Spiritual Disciplines: Servanthood & Submission

Sermon for February 6, 2022 - John 13:1-17

This is a deeply moving passage. And it’s all the more moving when we understand the underlying message in this account. This is a picture of Jesus visibly and tangibly demonstrating His heart for the church, His desire for our relationships and this His key to the main focus of his entire ministry - the Kingdom of God.

Today is the 4th message in a series we are doing on the spiritual disciplines. We began with an overview of the topic by Pastor Arleen, and then so far we’ve looked at the spiritual disciplines of prayer and of reading the Word of God. Let me know if you’ve tried any of the spiritual disciplines so far and how it’s going so far. I’d love to hear from you about that. And if you have any questions, please reach out.

Today we’re looking at the spiritual disciplines of submission and servanthood. You might wonder how submission and servanthood can be considered as spiritual disciplines. Aren’t spiritual disciplines supposed to be things that we do on our own, ways that we enter into the ‘training’, so to speak, of being a disciple of Jesus? But submission and servanthood - those things are about our relationships. So how can they be called spiritual disciplines?

Good question. One answer would be that prayer and fasting and reading the Scriptures and other things that we might call “personal spiritual disciplines” are hugely important because they lay the groundwork for our lives. They help to prepare us for the ministry that God has called each of us to.

They help us to apply discipline to our lives. Notably, when practiced they teach us patience. They teach us to dwell in the moment. They teach us impulse control. They teach us to depend on God. They teach us the heart and mind of God as we explore the Word of God

The personal spiritual disciplines do all that and a lot more, WHEN we practice them in an ongoing way, when they become a regular pattern in our lives. But again, how are submission and servanthood considered as spiritual disciplines? Well, they are key to your ministry. Did you know that God has called you to ministry? That ministry is a big part of your purpose in life.

You see we’re saved by God’s grace through the gift of faith; we’re not at all saved through what we do. But then once we have been saved, once we have come to follow Jesus, we discover that God has things - good things - for us to do that He’s intended all along for us. We learn that we ourselves are part of God’s plan to bring blessing to others.

That of course is a theme that we find throughout Scripture. Notably it’s stated pretty directly in Ephesians 2

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Those “good works” are your ministry. They are the outward expression of your life in God. And as we learn from Jesus, 3. ministry is first of all expressed in servanthood, as we will see.

So prayer and knowing the Scriptures are extremely important and they do represent things that need to become a daily part of our lives. We need to commune with God, to confess, to intercede for ourselves and others, we need to read the Bible so as to better know God Who we love and serve.

But here’s the thing. The spiritual disciplines of submission and servanthood are the testing ground. They are the foot-on-the-ground, real life opportunities to apply what we gain through prayer and reading the Word.

Prayer shapes us, it humbles us; it brings us into conscious contact with our Redeemer; prayer refines us in our deepest parts and, as we let it, really helps to conform our inner person to the image of Christ.

Likewise reading the Word shapes us. It helps us to think rightly, to sort out the confusion of what it means to be human and fallen and broken in a fallen and broken world. The Word makes us wise in relationship to sin, the devil and the world.

But submission and servanthood, those things represent where the rubber hits the road. They are “field disciplines” as it were.

Before we look at this passage in some depth, I do feel I need to say something that needs to be said when touching on the topic of Biblical submission.

It has been heartbreaking for me to hear, over the years, about some, I would say or hope, a minority, of Christian of influence, be they formal church leaders or just folks that try to influence others - who have really failed in a key component of being a Christian leader.