Good morning! Please open your Bibles to John 13, as we continue our series called SHIFT. We are talking this month about areas in our personal lives as well as the life of our church where we might need to experience some shifts. Last week we talked about the need for our church to shift out of neutral, and how for that to happen, we have to be filled with God’s spirit, submissive to God’s Word, yielded to God’s sovereign rule and committed to God’s purpose.
Today, I want to drill down to the personal level. This morning, I don’t want you to disengage and think, James is talking about what the church needs to do. Instead, as we talk about SHIFTing our attitude, I want you to take this personally. So, turn to the person that is socially distant from you right now, and say, “This is for me.”
So how does someone go about shifting his or her attitude? What does it take for someone to have a change in their attitude? Well, it depends on whom you ask.
There is a professional wrestler named John Cena. His trademark move is called The Attitude Adjustment. It involves picking up an opponent, lifting them over your head, and dropping them onto the canvas.
You could ask Hank Williams, Junior. He had a song called Attitude Adjustment. For Hank Jr, an attitude adjustment involves a tire tool, a police dog, a night in jail, or some combination of all three.,
Jimmy Buffet has perhaps the most well known answer. His breakout album, the one with “Margaritaville” on it, was called “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.” For Jimmy Buffet, Changes in attitudes are the result changes in latitudes. Go south. Find a beach somewhere. Charter a sailboat. Get into the sun with a bottle of rum, and you’ll experience a change in your attitude.
All of these made me wonder—is it possible to have a shift in your attitude that does not involve alcohol, a barroom brawl, or professional wrestling?
The answer is yes. Jesus actually gave his disciples an attitude adjustment on the last night He spent with them before his arrest and crucifixion. But he didn’t do it by raising His voice or brandishing the holy tire tool of the Trinity. He didn’t pick up Judas Iscariot and body slam him to the floor of the Upper Room. Instead, let’s look at what He did do. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word. This morning I’m reading out of the New International Version. Please follow along in your copy of God’s Word:
13 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God;
I’m going to stop right there, but keep your Bibles open. But you can be seated, and let’s pray together.
When we talk about shifting our attitude as Christians, it means shifting to be more like Jesus. In Philippians 2:7, Paul says that we are to “Have this attitude in ourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.” And we’ll talk more about what that means at the end of the message. But the thing we have to understand is that being more like
Jesus means making a Shift from Powering Up to Empowering others
To me, one of the most amazing things about this passage is that it totally doesn’t go the way you would expect it to. We know from verse 1 that Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to leave the world and return to the Father.
According to verse 2, Jesus knew that the devil had already put it into Judas’s heart to betray Him. This point is emphasized again in verse 11.
And he knew, according to verse 3, that the Father had put all things under His power. The ESV says, “the Father had given all things into his hands.”
On your listening guide, I printed verse three and just a small part of verse 4:
Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning
to God, so He…
Now if you didn’t know the story before hand, or if you don’t know the story, what would you expect to happen next?
Maybe you can imagine Jesus raising His hand and saying, “Guys, I have an unspoken prayer request. I’ve got a really big thing that’s happening tomorrow, and I don’t want to go into detail, but could you pray for me?” In other words, I need you to minister to me, because I’ve got a major crisis I’m dealing with.
Maybe you can imagine Jesus doing a pre-emptive strike, and saying, “Before we do the Passover meal, I need to tell you guys about Judas and what He’s planning.”
“Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God, so He…
Jesus could have used this moment to “power up” on His disciples. Do you know what I mean by powering up? It means leveraging the power you have or the position you have or the knowledge you have or the authority you have in order to dominate or control somebody.
That’s what we human beings do, isn’t it? And it never ends well. There’s the cliché, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Why is that cliché true? Where does bullying come from? Arrogance? Elitism? Where does the idea that might makes right come from, Where does sexual harassment come from? The idea that because I’m stronger or have more influence that I can control you and dominate you and leverage my power in order to gratify my own sinful desires?
We know where it comes from. It’s the original sin—eat of this fruit. Your eyes will be open, and you will become like God. Wow! I can be like God! That sounds pretty good. We start to act like Simba— free to run around all day, free to do it all my way I just can’t wait to be king!
And see, here is what is so different, and so radical, and so revolutionary, and so unheard of in the teaching and ministry of Jesus. Jesus was and is king! Jesus was and is God. He had perfect knowledge of the future. He had perfect knowledge of their hearts. He had power from God. He had authority. He had a captive audience of committed, all-in followers. He could have leveraged every bit of that for His own advantage.
But Jesus taught and modeled that power is not primarily for the benefit of the powerful. And instead of powering up, he empowered others.
3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Who saw that coming? Washing their feet? Gross. There’s no paved roads. It’s dusty and hot. And plus, everyone wore those Jesus shoes. Footwashing was considered a necessary part of showing hospitality to guests, but it was also thought to be such a menial task that Jewish slaves were exempt from it. If you wanted your feet washed, you hired a Gentile to do it.
And Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. Even Judas’s. Let that boil your brain for a minute. And this is so important to realize: Jesus didn’t wash their feet instead of being their teacher and Lord. Look at verses 12-15:
12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.
Jesus didn’t lay aside his power and authority to play-act the role of a servant. He was exercising His authority and power in service to His disciples! To teach us what it means to bind ourselves to one another in love. He goes on to say in verse 16
16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
Underline that word “servant.” Because as we think about what it means to serve others, to lift them up instead of powering up, as we think about shifting our attitude toward serving others, let’s be clear on what the word “servant” means.
There’s three Greek words in the New Testament that are translated as servant or serve in English. You see one of them right here in verse 16: No servant is greater than his master.
That word is doulos. It comes from the Greek word deo which means “to bind,” and so literally it means one who is bound to a master. When we think about a slave being “in bondage” it is this idea that the doulos is not free to act on his own. His very identity is bound to who his master is. So doulos emphasizes the relationship of a servant to the Master. It’s a very common word in the New Testament. It is used 127 times.
And in Greek culture, there was absolutely no positive connotation to being a doulos. For the Greek, your sense of personal dignity came from the fact that you were free. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament puts it this way:
Where there is doulemein (slavery), human autonomy is set aside and an alien will takes precedence over one’s own (TDNT, vol. 2, p 261)
So no one would think being a doulos was a positive, life-affirming thing. Think about our own culture’s reaction whenever we talk about slavery. Or today, human trafficking. The idea is repulsive. It makes our skin crawl. We aren’t all that different from the ancient Greeks, are we? Personal freedom and autonomy is every bit as important to us as it was to them.
So why would Jesus not only encourage his disciples to be doulos, but would model it himself? Why would he take the lowest, most menial, most degrading job that a servant could do—washing feet, and not only do it, but tell his disciples, you know, I washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet”?
Why would Philippians 2:7 say that Jesus emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a doulos?
Because Jesus saw that we already were. We thought we were free. We thought we had autonomy. But from the day we ate of the fruit in the garden, thinking it would make us like God, an alien will took precedence over our own. Paul says in his letter to the Romans that we are slaves (douloi) to sin (Romans 6:16). He says that when we gave into Satan’s temptation, we offered ourselves to sin as obedient slaves. Without Jesus, we are not free to not sin. As Bob Dylan said, “It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
So why not serve a new master? Why not let Jesus free you from your bondage to sin and bind yourself to Him instead?
You’re thinking, “But that still makes me a slave. I’m still giving up my autonomy and letting an alien will take precedence over my own.”
And I say, “Yup. Welcome to Christianity.” I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ living in me, and the life I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the one who loved me and gave himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
And that’s the difference. We are binding ourselves to the One who bound Himself to us. Who bound himself to the Cross. became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. You see, slavery stinks if you have a master that is constantly powering up on you. That’s why it never could work on a human level, because it is our nature to leverage our power for the benefit of the powerful. But Jesus used his power to give power to the powerless. That’s why Paul introduced himself in many of his letters as a doulos of Jesus Christ. That’s why James, the half-brother of Jesus, introduced himself as a doulos of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s a second word that is translated servant. That word is diakoneo. In the Greek, it literally means to wait on a table. In Acts 6, when some of the widows in the church were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food, Peter said, “It wouldn’t be right for us (by us he meant the twelve apostles) to neglect the teaching of God’s word in order to wait on tables. That was the word diakonos—to serve at a table. So they chose seven men who would serve in the church, make sure the widows were being taken care of, etc. And so our word deacon comes from this word diakonos. Here’s the difference between doulos and diakonos: doulos emphasizes the relationship of a servant to a master. Diakonos emphasizes the relationship of a servant to the ministry.
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. This is where he invites the sheep into eternal rest, and he says “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me drink, naked and you clothed me, a stranger and you invited me in, sick, and in prison, and you visited me.” And they’re all, like, “When did we do all this?” And Jesus told them that when they did that for the least of these, they did it to him.
Then, Jesus turned to the goats, and went through the whole list again, except he said, you didn’t do any of these things, so I want you to depart from me.” And again, the goats say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or sick, or naked, and in prison, and (this is in verse 44) and not minister to you?
And the word there is diakonos. Lord, when didn’t we deacon you? And the answer is when they didn’t feed the hungry. Or give water to the thirsty. Or clothe the naked. Or show hospitality to the stranger. Or comfort the sick. Or visit the prisoner.
Jesus says, When you don’t deacon them, you don’t deacon me.
And so as we talk about shifting our attitude to one of servanthood, I want you to see how these two concepts go hand in hand—we bind ourselves to the master, but we also commit to the ministry. It isn’t just about gathering for worship and Bible study and being a good doulos who is bound to his master, but it’s also about doing the work of the ministry.
You can be a diakonos and not be a doulos of Jesus. There are lots of pagans that do some wonderful things. They volunteer in soup kitchens and AIDS clinics. They march for racial justice. But they haven’t bound themselves to Jesus as their master. So you can serve people without serving God.
But you can’t serve God without serving people. You can’t be a doulos without being a diakonos. So if there’s one thing we have to shift out of as a church and as individuals, it’s this idea that all we have to do as Christians is come here and soak up another Bible study.
There is one more word for servant in the New Testament, and its not used very often. In fact, only three times. But the word Is huperetes. And this was a very specific kind of servant. The word means “under-oarsman,” or “under-rower.” And You see, Roman sailing ships would use dozens of galley slaves to row their ships when there wasn’t any wind. Or to maneuver them into battle position. If you’ve ever seen the movie Ben Hur, that’s what Charlton Heston did when he was enslaved by the Romans. It was menial, thankless, backbreaking work. It was invisible work—no one ever saw the work that was going on below the waterline. But it was crucial work. The mission of the warship could not be accomplished without a corps of huperetes—under-oarsman.
So if you are following along in your listening guide, you can write it down this way:
• Remember that doulos emphasizes the relationship of the servant to the MASTER
• Diakoneo emphasizes the relationship of the servant to the MINISTRY
• And huperetes—the under-oarsman, emphasizes the relationship of the servant to the mission.
The truth is, a church couldn’t function without a bunch of huperetes. Invisible, unsung heroes who keep the church moving forward. You might never see them above the waterline. But you are sitting in a pew that’s been disinfected because of a team of under-rowers. The chairs are set up in the Sunday school rooms because of under-rowers. Our microphones work, our powerpoints advance, our livestream goes out, our baptistry gets filled, our grass gets cut, our offerings get counted, and the church moves forward. All because of oarsman that you might never see but the church couldn’t move without. They are crucial to the mission.
You might think of it as the grunt work—the normal, everyday, menial stuff that it takes to make an organization like a church function.
But before you just write off this type of servant as maybe someone who doesn’t have any other skills, pay attention to how its used in the New Testament. Once it described King David. In Acts 13, Paul was preaching a sermon on the island of Cyprus and he was telling the whole history of Israel. And he says that David “served the purpose of God in his own generation.” The word translated “served the purpose” is huperetes. King David, the greatest king in the history of Israel, was described as an under-oarsman.
Paul described himself in this way. In the Scripture that’s printed in your listening guide (Acts 20:34-35), Paul talked about how his own hands ministered (huperetes) to his necessities. He says he did it so he could show the people in the church that by working hard in this way we help the weak and remember the words of Jesus.
Conclusion
So, what does it take to shift our attitude from one of entitlement to one of empowerment? From powering up to leveraging your power to help others?
In a sense, Jimmy Buffet was right. It takes a change in latitude to bring about a change in attitude. Or maybe we should say a change in altitude. We have to stop thinking so highly of ourselves. If we are going to imitate Jesus, we may need to stop thinking about ourselves altogether.
5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
