SERVING GOD AND ONE ANOTHER
Ken N Pye
Joshua 24: 14-24
Psalm 100: 1-5
Hebrews 12: 28
Acts 27: 21-25
Galatians 5: 13
It will be obvious to the brethren that all these scriptures we have read speak about serving, serving God and one another. We have been speaking about piety, and piety would result in service to God. If we are going to satisfy the heart of God, it would involve serving Him. That was God’s objective from the very outset in Exodus: “Let my son go, that he may serve me”, Exod 4: 23. God did not want His son in captivity. He says again in relation to His people, “Let my people go, that they may serve me”, Exod 8: 1. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. That was an attack of the enemy. The enemy would seek to restrict service to God, but God is looking for men to serve Him. How necessary it is in the present day that we serve God! We may therefore ask, what does that really mean? It means we have to exclude other things. One of the greatest dangers is that we are expected have to do more of such things; people at work will say you have to do more. Well, what are you going to stop doing to do more? There is not an unlimited amount of time. You have to stop something to do something else; so if you are going to serve God, what are you not going to do? You are not going to serve other gods.
That is what comes out in this first section that we read. Other things have to be left aside, have to be put away; they have to be cast aside and disposed of. These idols all had to be cast aside to allow the people to serve Jehovah, their God. How essential that is, and what a commitment it needs! It needs a great commitment to do that. It is not something that can be taken up lightly. The Hebrew bondman is a perfect example of one that served. He gave up everything: “I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free”, Exod 21: 5. He took on service to the ultimate, giving up everything else just to serve his master. What a type of the Lord Jesus Himself, who gave up everything to serve God! “I love”: it was done out of love, and He was bound to it. He did not deviate from it. What service was found in the pathway that He marked out! We have spoken of the pathway that He marked out in piety. What a joy that gave to the Father! What a joy that gave to God! What joy that gives to us as we contemplate it! “I love my master”; it was done in love. We spoke about affections being related to this. I think it is done in love: “I love my master”.
Why do you think Joshua said this, “but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”? It was out of love for God. Joshua was ready to give up everything else, he had given up everything else, because God had shown him the way. He was able to look back on his history and see what God had done. Think what good things God has done for us! Can you do that, beloved brethren? Can you look back over your history and analyse it and see what good things God has done for you? You may well say you have had this trouble, you have had that trouble, and the next trouble. What good things has God done for you? Do not focus on all your problems! What are the good things God has done for you?
The good things God has done include the giving of His only-begotten Son. That is one of the good things that God has done for you. Think what He has brought you into as a result of the finished work of Christ! He has brought you into a vast expanse of things that you could never enter into any other way. Oh, count your blessings! How many they are! Your blessings are far greater than all the troubles you may have had! How great your blessings are! Your blessings are countless. Why? Because you have been “blessed … with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ”, Eph 1: 3. Oh, go back and look at how God has worked in your life! Look back at what God has done! Jacob could look back and say, “the God that shepherded me all my life long”, Gen 48: 15. He could look back on his history and could see everything that God had done. Moses, when he came out of the wilderness and was on Pisgah, could look back and see everything that God had done. Does that not cause you to want to serve Him? You say, ‘Well, I have all these struggles’. Do not think about your problems! Think of what God has done and the blessings He has blessed you with because that is what brings you into the “very, very good land”, Num 14: 7. That is what brings you into where you can serve God in freedom and unhinderedly; you can serve Him in there. I would encourage each one of us individually to consider and count the blessings that God has given us. Count them! Analyse them! See what God has done!
David in the Psalms looked back, and he said, “For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall”, Ps 18: 29. I may say that I really conquered that; I really overcame that obstacle. It was by God that you overcame it. You did not overcome it in your own strength; in your own strength you are not able to overcome anything. It has to be done by the power of God. Well, count these blessings! Count them, one by one, and you will find the blessings far surmount any troubles you may have had on the way, and it would result in you appreciating God more. How do you appreciate someone? You appreciate someone when you can enjoy their company, enjoy the blessings together with them. Well, enjoy these blessings with God! Enjoy these blessings with the Lord! Think of all the things you have overcome and see how beneficial God has been to you!
I think Joshua recognised something of that. He says, “for Jehovah our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt”. That is what God has done. How could they get out of Egypt? The Egyptians were hard taskmasters. It looked like an impossible task; it looked like there was no way for them to go, but God had said, “Let my son go”, and because God said that, there was no going back for Pharaoh. They had to be let go because God said they had to go. What has God said in relation to you? They “shall be mine”, Gen 48: 5. He has embraced you; He has embraced us; He has brought us into these wonderful things; He has brought us in and has taken us into a “very, very good land”. He has taken us into the place where Jesus is. He has taken us into the place where that One has been taken up into glory, the One that has been taken up and given a place at His right hand; He has brought us into that place. Oh how wonderful a privilege and a joy it should be for us to look back on that blessing and cause us to prove God, and cause us to serve Him!
We find that “Jehovah drove out from before us all the peoples”. He goes through the whole the process of entering into the land. Look at the process you have gone through to get you where you are today! Look at the depths of things you have had to endure and see how God has taken you through! He has taken you through every step of the way, and now you can be found as Joshua was, “as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”. Look back individually and see how God has taken you through. I would encourage each one to do that. Very often when we look back householdly we see how God has taken us through. It is His blessing; He has taken you through these things. Why? So that you will serve Him as a household. And then you find as you come together as a locality, it expands, it broadens, to the service of God. “As for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”. How wonderful! for us to focus upon it, to see what God is doing and how He is operating.
So many times we get distracted by all the difficulties, but the difficulties can be overcome; you can be assured of that. Any difficulty God will take care of; He is able. We read that in relation to the apostle Paul. Whatever privation, whatever it was he had to endure, God provided for his every need. No matter what the circumstances are He will see you through. How wonderful that is! Joshua came to that, and he brought the people to that. They became witnesses themselves. They are witnesses themselves to what they had to go through. How essential it is for us to experience that and to realise we have committed ourselves! God will hold you to that. He will hold you to the day of your espousals. He will not go beyond that. He will hold you to that day because that is what you committed yourself to, and God will bring you back to that. He will bring you back to these exercises and tests that you have gone through. “And the people said unto Joshua, Jehovah our God will we serve, and to his voice will we hearken”. Now is a time when a vast result is secured for God. May we be committed to that, individually, householdly and collectively so that there is an increase in response secured for God!
Well, I read in the psalm. How do we worship God? This is “A Psalm of thanksgiving”, and it says,
Shout aloud unto Jehovah, all the earth!
The whole earth is to be involved in serving God. His desire is for the whole earth to be occupied with Him. Then it says,
Serve Jehovah with joy.
People who say, ‘I have to go to church’ are not serving with joy; they are serving out of obligation. We need to serve with joy. You have to be happy because you are serving Him, not merely because you have to but because you want to. We will gather together tomorrow morning, if the Lord will, to remember the Lord. We will gather together out of love for Him, not because we have to but because we want to, so we are a joyful company and we are ready to
Serve Jehovah with joy: come before
his presence with exultation.
That is what God is looking for; He is looking for a response in the heart of man, and exultation.
Know that Jehovah is God: it is he that
hath made us, and not we ourselves;
we are his people, and
the sheep of his pasture.
We are secured by God Himself; we are His; we belong to Him, and as a result of that we serve Jehovah, serve with happiness. It is not merely an obligation. The children of Israel looked on things as an obligation. If you go back and look at all the feasts, it became something that was obligated. In the first month we have to do this and so on. They went through all the obligations, and it became a ritual. If we are serving with joy, we are serving because we want to. Dear brethren, I trust we all gather together because we want to. It is our desire to serve Him and to serve Him with joy: it is not just because we have to. It is my exercise that we would have the desire, each one of us, to serve Him with joy.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
We spoke earlier about thanksgiving. I do not think we give thanks enough for all the things that give us joy; I do not think we give thanks enough for all the blessings that we have. We take things for granted; it is what transpires in the world today. It is the day of entitlement: ‘I have to get that, and I should get that, and I should get this. This should be mine’. That is entitlement. But this is a day of thanksgiving because we are thankful for what God has given. God will give you what you need. He might not give you everything you want, but God will give you all your needs; your needs will be satisfied. That is what God gives. Would that not cause you to serve Him with joy, the God that gives you all your needs? You can serve Him with joy; you can
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving
and into his courts with praise.
Praise is what He is looking for; He is looking for praise from man. He is looking for the presence of man with Him. He came down to Adam “in the cool of the day” (Gen 3: 8), looking to have man in His presence, and man hid himself. Why? Because of sin. Sin came in. Well, that sin has been removed, and we can be found in the presence of God. It has been removed by the Lord Jesus Himself so that we can be found in His presence, “into his courts with praise”. May that be our portion! May we be found with those that know,
For Jehovah is good; his loving-kindness
endureth for ever; and his
faithfulness from generation to generation.
You may say, ‘Well, the days are different now. I am younger. I am the younger generation. Things are different’. I do not deny that the days are more difficult, but God is able no matter how difficult the tests. God is able, and God will supply all your needs. You can depend upon Him, rely upon Him, look back on what He has done, look back on the ways that He has guided you and helped you, and find that you can serve Him, and you can praise Him in His courts.
Well, in Hebrews the exhortation is to the Hebrew saints. The Hebrew saints were moving from Judaism into Christianity, and the writer was bringing them back into the appreciation of this. The writer speaks about “receiving a kingdom not to be shaken”. It speaks earlier about kingdoms that can be shaken. Kingdoms of men can be shaken; they can be moved. He speaks about Sinai: “the whole mountain shook greatly” (Exod 19: 18); God could do that. It shows His great power over everything including creation. But there is something that is never shaken, “receiving a kingdom not to be shaken”, something that never changes. Our brother spoke last night about “the stability of thy times” (Isa 33: 6); it is never changing: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come”, Heb 13: 8. He never changes; He is the same; He cannot be shaken. Is this shaking in your heart? Is there a doubt in your heart? Is that coming in? That is the devil working. Do not let it be shaken! Rely on the grace of God because it says, “have grace”. Have grace towards one another! “Have grace, by which let us serve God acceptably with reverence and fear”. So there has to be a fear of God. I am not saying to be frightened of God; that is not what this means; it means having a respect for God. Have respect for Him! Serve God with grace! You cannot serve God without grace! If you do not know the grace of God, how can you serve Him? You have to know the grace of God in order to serve Him, to serve Him acceptably, to satisfy Him. Value these glorious things! The apostle Paul says, “by God’s grace I am what I am”, 1 Cor 15: 10. He was insolent and overbearing in his previous history, but he says, “by God’s grace I am what I am”. He was a believer on Christ. He was one that was able and available to serve God. He was one that would have done everything to support the work of God after he came to hear that voice and answered to the voice of Christ on the road to Damascus.
Well, that is what led me to Acts. This is an experience Paul went through in circumstances that were very difficult. You say there is nothing you can do. Maybe you think that you are stuck in a situation and there is nothing you can do. Paul told them before they sailed, ‘Don’t go; don’t sail’, but he was a prisoner; so he did not have a choice. He could have said, ‘Well, there is nothing I can do to help so I will just go down to the bowels of the ship and pray and read my Bible’. He could have done that. You might say there would be nothing wrong with that, and there is not; but there is a time, if you are going to serve God, when you have to stand up for things. It may be difficult; it was difficult, no doubt, for Paul. He might have been reminded that he was still in his chains and told to go back to where he belonged. But here he is asking them to take food; he is telling them what to do. He is a prisoner telling the soldiers who had imprisoned him, and had him under their care, what to do! You may say that is not normal. But Paul was serving God. He was carrying out the work of God in difficult circumstances. He is not saying, ‘Cut me loose so I can swim by myself’. He is not trying to escape; He is serving God.
I suppose this is one of the cases where he could say he knew privation, on the ship. The ship is about to be shipwrecked. It was a very difficult set of circumstances, but then he says, “Ye ought, O men, to have hearkened to me, and not have made sail from Crete and have gained this disaster and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good courage”. Why was that? Because he knew God. Paul was one here who could look back and see how God had touched him at every phase, every step, of his life. He knew that God would bring him through, and he is not afraid of the authorities; he is not afraid of the political elements. He stands up to them and he says, “For an angel of the God, whose I am and whom I serve, stood by me”. ‘I may be physically bound by these chains, but I am serving God.’ He is showing a testimony to whom he is serving. He is not serving man; he is serving God. He is serving God to the end that the glad tidings may be spread. That was his commission, to form assemblies and spread the glad tidings, and that was going to be continued when he reached Rome, and he knew that. He knew that because he was under the guidance of the hand of God, “the God, whose I am and whom I serve”. Oh, is that our attitude? Do we look at things and say, “the God, whose I am and whom I serve”? Are we serving God or are we pleasing ourselves? It is a great challenge. What are we doing? We ought to be serving God. That is what God is looking for. That should be your purpose. Men say in business, ‘What is your purpose?’ Well, what is your purpose? You might say, why am I on this earth? What is your purpose? Your purpose is clear, to serve God. That is easy. Our purpose is to serve God. Everything I do ought to result in serving God. Everything you do should be to serve God, and in how many different ways that can be done! Here is a man standing up and telling persons that he is serving God, “the God, whose I am and whom I serve”. You might have asked, ‘How do you serve God in chains? You are on a ship. You are in the most difficult circumstances of anybody here, and you say you are serving God’. Yes, he was, because he said, “an angel of the God, whose I am and whom I serve, stood by me this night, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must stand before Caesar”; he is going to spread the glad tidings in Rome. The angel says, “God has granted to thee all those that sail with thee”.
Well, here he is, able to speak to these men. He did not preach to them, but I am sure he prayed for them all. Later it says the soldiers could not let the sailors go; they had to keep everyone together, v 32. Where was the safety? The safety was in the ship. The sailors wanted to get out and go on a separate boat; they wanted to flee on the lifeboat, but, no, the soldiers had to stop that because Paul said, ‘No, you must stay in the ship; if you do not stay in the ship, you will not be saved’ because God had said, “all those that sail with thee”’.
Dear brethren, when God speaks, it will happen.
Once, yea twice, He may have spoken
(Hymn 253).
He speaks once, and He speaks twice; God will make it happen. God spoke and the worlds were founded: He said, “Let there be light. And there was light”, Gen 1: 3. When God speaks, it happens. When God speaks to you, be assured it will happen. Whatever God says is going to happen, will happen. Be attuned to hear what He is saying! Serve Him like the apostle Paul did. “Wherefore be of good courage, men, for I believe God that thus it shall be, as it has been said to me”. They all got safe to land. We know that; they were all saved. They were cast up on an island. You may say, ‘Well Paul did not explain all that’. Paul did not need to explain all that, but God said it was going to happen, and all were saved. How interesting! Dear brethren, it is open to us if we commit ourselves to God, commit ourselves to Him, and are occupied in serving Him, occupied in giving Him what He desires in every aspect of our lives.
I read in Galatians to look at how it works out with us. “For ye have been called to liberty, brethren”, but we want to make sure that we “do not turn liberty into an opportunity to the flesh, but by love serve one another”. We spoke about love at the outset. The Hebrew bondman loved his master, his wife and his children. We love to come together; we love the Lord as we gather together to remember Him. Love is essential, and I think what this tells us is that it is through love that we serve one another. We can serve one another in love. It is something we need to do. Serve one another in love with no care for self, no need of recompense, no need of anything else, just genuine love. How wonderful to experience that! That is how Paul operated. He loved these saints he wrote to in all these epistles; he loved them. You can tell that. He loved to write to the Galatians, who had gone astray. He wrote this long letter with his own hand, chap 6: 11. How much he loved them, and that is how he served them! He served them in love. By serving the brethren, you are serving God. Dear brethren, it is up to us how we act. Can we look back and see what blessings we have had? Can we see how we can serve God with joy? We need grace to be able to serve and we need to be bold in difficult circumstances, as Paul was in the shipwreck, and declare that we are serving God so that we can serve one another in love.
May it be our portion for His Name’s sake!
Indianapolis
27th November 2021