Selfishness Or Servanthood – Who's Winning In Your Home? Series

1. Title: Selfishness or Servanthood – Who’s Winning In Your Home?

2. Text: John 13, Luke 22:25-27

3. Audience: Villa Heights Christian Church, AM crowd, May 7, 2006, 2nd in the series “Family Made For Heaven”

4. Objectives:

-for the people to understand the many ways we can be selfish and how many areas of our life where that can surface; to understand that selfishness is outside the character of the Christian, and destructive to all our relationships

-for the people to feel confident that servanthood is better than selfishness, and not to be feared by rather embraced

-for the people to examine themselves for any self-serving attitudes and to replace those with the attitude of servanthood seen in Jesus

5. When I finish my sermon I want my audience to embrace servanthood over selfishness in light of God’s plan for their lives and to find just how rewarding that is for their lives at home and in the Church

6. Type: topical

7. Dominant Thought: When we begin to live for God, our selfish lifestyle is replaced with a lifestyle of servanthood.

8. Outline:

Intro: I remember being at a wedding – in fact it was my own, and I remember the minister – who was my dad, saying to us in the message on our wedding day, that most every problem that develops between a husband and wife can be traced back to selfishness.

I listened to on that occasion, May 30. 20 years later, I still see the great truth in that statement. In fact, as I look at life in a family, and in the Family of God, and in the world in general, I see how selfishness is one of the most basic causes of problems between people everywhere. Wouldn’t you agree?

Most of us have experienced selfishness – that is, we know what it’s like to be around someone who’s selfish. And, most of us are pretty good at knowing what selfishness looks like – when it’s someone else doing it, at least!

(picture of suckling piglets)

So I want to address that problem in our homes today, and I want to give the biblical alternative that will right away prevent most of the wrongs brought into our lives by selfishness.

But first, let’s see if we even have a selfishness problem or not. This is audience interactive time. In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy, the guy who does “You might be a Redneck if…” is this useful list, “You might be selfish if...” So, just listen, and you judge whether or not this sounds like you. If so, you might be selfish.

You might be selfish if…

• You have a genuinely difficult time letting someone else have the remote control

• You pick up the last piece of chicken, take a bite out of it, hold it up and say, “Does anybody want this?”

• You know all the words to the song “I Did It My Way.”

• You have a lifetime subscription to “Self” magazine

• You rush to be the first in line at a funeral procession

• Your favorite picture at home is the mirror

• You’re on a date and say, “Enough talk about me…let’s talk about what you think of me.”

• You’re a baby, a toddler, a preadolescent, a teenager, or an adult male or female

If you find that any of this applies to you, it’s important to understand that…

I. By Nature, Live for SELF

The reason that so many of those things hit close to home is because we’re born self-serving creatures. From the day we’re born, our worlds revolve around ourselves. That’s where we get things like the…

Toddler Property Laws

If I like it, it’s mine.

If I can take it away from you, it’s mine.

If I had it a while ago, it’s mine.

If I say it is mine, it’s mine.

If it looks like mine, it’s mine.

If I say I saw it first, it’s mine.

If you’re having fun with it, it’s mine.

If you lay it down, it’s mine.

If it is broken, it’s yours.

That’s the nature of a baby – and it’s also the nature of what the Bible calls “the flesh.” As we grow, we mature, and we learn to overcome that self-serving nature. At least, we’re supposed to. But if someone hasn’t been given a reason and the means to overcome being a self server, they end up sounding like a song by the Nelson Brothers. Apparently there’s this poor guy who has a self-centered girlfriend, and he’s tired of her always directing the conversation to her favorite subject…herself! So the song goes:

Enough about you baby-let’s talk about me

You don’t even have a clue lately what I really need