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SUBJECT: 32 JOH 12:26 Service and Honor
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SERVICE AND HONOR
by
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
"Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, my servant also will
be. My Father will honor the one who serves Me" (Joh_12:26).
You cannot claim to have Christ as your Lord if you will not serve Him.
If you take Christ as your Lord and Savior, you must take Him for all
that He is, not only as a Friend, but also as Master; and if you are to
become His disciple, you must also become His servant. I hope that no
one fights against that truth. Surely it is one of our highest
privileges on earth to serve our Lord, and this also will be our joyous
occupation even in heaven itself: "His servants will serve Him. They
will see His face" (Rev_22:3-4).
This thought also enters into our idea of salvation; to be saved, means
that we are rescued from the slavery of sin, and brought into the
glorious liberty of the servants of God. O Master, You are such a
glorious Lord that serving You is perfect freedom, and the sweetest rest
to my soul! You have told us that it would be so, and we have found it
so. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Mat_11:29). We do
find it so; and it is not as though rest were a separate thing from
service, the very service itself becomes rest to our souls. I don't know
how some of us would have any rest on earth if we could not employ our
daily lives in the service of Christ; and the rest to be enjoyed in
heaven is never to be pictured as inactivity, but as constantly being
permitted the high privilege of serving the Lord.
Learn then, all of you who would have Christ as your Savior, that you
must be willing to serve Him. We are not saved "by" service, but we are
saved "to" service. After we are saved we live in service to our Lord.
If we refuse to be His servants we are not saved, for we still remain
evidently the servants of self, and the servants of Satan. Holiness is
another name for salvation; to be delivered from the power of self-will
and the domination of evil lusts, and the tyranny of Satan--this is
salvation. Those who want to be saved must know that they will have to
serve Christ, and those who are saved rejoice that they are serving Him,
and their service is evidence of a change of heart and renewal of the
mind.
So you are proposing to yourself that you will serve Christ, are you?
You are a young man, as yet you have plenty of vigor and strength, and
you say to yourself, "I will serve Christ in some remarkable way; I will
seek to make myself a scholar, I will try to learn the art of speech, and
I will in some way or other glorify my Lord's name by the splendor of my
language." Will you, dear friend? Is it not better, if you are going to
serve Christ, to ask Him what He would like you to do? If you wished to
do a kindness for a friend, you certainly would desire to know what would
best please that friend, or else your kindness might be mistaken and you
might be doing that which would grieve rather than gratify. Now listen.
Your Lord and Master does not require you to become either a scholar or
an orator to serve Him. Both of those things may happen in your path of
duty which he would have you to take; but first of all He says, "If any
man serve Me, let Him follow Me."
This is what Christ prefers beyond anything else, that His servants
should follow Him. If we do that, we shall serve Him in the way which is
according to His own choice. I notice that many good friends desire to
serve Christ by standing in the most noticeable place. You cannot get
there in one step, young man; your better way will be to serve Christ by
following Him, by "doing the next thing," the thing you can do, that
little simple duty which lies within your capacity which will bring you
no special honor, but which, nevertheless, is what the Lord desires of
you. In effect, you can hear Him say to you, "Whoever serves Me must
follow Me, not by aiming at great things, but by doing just what I give
them to do at that time." "Should you then seek great things for
yourself?" said the prophet Jeremiah to Baruch, "Do not seek them." So I
say the same to you.
One friend, perhaps, blessed with great riches, is saying, "I will save
my money until I have a considerable amount, and then build some homes
for the poor; I will give large amounts of money to the some new foreign
missionary work, or I will build a church building in which Christ's name
will be preached." May God stop me if I try to discourage any good works
that you want to do! Still, if you want to be absolutely certain that
you are pleasing Christ, then I would not recommend any particular thing
for you to do with your money, but I would advise you just to do this--
follow Him, remembering that He said, "Whoever serves Me must follow Me."
You will, by simply going behind your Master, following His footsteps,
and truly being His disciple, do that which would please Him more than if
you could lavish His cause with a mountain of riches. This is what He
prefers as the best proof of your love, the highest confirmation of your
devotion: "Whoever serves Me must follow Me."
He requires that you should become like a little child, so that you may
be taught by Him. His own words are, "Unless you change and become like
little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mat_1:1).
If you want to be a servant of Christ, come to Him like a little
child; sit in His lap to be taught by Him the gospel A B C's. "Whoever
serves Me must follow Me--follow Me as My disciple, regarding Me as your
Teacher, to whom you will yield your understanding and entire mind, that
I may fashion it according to My own will." This is the language of our
Lord, and I would deeply impress it upon all of you, and especially on
any who are beginning the Christian life. If you are to serve Christ,
put your mind like a piece of paper under His pen, that He may write on
you whatever He pleases. Be His sheet of paper, on which He may write
His living letters of love. You can serve Him in this way, in the best
possible manner.
"Do whatever he tells you" (Joh_2:5). If you truly want to serve
Christ, do not do what you feel like doing, but do what He commands you
to do. Remember what Samuel said to Saul, "To obey is better than
sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams" (1Sa_15:22).
I believe that the profession of being totally devoted to God, when it is
accompanied by action that I suggest to myself, may be nothing but self-
worship, an abomination in the sight of God; but when anyone says to the
Lord, "What do You want me to do? Show me, my Master, what You want me
to do,"--when there is a real desire to obey every command of Christ,
then there is the true spirit of service, and the true spirit of sonship.
"Whoever serves Me must follow Me; running at My call, following at My
heels, waiting at My feet to do whatsoever I desire him to do." This
makes life a lot more simpler than some dream it to be. You are not to
go and carve a statue out of the marble by the exercise of your own
genius; if that were the task set before us, most of us would never
accomplish it. But you are to just go and write according to Christ's
own example, to copy His letters, the up-strokes and the down-strokes,
and to write exactly as He has written.
The other day I was asked to sign my name to an important document, and
when it was handed to me, I noticed that I had already signed it before,
so I said, "Why, I have already signed it!" "Yes," said the one who
brought it, "you have the very easy task of signing it all over again."
In that case I followed my own writing; and in the same way, you have the
easy task of writing after Christ, directly writing over again the
letters that He Himself has made, and you cannot do Him better service
than this. "Whoever serves Me must follow Me," that is, "let him do just
what I command him to do; follow Me by imitating My example."
It is always safe to do what Christ would have done under the same
circumstances in which you are placed. Of course, you cannot imitate
Christ in His miraculous work, and you are not asked to imitate Him in
some of those sorrowful respects in which He suffered that we might not
suffer; but the ordinary life of Christ is in every respect an example to
us. Never do what you could not imagine Christ would have done. If it
strikes you that the course of action that is suggested to you would be
un-Christlike, then it is unchristian, for the Christian is to be like
Christ. The Christian is to be the flower growing out of the seed,
Christ; and there is always a unity between the flower and the seed out
of which it grows. Keep your eyes fixed on your heavenly model and
pattern, and seek in all things ever to imitate Christ. If you want to
serve Christ, duplicate His life as nearly as possible in your own life.
"Whoever serves Me must follow Me, let him follow Me by copying My
example."
You do not need to run away from your father and mother, and leave your
home and friends, and go away to the lost people in Africa, in order to
serve Christ. It is not dreaming up some idea in your own mind and
working that out according to your own whims and fancies, that
constitutes service for Christ; it is simply this--Whoever serves Christ
must follow Christ. Let him put his foot down as nearly as he can where
Christ put his foot down; let him walk in Christ's steps and be moved by
His spirit, actuated by His motives, live with His aim, and copy His
actions. This is the noblest way in which to serve the Lord.
"Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, my servant also will
be." I don't know of any other master but Christ who ever said that.
There are some places where an earthly master does not want his servant
to be; he must have some room to himself, and some engagements which he
cannot explain to his servant, and into which his servant must not pry.
But the Lord Jesus Christ makes this the glorious privilege of everyone
who enters His service that, where He is, His servant also will be.
But where is Christ? He is and always was in the place of communion with
God. He was always near to His father. He often spoke with God. He
ever had the joy of God filling His spirit. And you, perhaps, are saying
to yourself, "I wish that I had communion with God." Well, through Jesus
Christ, it is to be had by serving Him in that particular kind of service
which consists in following Him. If you want to walk with God, why, of
course, you must walk! If you sit down in idleness, you cannot walk with
Him; and if you do not keep up a good brisk pace, He will walk on in
front of you, and leave you behind, for the Lord is no dawdler in His
walking. Therefore, you see, there must be diligent progress, and
activity in service, in order that we may keep pace with Him and have
communion with Him; and if we closely follow Him, He has promised that we
will be in the place of communion with our blessed Master.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was in the place of confidence. Whenever Christ
went to work, He worked with assurance. He never had a doubt as to His
ultimate success. No haphazard work ever came from Christ's hands. He
spoke with certainty, and He worked with the full assurance that His
labor would not be in vain. If you want to have confidence in your work
for Christ, so as to perform it without any doubts and fears, you will
have to obtain it by serving Him, and to serve Him by following Him; and
then, into that sacred place of confidence where your Master always
stood, there you will also come.
It is very sweet to notice how the Lord Jesus brings His Father into His
speech; it is as if He said, "When a man joins himself to Me, then he
joins himself to My Father also. It is not only I who will love him and
do My best to honor him, but My Father, the great and ever-blessed Lord
over all, keeps an eye on that man." On whom does he look with his gaze
of approval? Not on those who have some grand plan of serving
themselves, but on those who serve Christ, and who do it by following
Him.
It is delightful to have a sense of the approval of God, such as you
never had when you had the approval of men. Sometimes, when even
Christian people cry, "Well done, well done," the Lord says, "That is
quite enough praise for him; I will not give him My `Well done.'" But
when you get no "Well done" from men, but, on the contrary, are
misunderstood and misrepresented, then the Lord comes and puts His hand
on you, and says, "Be strong, do not fear, I have accepted your service.
I know your motive, and I approve of your action. Do not be afraid of
them, but go on your way." Such approval as that is the highest honor we
can have here. "If any man serves Me," says Christ, "him will My Father
honor," with a sense of sonship, and with a sense of approval.
If a man will serve Christ by following Him, the Father will give him
honor in the eyes of the blood-bought family. There are certain ones of
the Lord's people who do not carry yardsticks with them, but they carry
scales and weights, and if they do not measure by quantity, they measure
by quality; their approval is worth having. They are often the poorest
and most afflicted members of the church; but being the most instructed,
and living the nearest to God, to have them minister to us is a thing
worth having. I believe that, if any man will lead the life of a
Christian, however few his talents, and if his service lies in close
obedience and imitation of Christ, the real saints, not the mere
professors, especially not the shining worldly ones among them, but real
saints will say, "That is the man for us, that is the woman with whom we
would like to converse." Thus it comes to pass that those who really do
serve the Lord by following Him have honor in the estimation of those who
sit and eat with them at their Lord's table.
And then, when we come to die, or when we stand at the judgment seat of
Christ, or when we enter the eternal state, what a glorious thing it will
be to find the Father ready to honor us forever because we served the
Son! Our reward will not be because God owes us anything, but because of
His grace; it is grace that gave us the service and grace that will
reward us for our service; but no man and no woman will serve the Lord
Jesus Christ here on earth by following Him, without finding that the
Father has some special honor, some rich and rare reward, to give to such
soldiers in due time.
This is the day of the fight, expect nothing but bullets, bruises,
wounds, and scars; but the battle will soon be over, and when the war is
ended, the King will come, and ride up and down the ranks, and in that
day you who have been most battered and most wounded in the battle will
find Him pause when He reaches you, and He will attach on you chest a
star that will be more of an honor to you than all the Medals that have
decorated brave men here on earth. Stars and ribbons may be given to
those who want them, but blessed are they who will shine as the stars in
the kingdom of our Father! And this honor is to be had by that believer
who will faithfully serve his Lord; not by any who merely talk about it,
or dream of it, or propose to do it, but to those who serve Him by
following Him--this honor will be given.
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia
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