Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Verse 12 of our text says that it was revealed to the prophets of the Old Testament that they were not serving themselves but you. The “you” would be the readers of this letter.
The text does not say how it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but future generations. Maybe Daniel 8:26-27 gives an idea. An angel says to Daniel, “The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.” Daniel would not live to see his prophecies fulfilled. He would not benefit from them. In fact, it cost him to be the conduit of God’s revelation. The next verse says, “I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.” So Daniel’s task was to be given something he did not fully understand, that would only benefit other people, and that would leave him exhausted and sick.
Daniel was not the only prophet to have a tough time of it. According to Jewish tradition, Isaiah was sawed in half by order of King Manasseh. We don’t know that for sure, because the Bible does not say it directly, but it does say in Hebrews 11:37, “They were put to death by stoning, they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword.” The “sawed in two” probably refers to Isaiah.
Jeremiah is another prophet who had a tough life. He was beaten and put in stocks by order of the priest Pashur, according to Jeremiah 20:2. He was thrown into a dry well in Jeremiah 38 and would have been left there to starve to death had he not been rescued by a sympathetic palace official. And Jeremiah spent so much of his life lamenting the fallen state of Israel and God’s judgment upon it that he became known as the weeping prophet.
Elijah is another. In 1 Kings 19 he was so depressed that he did not want to go on living. He knew he had a price on his head, and he felt isolated with no support.
So the prophets had hard lives. They had a rough go of it.
Generally speaking, we can endure a tough time if we know that we will receive some benefit for it. For example, I work a fairly physical job at a chemical production plant. And it is not always pleasant. But there is a paycheck at the end of it. Every two weeks I get paid. And I get benefits too. And that renders the job endurable. It would be much harder if I were doing the same work but someone else was getting the paycheck.
The prophets of God, despite all they had to endure, were told, “Someone else will benefit from your work. Someone else will reap reward from your labor. Not you.” As it says in verse 12, “it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you.”
The prophets were not alone in being given the task of rendering service to their inferiors. Hebrews 1:14 is a stunning verse that says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
That text says that angels - all angels! – serve the people who are being saved. If you and I are being saved, that means us. Angels serve us.
What makes that especially noteworthy is the fact that angels are so much greater than we. The Bible says so. 2 Peter 2:11 says they stronger and more powerful than we. We get a hint of how much stronger when we read in Genesis 19 that it was just two angels that were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And then in 1 Chronicles 21:15 we learn that just one angel was sent to destroy Jerusalem. If somehow there were to be warfare between the United States military with all its nuclear weapons and one angel, I would bet on the angel.
Not only are angels more powerful than we, they are closer to God than we. We human beings can’t quite see God. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God.” And the Apostle Paul wrote, “Now we see through a glass darkly.” But it is different with angels. In Matthew 18:11 Jesus said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” We can’t see God’s face but angels can.
And then there is that account in Luke 1 where the angel Gabriel tells the priest Zechariah some good news. Zechariah’s prayers have been answered, and the prayers of his wife. They’re going to have a son, a great son. When Zechariah pushes back against that good news and questions Gabriel’s credentials, Gabriel almost seems to be ticked off. He says, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God.” We see that Zechariah is about to get put in his place. Zechariah knows that he can’t stand in the presence of God. The closest he can get is a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Holy of Holies in the temple. That’s his closest approach. Zechariah cannot abide the full presence of God. But that is where the angel Gabriel lives.
Angels are stronger than we. They are closer to God than we. They are definitely holier than we. Yet somehow, just like the prophets, they are given the task of serving us. We who are weak, mortal, sinful human beings. Angels serve us.
If angels were capable of sin - like their fallen counterparts, the demons - I wonder if they could be tempted to a kind of resentment over their task. I can picture an angel saying, “God, you want me to serve him? Paul Lundquist, that lowlife? Couldn’t you get me someone worthier of my assistance?”
In our text from 1 Peter 1:12, where it says that the prophets were told that they were not serving themselves but you, just a couple clauses later it says, “Even angels long to look into these things.” What does that mean? At least part of it can be understood this way. If you long to look into something, it’s because you don’t understand it right away. It sparks your curiosity, your sense of wonder, but you need more wisdom, insight, and explanation to get a grip on it.
That is what our salvation is like for angels. They long to figure it out. I imagine angels thinking to themselves, “How could God love these rebellious creatures so much that he would become one of them and subject himself to death by torture at their hands in order to welcome them into fellowship with him – the same fellowship that we enjoy? How could God do that? How does that work? How could he love them so much?”
In 1738 Charles Wesley wrote the hymn “And Can It Be That I Should Gain.” In one of the stanzas he imagines a mighty angel, the first-born seraph, standing on the deck of a ship that floats on the high sea. The sea represents the love of God. The angel has a long rope with a weight at one end of it. That rope is used to measure how deep the water is. In nautical terms that is called sounding the depth of the water. You drop the weighted rope overboard and let it out bit by bit until you feel it hit bottom. Then you pull up the rope and measure the wet length of it to see how deep the ocean is at that point. But this angel has a problem. Wesley writes,
In vain the first-born seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine.
The angel just keeps letting out the rope until there is no more left and it still has not hit bottom. The ocean of God’s love is too deep for any angel to measure. He’ll never have enough rope for that. Wesley concludes,
Tis mercy all! Let earth adore. Let angel minds inquire no more.
So far we have seen that great prophets of the Old Testament served us rather than themselves. Then we see that mighty angels serve us rather than themselves. Most amazing of all is the service that Jesus, the Son of God, has rendered to human beings.
In Luke 22:27, Jesus said, ‘I am among you as one who serves.” In Mark 10:45, He said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Philippians 2:6 says, “He took the form of a servant.”
In John 13 he gave an illustration of that service by taking a bucket and towel and washing his disciples’ feet. In their culture only servants did that, or the lowest-ranking member of a family, like a child. Rabbis didn’t wash feet. But Jesus did.
What conclusion should we draw from all these examples in Scripture of the greater serving the lesser? Prophets serve not themselves but future generations. Angels serve not themselves but sinful human beings. Jesus served not himself but his disciples to the point that he washed their feet and then the next day gave his life for them. What conclusion should we draw?
I’ll tell you a conclusion we shouldn’t draw. We should not say, “Well, I guess I must be pretty special. Prophets serve me. Angels serve me. Jesus serves me. I exist to be served! I’m no servant myself. I’m nobody’s slave. I have no obligations to others. I’m a child of the king! Everybody else serves me.”
Jesus explicitly stated when he washed his disciples’ feet that he was teaching them to be servants to one another. He said in John 13:14-15, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
When we learn that prophets serve us, angels serve us, Jesus has served us – that should humble us. It should prompt us to ask, “How should I serve? How might I act in such a way that benefits others even if I don’t benefit myself? How might I serve even when it works to my detriment? What opportunities lie before me whereby I can imitate the example of prophets, angels, and Jesus Christ?”
A classic Christian answer, and it’s a good one, is to volunteer your service in ministries that are already up and running. Maybe that’s tutoring disadvantaged youth in an after-school program. Helping out with a nursing home chapel service. Conducting a Bible study for men at a homeless shelter. God may call you to something even more ambitious. My sister and her husband were the ones that the local police would call when kids were taken away from abusive parents, or when parents were arrested and the kids needed immediate foster care. Whatever your station in life, whether you are retired, middle-aged, or in middle school, there are opportunities for service if you just open your eyes. And if nothing is readily apparent, pray this prayer: “God, what good thing should I do? Is there some place I should serve that till now I have overlooked?”
In our natural state, which is fallen and selfish, it may not occur to us to ask that kind of question. I’m reminded of an experience my mother had 35 years ago. She was flying back from New York after seeing my sister and her family with their kids, adopted kids, and foster kids. The man next to her on the plane said he was going to Chicago to be on the Oprah Winfrey show. The theme of that show was “Suddenly Rich.” Oprah had several guests who came into wealth overnight. Maybe through an inheritance, or winning the lottery. I don’t know how my mom’s seatmate got his money. My mom watched the show, and he was on it. But my mom said she found the show depressing. Because every one of the guests talked only about what they were now able to afford, and how they were indulging their desires for luxury – whether for travel or a new car or a new house. The theme was, “Here’s the stuff I can get now that I’m rich.”
None of them talked about the good that they could accomplish now that they could afford to give money away charitably. That issue didn’t come up. It was all, “How can I be served?” rather than “How can I serve?” “What good thing can I enjoy?” rather than, “What good thing can I do?”
I don’t think it is a controversial point among Christians that we ought to serve. If you’re a Christian, you go to church, you read your Bible, then you know this already. It is a lesson we needed to be reminded of rather than taught afresh. Even so, I think I have detected areas of rhetoric and cliché among Christians where the theme of service gets lost. It dissipates and disappears unnoticed rather than being incorporated into the forefront of our decision-making.
I’ll mention three such areas which have nothing in common other than the fact that I became interested in them as they sprang from iconic moments in my life and have shaped my thinking over the past 40 years.
The first has to do with giftedness - God-given abilities. 1983, my junior year of college at Wheaton. The guest speaker for spiritual emphasis week, Jill Briscoe, asked a group of us, “Are you willing to do a job badly?” Here’s the context. My alma mater is obsessed with gifts, talents and abilities. They talk about it all the time. You will hear a student say something like, “I feel God calling me to move in my area of giftedness because he has endowed me with talents and abilities and I need to locate the right arena where I can lean into my calling to glorify him through my gifts and talents and abilities because I can be effective if I am utilizing my gifts and talents and abilities to their maximum potential.”
Well. The Bible does speak of spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit distributes to believers. Those are good things. The problem is when they become idols, when our giftedness becomes an excuse to avoid an obligation that has landed in our lap. And we justify our refusal to do the necessary thing by saying, “Oh I’m not good at that. It’s not my gift. I could only do C-level work, and I should serve where I can do A-level work. I need to serve where I can shine.”
Ok, but if no one else is available for some necessary work that is outside your area of expertise, will you leave it undone out of pride? Are you willing to do a job badly, simply because it needs to be done, and you’re the person available?
To be a servant you must be humble. And sometimes humility demands that you do your pitiful best at a job that everyone can see you’re not very good at. Spiritual gifts are for service, but they must not become obstacles to service. It is good to ask Jill Briscoe’s provocative question, “Am I willing to do a job badly?”
The second area has to do with mate selection. This may apply directly to no one here ever. I still think it is a good thing to have in the back of one’s mind.
Preachers like to talk about the kind of person you should marry. They will give you a list of qualities. I heard a sermon by Alistair Begg where he gave his list for both men and woman. A woman should look for a man who “leads with boldness, laughs heartily, lives prayerfully,” and a bunch of other things. A man should look for a woman who is “an initiative taker who is willing to submit, who exhibits behavior that builds confidence, a kindness that touches others, has a kind of humor that takes you through adversity,” etc.
Another pastor that I heard on the radio gave his list. After his first wife died and he was looking to remarry he prayed, “God, if you have somebody for me, here’s what I would like: someone who is (1) intelligent (2) godly (3) sweet (4) humble (5) attractive and (6) Let her not have complications in her personal life, like grown kids who run around the house smoking dope all the time.”
I have problems with such lists. First, they seem to assume that you have dozens of people who all want to marry you and you are in the privileged position of getting to pick the best one. That’s just not the case for most people. I think most people, if they are to marry at all, have to settle for somebody, just as their partners have to settle for them. Secondly, such lists exhibit strong self-regard. When the widowed pastor said he wanted someone intelligent, godly, sweet, humble, attractive with no complications, he was saying, “I’m worthy of such a person, because I’m all those things. I don’t expect my wife to excel in virtues that I lack. I just want someone who is intelligent godly sweet humble attractive and care-free like me.”
17 years ago when I was single a widow kindly offered to match-make for me and asked, “Can I help you find someone? What are you looking for in a woman?” And I said, “I just want someone nice.” Has to be a Christian of course. But I don’t have a list of qualities she must fulfill. I just want somebody nice.
What that widow did not know at the time was that I had already determined that she was the nicest person I had ever met. We married a few months later and she made me the most happily married man I have ever known.
As for those lists of the qualities that some preachers think you should demand in a mate, I have noticed all of those lists lack a feature that I think is important to consider. How about seeking to marry someone whom you can benefit? Someone whose need or longing you can help satisfy? All the lists I have ever heard were self-centered. They never looked at marriage from the perspective of, “Is there someone out there for whom I can do some good?”
The greatest romance in history that I know of sprang from that consideration. On April 23, 1956, C. S. Lewis married Joy Gresham, a divorced mother of two. He did it strictly as a favor to her. He was a content 57-year-old bachelor with no designs on marriage. But Joy, a friend and intellectual sparring partner, had a problem. She was an American living in England with her two boys, and she wanted to stay, but she couldn’t. Her visa was about to expire and would not be renewed. She could however stay if she were married to an Englishman. So she asked Lewis if he would be willing to marry her. He thought and prayed about it and reluctantly agreed. It was to be a marriage on paper only. They had a brief civil ceremony, no rings exchanged, they would live apart. He did this for no other reason than as a favor to her, to serve her and her boys. That’s why he agreed to it.
But not long after that, Joy got cancer. Advanced cancer, considered terminal. Then Lewis took her into his home and cared for her lovingly. She was not expected to live long. She had a brief remission before she died two years later. And Lewis grieved inconsolably. Read his book A Grief Observed and it will rip your heart out. A book written about their marriage, Through the Shadowlands, is the only book that ever made me cry. Lewis said to his friends that what started out as friendship turned to pity, and then pity became love.
The point I am trying to make is that Lewis married Joy Gresham not because he was considering his own needs and had finally found a woman who fulfilled his criteria. He married to serve her. I wish more Christians thought of marriage as a service that by God’s grace they might lovingly render to someone else.
I have one more iconic moment in my life where I was stirred to think of service in an area where I think Christians are prone to overlook it.
20 years ago I heard a talk given at a religious conference by the former commissioner of baseball Bowie Kuhn. It turns out that Bowie Kuhn was devout Catholic. As he traveled around the country to different cities that had baseball teams, he would drop in at a local Catholic church to attend Mass. One day a bishop challenged him and said, “When you show up at a church in Pittsburgh or San Diego or wherever, go sit at the very front.” Kuhn asked, “Why?” The bishop said, “To strengthen the priest!”
The bishop was saying, “You’re not in church just for your own sake. Your presence ministers grace and encouragement to that man who is conducting the service as well as to others who have gathered. You’re setting an example for them.” Kuhn took that advice to heart. From then on when he went to Mass he didn’t slip in late, sit in the back, exit at the first opportunity. He marched to the front as example for others and to provide encouragement for the priest.
I want to be clear that where you sit in a church sanctuary is not so important as just showing up in the first place. I used to sit at the front like Bowie Kuhn to encourage the pastor, but I don’t do that anymore for the simple reason that I am old and I fall asleep every single Sunday when I listen to a sermon that I’m not preaching. Given that I will fall asleep, I want to do so inconspicuously at the back rather than right there under the preacher’s nose. That might discourage him.
I know a good many Christians who don’t attend services at all. And I’m not talking about people who have a good reason for it – like they have a bad back that prevents them from sitting, or a crippling social anxiety that makes it hard to leave the house. Or they have to stay home to take care of a disabled love one. I’m not talking about cases like that. But when you have an able-bodied, able-minded free Christian who refuses to worship God in the company of his people, and you ask them why, I guarantee you that 100 percent of the time they will give you an answer that focuses on themselves, that puts themselves at the center.
They might say, “I feel closer to God going for a walk in the forest than sitting in a pew.” Or, “I get more out of listening to an Andy Stanley sermon online than I do going to church.” They are only thinking about their own benefit, and it doesn’t seem to enter the periphery of their mind that their showing up and participating in worship would be a blessing to other people, a service to them, and an encouragement to those leading worship. That thought hadn’t occurred to devout Bowie Kuhn until a bishop brought it up. The notion of serving others by their mere presence for some Christians does not jiggle the needle on the Richter scale of their conscience. They have to be made aware of it. They need to be shown that they are only thinking of themselves. We are all tempted to think only of ourselves.
The prophets served us. Angels serve us. Jesus has served us. Therefore let us serve one another, and may the Holy Spirit open our eyes to galling discoveries of our own self-centeredness, so that we might repent of it and imitate our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank you that we benefit from the sacrifices of others. Like mystified angels we wonder that your Son Jesus should sacrifice himself to serve sinful rebels like us. Teach us to follow your Son, and please, even this week, point us to some area of service that till now we have avoided or not even noticed.
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