Improving Your Serve - 1 Peter 4:10-11 Series

1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Introduction: Improving Your Serve

Back in 1986, Chuck Swindoll wrote a great little book titled Improving Your Serve. It is about how to live a life of servanthood. If you know anything about the gospel you know that servanthood is fundamental to the Christian life.

Serving is Essential to Christian Love

The greatest command is love, and the most basic expression of love is eager serving. Where there is no serving there is no love, which means servanthood is right there at the core of the Christian life. You could even go so far as to say loving servanthood is the opposite of sin.

Galatians 5:13 do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another in love.

That is what following Christ looks like.

Mark 10:42 Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them … 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve

We are walking in Jesus' steps when we serve one another. And that is exactly what Peter is calling us to do in verse 10.

10 Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve others

The term translated serve there is the verb form of the word deacon. It is a very broad term. To deacon means to do something for someone else's benefit. It is used many times of serving a meal or waiting on someone at a meal. Sometimes the word is used of providing financial support. It is a broad, general term that includes any kind of meeting of someone's needs. In Matthew 25:44, Jesus used that word to describe serving food and drink, providing clothing, inviting a stranger into your home, and visiting someone in prison. Jesus sums all that up with this one word, serving. Our primary activity in the household of God is to serve one another.

And that is unique to Christianity. No other religion has the primary purpose of waiting on one another. In fact, even in the Old Testament you don't really see this. Jesus introduced this idea, and it is something you only see in His Church. The servanthood model in the church is a mark of the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Swindoll's title - Improving Your Serve - should pique every Christian's interest. Every one of us should be very eager to know, How could I become a better servant? Peter answers that question in today's text. What we are going to find is that if you want to become a better servant in the kingdom of God there are three things you are going to need: knowledge, resources, and motivation. And you have to have all three. If you know what the person needs, and you have it, but you are not motivated, it is not going to happen. If you are motivated, and you want to meet the person's need, and you know what that need is, but you do not have the resources to do it, it will not happen. And if you do not even know what the person needs, obviously it won't happen. So we need all three: knowledge, means, and motivation.

Need #1: Knowledge of Need (They Need Grace)

The first one we covered last time. We know now what people need - grace! That is the greatest need people have because no matter what their spiritual problem or spiritual goal, the solution is grace. So we have the knowledge about what they need.

Need #2: Means of Meeting the Need (Your Gift)

We also talked about the second point: Means. If you are going to improve your serve - become a better servant - you have to not only know what the other person needs, but you have to have the means to provide it. If the person needs grace, what are the means for getting them that grace? What are our resources in our effort to get grace to people? Answer: Your spiritual gift. If you want to improve as a servant, the best service you can give is the kind that is colored by your gift, because your gift is the main way God desires to deliver grace through you.