The Service of God

If we would have a right conception of God’s service, we must recognise the principles by which it is governed. And these are all laid down in the Scriptures. We may look at the subject under two main divisions —

The SERVICE to which we are called, and the life we need for that service.

I. The SERVICE itself.

I. All true service lies in the lines of God’s Will. A good servant knows his Master’s will, and obeys it. It is not enough that I am engaged in a good work; I must work according to my Master’s will. It is the Master’s office to give directions; it is the servant’s to obey Ps. cxliii. lo; XXV. 4.

them. But if I am following my own directions and pursuing my own counsels, the work I am doing may be a very excellent work, but I am not really serving the Lord.

We may go to God for His blessing, but it may be for His blessing on our own plans. The first thing is to come to Him for His orders. We shall then pray, not only “Give me Thy blessing,” but “Teach me Thy will, show me Thy ways.” He may bid us do a very simple work; but by doing it we shall be really serving Him. It is better to be occupied with little things in the path of His will than to be doing a great work in obedience to our own conceits.

We recognise this principle in daily life. You ask your servant to bring you a glass of water. That is your will for him. But he thinks to himself, I will do something better than that, something grander and nobler. I will take my master a basket of fruit. Would he be a good servant, and would that be true service? A good servant is one who fulfils his master’s bidding, and seeks to carry out his will. It is not with a view to glorify himself that he serves. Self-exaltaiion is one of the chief hindrances to our service. As Pasteur Monod once said, “If you want to do something, do not try to be somebody.” Such a life of service is always simple. It is not coujplicated. It is not like a number of divergent lines, but one single line. God does not require you to be in two places at the same time. Service in the path of God’s Will never consists of a series of conflicting duties. It is when we let our own desires, our own plans and ambitions come in, that duty seems to be complicated. “This one thing I do,” is the true motto of the whole course. The nearer we approach God’s will in our service, the simpler and less difficult it becomes, and the more freedom shall we find in it We shall be learning then the truth of those words,” Thy service

Phil. Hi. 13.

Acts xxYii. is perfect freedom.” It has been well said by one deeply taught in God’s service, “The more liberty we can throw into service, and the more service we can put into liberty, the truer both the service and the liberty will be.” *

But some one may say, “How may I get into the line of His will?” Come to the right centre, the place where the will begins. It is well to be occupied with His commands; it is better to be occupied with the Commander. When you come to Him, you are in the right centre. Get right with God. True service cannot begin until we respond to God’s claim upon us, until we recognise His Ownership. “Whose I am’ must come first; then we can say,” a7id 7vhom I server It was not the service so much as the One he served that then occupied the Apostle’s thoughts. The practical recognition of our true relationship to Him as His servants involves very often * Rev. James Vaughan.

9f

a complete re-adjustment of our whole spiritual condition. We may have followed the dictates of our own hearts so fully, have served self so long, that before we are brought to give up what we have hitherto regarded as our personal rights, a tremendous struggle ensues. But to that point we must come, the entire surrender of our whole beings to Him who has bought us. This is to come to the right centre. From that point the path of His will for service begins. The act of dedication now becomes an attitude of devotion.

2. True service lies in the line of God’s supply. If we would be receiving His supply, we must be found abiding in His Will. We need never then be afraid of His commands. “His commandments are not grievous.” They may be impossible to you when you are out of Christ, or when you are not abiding in Him. From man’s point of view they might seem very unreasonable. You remember that command the Lord Jesus gave to His disciples when He said to Luke ix. 13. them, “Give ye them to eat.” How could this requirement be fulfilled? What were their resources? “Five barley loaves and two small fishes!” What were they among five thousand? And yet, impossible as it was, that command they literally fulfilled!

But observe how it was accomplished. We have here an illustration of being brought to the right centre in order to get into the line of true service. They must first see their own utter insufficiency: “How many loaves have ye?” That question was intended to convince them of their own helplessness. The first lesson we all have to learn in service is contained John XV. 5. in that one sentence, “Without Me ye can do nothing.”

The next step is consecration — “Bring them hither to Me.” Bring all you have — your weakness and poverty, your emptiness and want — to Him. Put yourselves into His hands. When that was done, everything was adjusted ready for the fulfilment of the command.

Picture the scene. The multitude forms an outer circle — the disciples an inner circle; but the Centre is Christ Himself. True service is found in lines that radiate from Him. Taking these weak and feeble things into His hands, He opens the fountain of supply, and the stream at once begins to flow from Him, through the disciples, to the multitude. The impossible command was actually fulfilled.

“But,” you say, “the disciples themselves did not fulfil it. It was the Lord who wrought the miracle. It was Christ Himself who fulfilled it.” Precisely so, and so it must be always. This is what we would insist upon to- day. Not you, but Christ working through you. The great point is, to be in the line of His power and life and fulness. We have no resources of our own with which to carry out His commands. But in Him vre Phil. iv. 19.

shall find an abundant supply. “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

3. True service lies in the line of God’s guidance. God has a place for each one of His children. The highest wisdom consists in learning His way concerning us. The highest privilege is to live continually in His secret guidance. God does not show us the whole course of our life-work beforehand. We must be content to have it gradually revealed. If we would abide in His service, we must walk continually in His guidance. The work of failh and the walk of faith are inseparably united. The best way to do the work, is to be always in the will — that is, in the guidance — of God. He will not dispense with our faith by showing us a chart of all His purposes concerning us marked out in detail. He gives us light step by step. And faith lives and grows as it learns to trust, to follow, and to obey. f Recognise this truth, and it will remove all anxiety about work for God, It will teach us that we can serve Him as truly in the little things, and in the ordinary events of daily life, as in the great, and on special occasions. “There are some Christians,” it has been said, “who can never find a place large enough to do their duty.” But small things after all constitute almost the whole of life. True service lies therefore in the line of God’s continual guidance.

II. The Life we need for the Strvice.

We shall consider Christ our life for service in three aspects: —

I. He is the life before us — our Pattern; the Object of our gaze — “Behold my Servant.” “I am among you as one that serveth.” “I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” He has left us an example that we should follow His steps — “As the Fathei hath sent Me, even so send I you.” And as He went forth in entire submission, in complete dependence, and in simple trust, Isa. xlii. 1.

John xiii.

John XX.

Ps. xvi.

Ps. xlii. 5.
(margin.)

John XV. 4.
Col. iii. 17.

SO we must serve according to that pattern. I heard a farmer once say that he had a servant in his employ who was a very good man, but a very bad ploughman. When he was ploughing, instead of fixing his eyes on some object, and keeping it steadily before him as he drove the plough, he was in the habit of continually looking back to see whether he had made a straight furrow! The result was, he was constantly making crooked ones. There are many of God’s servants who are doing the same thing. But the true attitude of service i.s, to be pressing towards the mark, and to be looking off unto Jesus. We have to look away from our own walk. We have to “set the Lord always before us” as the object of our continual gaze. 2. Christ is also the life around us — our Protection. “His Presence is salvation.” He Himself, the ever-present living One, is the Home of our souls. Hence He says, “Abide in Me.” “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in Me.” Our service is to be carried on in Him. Often we have to serve through scenes of temptation. Often our path lies through defiling and deadening influences. It is in a world of sin and darkness we are called to serve. For this reason we need an armour to keep us pure and undefiled. This provision we have in Him who is our life.

There are little creatures we have often seen playing on the surface of our ponds. They do not spend all their time upon the surface: they dive down into the water beneath. But when they descend, they take with them a globule of air. They become, in fact, enclosed in what looks like a crystal sphere. In the atmosphere of the world above they pursue their errands, and prosecute their search in the world beneath. No matter how impure or polluted the waters may be through which their duty lies, they pass through them all, and come up again uncontaminated, because all the while they are protected in this sphere of atmospheric air.

Ezek. xi. t6.

Rom, xiii.
14.

There we have a picture of what it is to be abiding in Christ, and of how we have to live, and move, and have our being in Him. All our service is to be done in Him. “I will be to them as a little sanctuary.” “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He that obeys that command is, as an old writer says, “a Christ-enclosed man.”

3. Christ is the life within us — our Power. This power is needed for a twofold purpose — to cast off the works of darkness, and to put on the armour of light, or, to use another figure, to throw off the dead leaves of the old life, and to put forth the foliage and blossoms and fruit of the new. It is wonderful with what tenacity the dead leaves of our former conversation often cling to us. We need the life of the Risen Christ to cause them to fall off.

Sir John Lubbock, lecturing recently on “Leaves,” has told us that the cause of the fall of leaves is a process of life — not of death. To prove this he exhibited a twig which had been hah’-broken off in the autumn. It was left hanging to its parent trunk. The leaves above the bend, where the life-sap had been hindered in its flow, although utterly withered, remained so firmly attached that it needed considerable force to pull them off. The truth taught here is self-evident. If we find it so difficult to throw off evil habits — if sometimes we have almost despaired of ever being thoroughly quit of them — we may discover the secret of our failure in the fact that our real need is not merely life, but the “life more abundant.” If only the avenues of our being were in full and unhindered union with Christ, there would be no lack of power. The dead leaves of evil habit, which too often mar the believer’s testimony, would then become easily detached, and by the same increased flow of vital energy, the whole life and conduct would become a bright and attractive witness to the transforming power of the indwelling Christ.

John X. lo.

lOO