. I remember a preacher said over 30 years ago the only motivation that we need would be basically 2 Corinthians 5.

2 Corinthians 5 of Christ constrains us. The motivation that Jesus loved us and died for us that seems to be the highest motivation we can have to serve one another. We don't do it out of our own righteousness but the fact that he loved us and died for us simply asked us to do it is the motivation we need to be a servant.

And I think of that little song there in Galatians 5 standing fast therefore in the liberty where which Christ has made you free and be not tangled again with a yoke of bondage. Verse 1 and then verse 13 For brethren ye have been called unto liberty only use not liberty as occasion to the flesh but by love serve one another.

The Lord be magnified. Forgive my singing. Thanks Adeline. Thanks Robert for the song.

I thought of a little song too that I... a little children's song. I don't think we've even taught our children this one. I don't know who knows it but it goes J-O-Y J-O-Y J-O-Y must be Jesus first and yourself last and others in between.

Anyway, just thought of that. Maybe while I think about it I was actually just convicted about about putting others first like the man that passed on the rope. I tend to think I would do that because my intentions are to put others first.

What Rob shared there. I tend to think I would give my last piece of bread to somebody else because my intentions would be to do that. But, I don't know. What about the wee little things or the much smaller things than those two because I guess I'll just make a confession like you know this morning before these extra tents came it kind of looked like maybe there would be a limited amount of shade for everybody and I just kind of kind of wanted to make sure I have a a good spot that would stay shady and I should have made sure for that for everybody else first.

I just kind of kind of feel like I failed in real small things and how what makes me think that my intentions would carry me through on bigger things.