Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2334
“But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him, by-and-by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird yourself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunk; and afterward you shall eat and drink? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.” Luke 17:7-10.
THESE words are not addressed to the general congregation. You notice that the chapter begins, “Then said He unto the disciples.” Even they felt as if Christ’s words were too heavy for them and so, when you get to the fifth verse, you read, “And the Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith,” as if only the very strongest of them were able to receive His teaching just then—He was describing such difficult duties and prescribing so peculiar a path. Mark you, He was not laying down the way of salvation, but pointing out a path of service for those who were already saved. We must be saved, first, and must serve afterwards. To hope to serve Christ so as to win salvation is a fallacy, a delusion of our proud hearts. But to be saved by His Grace as a matter of pure favor and then, afterwards, to serve Him, having gratitude for our great motive, is the right order and a very different thing from self-righteousness. It is to disciples, then, that the words about which I speak, tonight, are addressed.
We must not start back at the sight of the service which is required of us. It is our highest honor that we are allowed to be the servants of our Savior and, being servants, unless we are so only nominally, and not really, we must not be offended at anything that is demanded of us. We must try to fill up the word, “servant,” and show the world what a servant can be! It is the duty of every Christian to turn each common silver word into a golden one. Whatever “husband,” or “father,” or “son,” may mean in reference to ordinary society, it must mean something more when it gets into the Church of God! We must fulfill it, we must fill it full! We must make something more of it than it used to be. So with regard to servants, if we are servants of Christ, let us be servants, as the mathematicians say, “to the nth degree”—to the very highest possible degree! Let us elevate and enlarge our calling till, if men want to know what a servant is, they will only have to ask Christ, our Master, and He will point to us and say, “These are the kind of servants that My love and My Grace can produce. Money could not buy such and no rate of wages could secure such service as they are prepared to freely render.”
With those two thoughts on your minds, that, being saved, you are servants, and being servants, it is your intense desire to make that word mean all it possibly can mean, follow me while I try to bring out the teaching of the passage before us.
I. First, WE ARE, ADMITTEDLY, THE SERVANTS OF CHRIST.
If the word, doulos, is interpreted here, “slave,” as it certainly might be, we are quite willing to be known as the bond-slaves of Jesus Christ. Like Paul, we have no objection, even, to be branded with the mark of a slave, and with him we dare to say, “From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”
We are the servants, the slaves of Christ, and we rejoice to be so because in this lies our deliverance from the bondage of sin. No man can really be his own master—he will serve either one lord or another. We are such dependent creatures that we must give ourselves up to be either the servants of sin, or the servants of righteousness. We were once the servants of sin. We were “children of wrath, even as others.” We found ourselves born into hereditary bondage which we also freely chose, for the iron entered into our will and our will chose the bondage of evil passions and corrupt desires. One way or another, though each of us differently, we resolved to be the servants and the serfs of the Prince of Darkness, that Evil One who still rules over the children of disobedience! Now that we have become the servants of Christ, we are freed from the bondage of sin—His service is our freedom! There was no other method of setting us free from the bondage of the black prince than that of bringing us under a Divine and blessed servitude to Immanuel, the Prince of Holiness and Peace. We therefore rejoice in being His servants because it means deliverance from an older servitude, even the service of sin and Satan!
Our being Christ’s servants is the absolute result of redemption. We are bought with a price—therefore we are not our own. Standing on Calvary and gazing with wonder at those purple founts from which flow our salvation and eternal life, we feel that, “if One died for all, then all died,” and that, inasmuch as Jesus Christ there bought us with His precious blood, we are His inalienable property and belong to Him—body, soul and spirit—forever. Such a price, paid by such an One, in the midst of such circumstances of shame and derision, binds us as His forever and ever! We do not want to be our own—our purchase by Christ is our delight and we willingly yield ourselves up to Him who has paid for us a price infinitely more than we could ever be conceived to be worth! Hence our service is founded upon our deliverance from the bondage of sin and it is also the direct result of our redemption by the blood of Christ.