Introduction
Have this ever happened to you: You went what you thought was out of your way to do something for someone and your efforts went completely unnoticed? They simply took what you’ve done for granted. Have you ever done a good deed and not been thanked or recognized? Worse, have you ever been criticized or treated badly because of your efforts to serve? Not only are those on the receiving end of your efforts ungrateful, but they actually complain about the job you’ve done? How does that make you feel? I bet I can guess.
Psalm 123 is a song about service and servanthood. It tells us how to serve God, but not by giving us a list of possible jobs and tasks that we could do in the church or community. Other passages in the Bible do that for us quite well. And so could the deacons’ board or trustee board or any church board if you dare to ask! You may wish you hadn’t! This psalm tells us how to serve God in another way. It talks about our attitude in serving. This isn’t a what psalm; this is who and a how psalm. Psalm 123 is much less interested in how we serve than in our attitude while we serve. And it begins by telling us who we serve.
Service is always a part of discipleship
“To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens” is how Psalm 123 begins. It begins by looking upward to God. As disciples of Jesus, this how we always begin—or at least how we should always begin. This lifting up of our eyes is a reminder of what kind of relationship we have with God. Psalm 123 continues: “As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God.” We do not enjoy a relationship of equals here. As it says in Ecclesiastes 5: 2 says: “For God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.”
In other words, God is our Lord. And as it says, this means He is our Master. We are here to serve Him, not vice-versa. This isn’t easy for everyone to swallow. First of all, we like to be our own masters. We like to manage our own lives. Second, there are also lots of people who like barking orders at other people—they have a position of some authority and they use it to belittle others and to build themselves up. People who have these attitudes—which can be any one of us any day of the week—can bring them into a relationship with God. So when it comes to God, there are times when we all feel like, first, that He should give us what we want—which, if He did, would help us manage our own lives—and second, that we can somehow order Him around like we are His boss and master and not the reverse. Just because Scripture says “ask and it will be given you” doesn’t mean God is there to give us whatever we want and when we want it. It shouldn’t instill in us a feeling of entitlement. Whenever it does, we need to be brought up short to realize that this is the opposite of what the situation really is. God is our Master and Lord.
This brings us to the first truth of servanthood—because God is our Master, we are His servants. We are here to serve Him and this means putting our own wants and desires aside in order to live a life pleasing to God. Servanthood is a living a life on behalf of others besides me to the glory of God. Paul says in Romans 12: 1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [reasonable] worship [service].” The word for worship can also be translated service. Service and worship are the same—we serve as we worship and we worship as we serve. As long as we are following Jesus as his disciples, we follow as servants.
Verse two of Psalm 123 also reminds us that in all the ways we serve God we rely upon God. We are told that “our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.” When we pray these words we’re not praying for forgiveness. We’re praying that God would enable us to serve. We’re praying that God would help us be the servants He calls us to be. We aren’t able to serve God out of our own strength. These words are a recognition of that we rely upon God for life itself; and if we rely upon God for our very life certainly we rely upon Him for strength to carry out whatever tasks He calls us to do.
Service isn’t always appreciated
There are so many ways to serve. Think of a father helping his son with math homework. Think of the husband who cooks supper for his family. Think of the person who mows your lawn. Think of the cashier who rung through your groceries the last time you went to Sobey’s or Superstore. Think of the all the people who do the various tasks that make it possible for this church to run. There are big tasks and little tasks. There are jobs that are more obvious and upfront. Much service includes menial tasks and is not glamorous. And there are jobs that are so behind-the-scenes that they are almost invisible. We see the results but we don’t see the effort. We would notice if they were left undone though, you can bet on that! The point here is that service is not a narrow slice of life; rather, service is at the heart of much our everyday life. There are lots of ways to serve, and most of us spend a lot of our time serving in one way or another.
As we all know, service isn’t always appreciated. We began by talking about this. We’re not always thanked for the jobs we do. Either the job has gone unnoticed or people just don’t feel the need to make a big deal out of it. And this can really discourage us. Maybe we wonder whether we’re doing a good enough job. Maybe we would just be grateful for even one kind word. Maybe we just want to know if our efforts are in fact appreciated.
Sometimes it goes beyond not being appreciated. Sometimes people do respond, but do so in a negative way. They tell you that they could have done a better job. They’re critical. “If I had been the one, I would have done it this way!” You give time and energy to tasks you’ve volunteered to do, and rather than receive thanks you get contempt and scorn. You’re criticised. Your work is criticised. Rather than just being discouraged, you get frustrated. Maybe you even get angry. You feel like you’d be better off not serving at all.
It’s when we’ve found ourselves feeling this way that we pray verses 3 and 4 of our Scripture passage: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.” We say to God, “Please, Lord, I want to serve, but nothing I do seems to be done right. I don’t know if I can serve you anymore if this is the thanks I get. Have mercy on me.”
Now, the psalmist here asks for mercy. Why do you think he does that? Maybe it’s because in the face of thankless hours of service and even criticism you begin not only to be frustrated and angry but bitter toward the person who is critical. When finding yourself feeling this way, maybe you want to lash out somehow. You want to tell them that if they want the job done better that they can darn well go ahead and do it themselves! Basically, you feel like you want to tell them off. You think, “How dare you? I’ve done all of this work and all you can do is criticise me? Why don’t you do it then?” And let’s face it, you don’t always have to lash out at a person to get lost in bitterness and anger.
So maybe this is why the psalmist asks for mercy. Someone has criticised what they’ve done as a servant, and they feel angry. They feel bitter. Even if they haven’t said anything to the critic, they still harbour those feelings inside. So as a result, a relationship in the church has been broken. It is for this attitude that the servant asks for mercy. “Please, Lord, have mercy on me. Because this person has been critical, I’ve gotten angry. I feel bitter. I just want to tell them where to go! And I know I shouldn’t.”
This is why it is crucial that our first response to being criticised or not being thanked for our service is prayer. Either we have to ask for forgiveness because our attitude has already gone down hill or because we want to make sure that it doesn’t go that way. This is why it is crucial that when we face criticism or when we feel frustrated that no one has noticed our work that our first response takes us back to the first verse of the psalm: “To you I lift my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens.” Once again we lift up our eyes. Once again we turn back to God. Once again we pray. We talk to Him. We bring our feelings to Him before we lash out in frustration or anger at anyone around us. It is better not to serve than to serve for the wrong reasons or with the wrong attitude. Service, as we said, is worship. How can you worship when angry, frustrated and bitter? You can’t. This is why the psalm includes a prayer for mercy. God knows that service involves frustrations. And He knows that we will tend towards bitterness and anger when not thanked. He wants our service to be worshipful. He wants us to learn that we are His servants and that we are not looking for the praises of men. In other words, He wants us to be serving for the right reasons and with the right attitude. That is why I said this Psalm is not about what we do to serve but rather about who we serve and how we serve.
Service is to please God
Not only do we not often get the rewards from people that we might like, we are told in Scripture not to count on such rewards. When Jesus was talking about prayer, he said that those hypocrites who prayed in public have already received their reward: praises from others. He goes on to say that those who pray in secret will be rewarded by their Father in heaven. Jesus is telling us here that the rewards available from people are nothing in comparison to the ones available from God. While it is our natural inclination to want praise from other people, that is not the sort of praise that we should seek.
Instead we are told in Scripture to serve in order to please God. In Ephesians 6: 7, 8 Paul says this: “Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord.” Another translation puts it this way: “Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men.” We serve others, that is true, but God is the ultimate recipient of our service because our service is a part of our worship. Paul is also saying here that we should serve with enthusiasm, with our whole heart. We all know what a half-hearted effort looks like and feels like. If we were to try and serve thinking that it was all about the thanks we were going to get, knowing that service often goes unnoticed, it would be much easier to slip into half-hearted service. Our service should never be like that. And if we keep in mind that our service is worship it will be easier to do with our whole hearts.
Our ultimate example for service and servanthood is Christ himself. In John 13 Jesus washes his disciples’ feet to illustrate what kind of attitudes we should have. In both Matthew and Mark we have an account of James and John seeking preferential treatment above the other disciples; well, in Matthew’s account, their mother does the dirty work of asking for them! But Jesus’ response in both cases is exactly the same: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles rule it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.”
Jesus reverses our notions of greatness and what it means to be in first place. And he bases this on himself when he goes on to say “just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus is our example. Jesus came to serve. He came to do the will of the One who sent Him. Just so he sends us, and we are to be like Him, seeking to please God and not people; and our reward is in heaven with Him. J.M. Mason says that “They that deny themselves for Christ shall enjoy themselves in Christ.”
Conclusion
Before being critical of any jobs being done, ask yourself if you could have done a better job. Ask yourself if there are any ways you can make suggestions about improving the work. Make it into an opportunity to work together. Make the criticism constructive rather than critical.
If you are ever criticised for your service, make sure you go before God first. Don’t respond with anger in the heat of the moment. A quick in the heat of the moment prayer is better than saying something you’ll later regret.
When we see someone giving themselves to service, let’s be encouraging rather than critical. We are called to encourage one another and build one another up—and being built up is not the same thing as giving someone a swelled head!
We must constantly be seeking God for help in the midst of our service. Only can God give us the ability to serve as we are called to serve. We cannot serve out of our own strength. James Packers comments that “Only the Holy Spirit can create in us the kind of love toward our Savior that will overflow in imaginative sympathy and practical helpfulness towards his people.”
While ultimately we do serve God, we do so by serving others. Packer also says: “What work does Christ set his servants to do? The way that they serve him, he tells them, is by becoming the slaves of their fellow-servants and being willing to do literally anything, however costly, irksome, or undignified, in order to help them. This is what love means, as he himself showed at the Last supper when he played the slave’s part and washed the disciples’ feet.”
Our job in service is not to maintain this building or our facilities. It is not to keep programs running. It is not even to make sure that everything goes completely smoothly during the worship service. It is help those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ be our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are called to serve one another so that through such mutual service and encouragement we can all follow Christ more closely and faithfully. “When the New Testament speaks of ministering to the saints, it means . . . devoting time, trouble, and substance to giving them all the practical help possible. The essence of Christian service is loyalty to the king expressing itself in care for his servants.”
A.T. Pierson says this: “The supreme test of service is this: For whom am I doing this? Much that we call service to Christ is not such at all . . . If we are doing this for Christ, we shall not care for human reward or even recognition. Our work must again be tested by three propositions: Is it work from God, as given us to do from Him; for God, as finding in Him its secret of power; and with God, as only a part of His work in which we engage as co-workers with Him.” And so let us then, as Paul tells us in Gal. 6: 9, “not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”
