What I have before me this year is the theme of “Service for the Lord.” It is a very difficult subject to take up, even with the Lord's help. Once again we are going to try to cover a few things well, rather than make so many remarks that you go out saying, “I wonder what he really did say”? I am not really sure just how we are going to divide this up, but at least for this meeting I'd like to talk about something for the heart — the motive for service for the Lord.
Let's turn first of all to some verses in John 12:2323And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. (John 12:23): “And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honor. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
Now a verse in 2 Corinthians 5:1414For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: (2 Corinthians 5:14): “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that is one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”
When we read these verses in John 12, it really touches our hearts, because here the Lord Jesus was right on the brink of going to the cross. He was telling them that He was that corn (or kernel) of wheat which was going to die. The corn of wheat, as you all know, you have to plant. You never get that kernel of wheat, or whatever it might be, back again, do you? No, it has to die. It has to disintegrate in the soil in order that a plant may grow, but how much more you get from the plant than you originally planted!
The Lord Jesus here was the corn of wheat and He says, “I am going to have to die. I am going to have to give up everything in order to have you with me in glory.” It is at that point that these two little verses 25 and 26 are tucked in. I suggest to your heart and mine that we will never be able to serve the Lord properly unless these verses get hold of us.
I look around the room here and I know that most of you belong to Christ. I hope all, although I can't say that. I know that most of you do and it is to you that I address my remarks. We all want to do something for the Lord. We all want to serve Him if we are really saved. Our hearts go out to that One who loved us and died for us. But if you are anything like me, how many times you feel, “Oh, I just don't seem to be able to do anything for the Lord. I don't know what to do or where to go. Whenever I try anything I seem to bungle it. The Lord doesn't seem to open doors for me. I just wish I had the kind of energy, the kind of faith, the kind of wisdom that I see other people have who seem to go ahead without any problem, without any difficulty. They seem to know what the mind of the Lord is. They seem to go here and go there and the Lord seems to bless what they are doing, but I can't seem to do it.” I think we have all been there. I surely have.
I believe what we need is to get back to what we have here. When it comes to service for the Lord, or anything in your Christian pathway, (and if you don't get anything else out of this meeting, I want you to get this straight), it is not he or she who knows the most that walks the best before the Lord, nor even he or she that reads the most, but he who loves the most. Intelligence in divine things does not come through the intellect, it comes through the heart and conscience. I repeat, it is not he or she who knows the most or reads the most or understands the most that walks the best, it is he who loves the most. And you know, when it comes to loving the Lord, how do we love the Lord? Brother Harry Hayhoe, long since with the Lord, often used to remind us, “Never try to love the Lord any more than you do. Rather think about how much he loves you.”
There is only one motive for service to the Lord, and that is love to Christ. Now there is service that can be done outside of that, because sometimes we feel “I ought to be doing something for the Lord, other people are doing something,” and so I go and do something. And the Lord accepts that, even though sometimes we bungle and do something that is not the Lord's mind.
Sometimes, sad to say, we don't do anything and that is a real problem. We get so occupied with our own interests and ideas and getting ahead in this world that we say, “I don't have any time left for the Lord.” Other times we go ahead and do something because we feel we ought to. Well, I would rather see someone do something because he felt he ought to rather than do nothing at all. The Lord accepts the service that we give to Him because we feel we ought to, but isn't it better when that service springs from a heart of love because we are in communion with the Lord? You can do something for the Lord without being in communion with Him. It will not, perhaps, be done in the right way. It will not be done for the right reason. God may not be able to bless it in the same way, but nevertheless we can do something for the Lord without really being in communion, but you can't be in communion with the Lord without serving Him. I say that without reservation. You cannot be in communion with the Lord without serving Him.
I know I am saying a lot of things, perhaps, that might seem on the surface to be very simple, but I have found in my own soul that they have to get hold of me.
Here is another remark that I hope you will get hold of: It is not what you do that counts, but what you are! If what you are is right, what you do will never come short, but if what you are is wrong, what you do will not be right. When God calls us to service, He first of all brings before us the love of Christ. The Lord says, “I am giving up everything for you,” and then He says, “He that loveth his life shall lose it.” That does not refer primarily to our eternal salvation, although I believe it could include it — that is, someone who goes on and enjoys everything in this world and then forgets God will end up in a lost eternity if he never pays any attention to eternal matters. But this is primarily spoken here, I believe, to those who knew Him and He said, “If you love your life, you are going to lose it.” Why? Because if you spend all your time and energies for yourself, you are not going to have anything to show for it up there. It may all have to be burned up. But it says, “He that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal.” That doesn't mean that I hate myself or my life, or anything like that. It simply means that I have one thing before me that takes precedence over anything else — the Lord and how much He did for me, and what is due to Him.
We read that verse in 2 Corinthians, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” You will never do anything for the Lord properly, unless it is the love of Christ constraining you. Oh, you say, “I wish it would constrain me.” Let me use an illustration that is a bit simple, but it makes the point. It does not say “The Love of Christ (should) constrain us,” because that is not the way things work. When you love someone you don't say, “Well, I should love them more than I do.” That is not the way relationships work in this life, is it? No, it simply makes that statement, “The love of Christ constraineth us.”
Let me use the illustration of a magnet. If I had a horseshoe magnet here up on the podium, (I am no physics professor, but if I were and I stood up here with a magnet before a junior science class) what would I say? Would I say “Now this magnet should attract iron”? I wouldn't say that would I? I would say, “This magnet does attract iron,” but supposing there were a pile of nails down there beside you and I held this magnet up here and said, “Well this magnet attracts iron, but those nails don't seem to move. What's wrong?” You know what's wrong! They are too far from the magnet and any student of physics would tell you that the strength of a magnetic field varies as the square of the distance from the magnet. And so if the nails are one inch from the magnet, there is a certain drawing power, but if they are two inches from the magnet, there is only one quarter of it and if they are three inches, there is only one-ninth and so on and on it goes till by the time you got to the back of the room the magnetic field is so dissipated that for all practical purposes you say “Well, there is just not much pull left there.” That is the problem with me, and maybe with you. The magnet is fine, there is no problem with it, but we need to get closer to it. That is what I want to impress on you and me. When it comes to service for the Lord, we cannot simply look around and say, “Well, what needs to be done? Where is something to be done?”
We'll get to that, perhaps tomorrow or the next day, about intelligence and how to know what the Lord wants us to do, but today we want to talk about the motive. We will never serve properly till we are close enough to the Lord. When we get close to Him (I say it very humbly, because I don't pretend to live it out in my own life), we find it is not that difficult to know what He would have us to do, but if we are at a distance from the Source, we may find that the love of Christ doesn't seem to be constraining us. Has His love changed? Not a bit of it. But I am too far away. I have allowed things to come in. I have allowed things in my life that have put a wall between me and the Lord. Then I say I don't feel the love of Christ constraining me. I can never talk about serving the Lord without bringing my own state of soul into it. And if I have allowed something (I may not even know what it is), let me tell you that the Lord is willing to show me.
We will not turn to the scripture, but you will remember in the Old Testament there was a man named Gideon, and things were in a mess in Gideon's day. The Midianites were coming in and destroying their crops and poor Gideon was discouraged. There he was behind a winepress threshing some wheat, but inside that heart the Lord saw a desire to do something about it. When the angel came and spoke to Gideon, Gideon said, “The Lord has forsaken us. Where is the God that delivered us out of the land of Egypt?” “Where are all the mighty miracles that the Lord worked for us? The Lord has forsaken us.” Poor Gideon didn't understand. He was so blind that the angel had to tell him, “Gideon, I want you to go out there. There is an altar in your backyard to a false prophet (Baal) and a grove around it. I want you to go down and break down that altar, cut down the grove, rebuild the altar of the Lord and offer the second bullock for a sacrifice.” Poor Gideon had gotten so used to that altar in his backyard that he didn't even recognize it. How could the Lord bring blessing when they had an altar to a false god sitting right there?
Sometimes you and I get far away from the Lord (and I speak to my own heart). We get so under the influence of the world around us and even perhaps, shall I say, the influence of other worldly Christians, that we don't recognize how far we have gotten away from the Lord until we want to do something for the Lord and we find that there just doesn't seem to be any direction, any power. The Lord is saying, “I want you closer.”
So the thought I want to leave with you this morning is the thought that the great thing in service for the Lord is to be wholehearted because of love to Christ.
Let me tell you a story. You might say, “What does it mean to be wholehearted?” Years ago in England there was a young boy who perhaps was 10 or 12 years old, (I think his name was Tom). Tom was crippled. His father and mother had died and he was being looked after by an aunt who didn't care much for him. She didn't like Tom. He was a nuisance. He couldn't do anything for himself. He wasn't even well enough to get out of bed and go about so he couldn't work or go to school. She did not like having this boy around the house because she had to look after him. You might say, “How could anybody think that way?” Well, that was the case. As Tom lay there in his bed, he had a good friend whose name was Jack and Jack was one of these boys that we don't see much of today, but he was what we call a “street” boy. He had no father or mother either, and he just had to make his own way in the world by doing odd jobs here and there and sleeping wherever he could. There were a lot of boys in big cities living like that in those days. Incidentally, if you go to the third world, you still see them— children that have to make their own way in the world. We don't see it here in North America, even though some do it by choice. Perhaps there are more than some of us realize that are still doing that, because things are so rough at home that they would rather be out on the street than at home. At any rate, Jack had to go away somewhere to another city, and he was Tom's friend. He came to Tom and said “I'm leaving you, but I've got something that I have saved up for you.” Then he gave him a shilling. It isn't worth very much in today's terms, but a shilling was a lot of money in those days. So he said, “I want you to save this until you can buy something really good with it.” Tom's eyes lit up and he said, “Jack, what time is it?” Jack said, “Oh about 4:30 or so.” “Jack,” said Tom, “would you go and run down to that corner store a couple blocks away where they sell Bibles. I know they have Bibles for a shilling and I want you to buy me a Bible.” “A Bible!? You know I worked hard for this and I want you to buy something you really want.” “Listen” said Tom, “I don't want anything else. Buy me a Bible.” So Jack said, “All right, if that is what you really want.” So he went down and bought a Bible and Tom drank it in and came to know Christ as his Savior. Poor boy lying there, he wanted to know about the Savior, and he was saved. After a while Tom thought, “I want to do something for the One that loved me enough to die for me.” Well, his aunt used to allow him a certain amount of food every day, but she rationed it out. He didn't get as much as he wanted. He got one cup of milk a day and a certain amount of food. Tom had no money. What could he do? You would say it was hopeless. But Tom had a heart for Christ. So he finally said to his aunt, “How much does that milk cost?” So she told him three pence a day, or whatever it was. Tom said, “If I went without that milk, Aunt, would you let me have that three pence?” “I guess so, it doesn't make any difference to me if you want to go without your milk.” And with that three pence, Tom found someone to go to a store and bought him a pencil and paper, and with his own hand as he sat on that bed, he wrote verses from the Word of God.
Then he folded the pieces of paper shut and wrote on the outside “To the passer by, please read.” Then he threw them out the window. It was a busy street down below in London, England (nowadays we would say that would be littering the streets), but people did pick them up and read them. They opened them up and wondered “What is this? A verse from the Word of God! a gospel verse! — and people got saved. One time a wealthy man, who was a Christian, came along, picked up those verses, read one, and thought, “Where did this come from?” He looked on the sidewalk and saw more. Then he looked up and figured something had to come from that window. He then inquired and found out who Tom was and what he was doing, and that he was doing without the only milk he had. He said, “Tom this is terrible. Why don't you come with me. I have a nice home. I'll give you all the pencil and paper you want and make it easy for you to do this. I'll give you your milk and good food to eat plus envelopes so you can mail these out to people.” Tom thought about it for a while. “Well sir, I really appreciate that, but you know if I did that I might get too comfortable. I might like that too much. Sir if you don't mind, I think I'd just rather stay here. I'm not going to last very long (because he wasn't just crippled, he wasn't very well either).” Well the man saw to it that Tom was well supplied with food and pencil and paper and gave him opportunities, but Tom wouldn't leave that little room where he was because he wanted to do something for the Lord. Well, I say to my own heart and yours, that was wholeheartedness.
Another story comes to mind. This time from a more mature man, Hudson Taylor in China. Hudson Taylor was in China and he gave up a lot to go there, and so did his beloved wife, Maria. They had a number of children born to them in China. I can't remember just how many children they had, perhaps 7. Four of them went to be with the Lord in China when they were quite young. I think the eldest daughter was only 8 years old when the Lord took her, and then several others followed. And at the age of perhaps 35, he stood by the bedside of his beloved wife, who at that time was only 33. He was a medical doctor. She didn't realize how sick she was, but he knew and he sat down beside her and said, “Do you realize that the Lord is going to take you home?” He could hardly say those words. And his wife said, “Oh do you think so?” He said, “Yes dear.” And shortly after that she was taken home to be with the Lord, leaving him alone in China with three small children, I believe. And his first act when his wife had gone home — what do you think he did? I think if it had been I, I would have packed it up and gone back to England or somewhere and said, “I just can't handle this.” But he knelt down beside his wife's bedside, thanked the Lord for providing her, thanked the Lord for the happy years they had together and rededicated his life to the Lord afresh to serve Him in China with the body of his wife laying there on the bed beside him. I say to you and to me, that was wholeheartedness.
Well, I don't pretend to have that. I don't pretend to know what it is like to go through that, although I tell you, in the absence of my wife, that I did stand by her bedside about 11 years ago and stared in the face of that same thing when I thought the Lord was going to take her home. So I know a little bit about how Hudson Taylor felt, but I don't know if I would have reacted that way.
We will not say too much more. Our time is up. The great thing in service is to be wholehearted. But again I want to emphasize, how do I get it. You say, I want that for myself. I'd like to feel like that. I'd like to have wholeheartedness. There is one way to get it and that is to go back to the cross.
I hope the brother who made these remarks to me yesterday won't mind if I repeat what he told me. He said that when he was first saved he was really on fire for the Lord, and an older brother who is still among us, gave him some wise counsel. He said, “You are really on fire for the Lord right now, but there may come a time when you don't feel that way. When that happens go back and read Matthew 27.” I agree with that advice. Read Matthew 27 or Luke 22, or Mark 14 and 15, or John 19. Read those verses the account of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. That is what we need. And above all, if there is something, and rest assured the Lord will show you what it is, that has come between you and the Lord so you don't feel that warmth and love toward Him, kneel down and first of all ask Him to show you what it is and then ask Him for the grace to remove it, because that is the secret of all service to Him.