Tag Archives: Matthew 23

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Weekend Meditation: They Also Serve Who Lead

Read: Matthew 23-24

“The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:11-12, NLT)

Oswald Chambers said, “True greatness, true leadership, is achieved not by reducing [people] to one’s service, but by giving up oneself in selfless service to them.”

If that be true, then our greatest leadership is wherever we practice authentic servant-leadership. Our greatest influence occurs when we serve from a Christ-centered heart of love. And we are most bless-able before God when we humble ourselves in selfless service to those God has placed within our reach.

Do you want to be a great leader, have influence over people’s lives and be positioned for Divine favor?  Develop your servant-leader quotient. The late Dr. Earnest J. Campbell, Senior Minister at the historic Riverside Church in new York City from 1968-1976, gave a powerful commencement address at Princeton Seminary in 1978, and the title of his message was, “They Also Serve Who Lead.”

That title is a sermon in itself.  In his address, Campbell gave some characteristics of servant leaders that I have found personally challenging—and definitely worth emulating.  Give some thought to these as you think about your own call to servanthood and influence:

  1. The servant-leader is willing to assume whatever role necessary.

  2. The servant-leader understands that there is no job beneath his dignity.

  3. The servant-leader is willing to pay whatever price for stability, peace, and health [in his home, business or church].

  4. The servant-leader measures his success not in how submissive people are to him, but in how much they respond to his Christ-like example.

  5. The servant-leader takes responsibility for and watches closely the spiritual, emotional, financial and physical well-being of those in his care.

  6. The servant-leader is never too busy to or too important for interruptions to meet whatever need people may have at the moment.

  7. The servant-leader is quick to forgive, slow to judge.

  8. The servant-leader is ridiculously generous.

  9. The servant-leader is willing to pay a high price, whatever the cost, to obey God.

  10. The servant-leader willingly puts his life on the line for God, his family, and his people.

Something to really think about, isn’t it?  Have a great weekend!

Pastor Ray

 

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The Stench of Hypocrisy

Read: Matthew 23

“The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. (Matthew 23:2-3)

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: Sin is sin, and no matter what level of sin it is, it is always offensive to a holy God.  Sin corrupts; it corrodes the soul; it prevents the blessings of God and if not dealt with, will cause the gift of eternal life to be forfeited.

Having said that, have you noticed how Jesus seems to rail against one particular sin more than others?  Jesus doesn’t beat up on prostitutes and thieves and good old run of the mill garden variety sinners like he does religious hypocrites.  Just read through this chapter and you will see what I mean.

Hypocrisy is intolerable to God; religious hypocrisy is especially repugnant.  It is the worst indictment the Divine could lay against you.  To say one thing and to do another; to believe one way and live a different way; to teach people one thing and to personally practice another in the name of Christ will arouse God’s disdain like no other.

Why?  Hypocrisy is the height of deceitfulness.  It layers the heart act by act with calluses that will eventually prevent the Holy Spirit from doing his work: Convicting us of sin.  It lures gullible followers into the same destructive patterns of incongruent beliefs.  And perhaps worst of all, it hardens those who are turned off by the religious hypocrisy they witness among God’s so-called people from ever wanting to have anything to do with Jesus Christ.

How many times have you heard an angry, hardened unbeliever say, “If that’s what Christianity is all about, I want nothing to do with it!”?  How sad!  It may be that the hypocrisy they’re reacting to will close the door of their heart for all eternity to God’s offer of salvation.

The challenge with hypocrisy is that it is so hard to spot in your own life.  Again, it is so effectively evil because of its power of deception and the hardening of the heart that it wreaks.  However, if you are willing to lie very still on the Great Surgeon’s table and allow the Holy Spirit to apply the scalpel to your heart, I am confident that he will expose and excise any hypocrisy that has taken up residence.

Are you courageous enough to allow him to do some spiritual surgery on you today?

“Hypocrisy desires to seem good rather than to be so; honesty desires to be good rather than seem so.” ~Arthur Warwick

 

What If God Took Over?

 

Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart to you, expose any hidden and unknown sin and remove anything that could hinder or destroy you relationship with God.