Life service

In this lecture, I'm going to talk a little bit about the concept of university life. I'm going to talk a little bit about the concept of university life. I'm going to talk a little bit about the concept of university life.

God was curiously shown to our world inasmuch as He sent our Lord Jesus to bear the punishment of our sin. God so loved the world He gave, gave His best, His only Son. We'll be thinking of the magnificent, strange work of our Lord Jesus as we come around Scripture in a moment.

But let's extol Him as we recognize that He is here, as we acknowledge His majesty. His majesty, kingdom of God, is with thee. The road is slow, the journey is long.

It's time to pray. So exalt the power of the name of Jesus. And we adore Him, the Lord God, the Jesus of Israel.

Majesty, worship His majesty. Jesus, the Lord God, the Lord God in all of Israel. And welcome to the tabernacle, to our evening service.

I can't think of any better way to finish off a lovely, sunny Sunday than to come together in the house of the Lord to praise Him. I hope you've all come with expectation in your hearts. Of course, we're going to have a wonderful time.

Bless you all. Let's come before the throne of grace in prayer first, shall we? Our Lord and Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come into your house tonight to worship a living God, to give you the praise and the thanks due to the one who so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that those who believed on Him might have eternal life. This is the promise He's given to our people, and this is the promise which keeps our hearts stayed on Him until we are called into His presence or until His Son returns in glory.

Hallelujah. In the meantime, Lord, we thank you for the talents which you have given to each one of us, talents great or small, talents which should not be hidden or denied but must be used in your service and for your glory, not ours. Help us, each one, Lord, to work within our talents, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and never to heed the wounds, to labor and not to seek for any reward save that of knowing that we do your will.

We pray first tonight, Lord, for those who are setting out on their Christian walk. We ask that there may always be Christian fellows to walk alongside them to help sustain and confirm their faith when times are difficult, to minister to them when, like the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell as they will fall, perhaps not amongst thieves but amongst those who would draw them away from the narrow path which leads to eternal salvation. And for those, Lord, who have been traveling the Christian path for many years, we give you thanks for their faithfulness.

We ask that they may be cheered by the sight of young Christians pressing from behind, ready and willing to take over the torch which, sooner or later, they will be required to relinquish. And for those, Lord, who do not yet know you as their Savior and who have not yet set out on the Christian path, and each one of us surely must know some one person or family or relative who is in this situation, we carry a special burden for them. And we think of those who have allowed the things of this world to divert them from the walk with you which started so promisingly and now has faltered.

We pray, Lord, that ere long they will be further rejoicing in heaven over a sinner who has been saved or a sheep who has returned to the fold. Heavenly Father, we commit our service into your hands, and we ask that your Holy Spirit may direct every aspect of it. We ask for your anointing on Pastor Tony as he brings us your word.

And we pray that it will not only be ears that are pierced, but hearts also. It is in the name of our loving and beloved Savior, Jesus Christ, that we bring this prayer to you. Amen.

And now we turn to the Word of God, which tonight you'll find in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 15, starting to read at verse 1. The book of Deuteronomy, as Tony reminded us at Maybridge only this morning, contains some 30 chapters of Moses' last address to the people of Israel, tens of thousands of them gathered together to hear him. And it is regretted, no doubt, that he realized that his long life was coming to an end and that, after all, he was not to be allowed to accompany his people across Jordan into the Promised Land. And he was determined, therefore, that they should understand fully the content of the law and the commandments, how they were to govern their lives if they were to live lives which would be acceptable to the Lord.

And two of the things which he deals with in the passage which we're going to read tonight are firstly a question of debt and our responsibility for the poor, and secondly, the problem of slavery and servitude. Now, the way in which the people in Moses' day were to deal with these problems would probably not be very practical to us in these days, but we have to remember that our obligations to the poor, our obligations to those in servitude, are nonetheless to be taken seriously in the eyes of God. Let's look at chapter 15 and read from verse 1. At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.

This is how it is to be done. Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother, because the Lord's time for cancelling debts has been proclaimed.

You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your brother owes you. However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving to you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you. If you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all the commands I am giving you today, for the Lord your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations, but will borrow from none.

You will rule over many nations, but none will rule over you. If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns in the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your poor brother. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend him whatever he needs.

Be careful not to harbour this wicked thought. The seventh year, the year for cancelling debts, is near. So if you do not show ill will towards your needy brother and give him nothing, he may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin.

Give generously to him, and do so without a grudging heart. Then, because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land.

Therefore, I command you to be open-handed towards your brothers and towards the poor and needy in your land. Now, if a fellow Hebrew, or man or woman, is sold to you and he serves you six years, in the seventh year you must let him go free. And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed.

Supply him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress. Give to him as the Lord your God has blessed you. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.

That is why I give you this command today. But if your servant says to you, I do not want to leave you because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an oar and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life. Do the same for your maidservant.

Do not consider it a hardship to set your servant free, because his service to you these six years has been worth twice as much as that of a hired hand. And the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do. May God bless the reading of His word to us tonight.

Amen. I shall soar high, safe from the hills beneath, but the birds have revised in my name of the beast. In order not my shoulders wrap, I may return to the bliss of the endless hour.

Now you might care to have your Bibles open at that passage to which Denzel directed our attention. I wonder what it is you perhaps might imagine that pirates and gypsies and at least during the last ten years some Englishmen have in common. Well, the answer is not a parrot, or I can't think of a proper pirate without a parrot on his right shoulder.

The answer actually is an earring. I mean you wouldn't have a pilot without an earring, would you? You wouldn't have a gypsy without an earring. And today it's become in vogue not just for pirates and gypsies but for some men to wear earrings.

Now I'm not thinking of introducing this as far as the ranks of the clergy are concerned. I think younger men like Tim Saunders ought to give attention. But though I've got no inclination to go down the road and have my ear done, there's a very real sense in which I follow the man with the pierced ears.

There's a very real sense in which our Lord Jesus was a man with pierced ears. You didn't know that? Well, have you ever read in the 40th Psalm, to which I ask you to turn just for a moment, keeping your fingers also on the passage from Deuteronomy? Because there in the sixth verse of the Messianic Psalm, that's the psalm that describes our Lord Jesus, you read of Him saying, Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but My ears you have pierced. What's it mean? I was taken by some dear friends with my wife on Friday to the musical Cats.

Interesting that at least London can produce some good wholesome stuff. Now just in case you're not initiated into T.S. Eliot, there are many cats, different shapes and sizes, differing abilities, and of course the wisest cat that any lover of Eliot will know is called Deuteronomy. He helped the other cats cast light on something that Mike Jenkins could tell anybody, that cats actually go to heaven when they die.

Now joking aside, there is a sense in which the book of Deuteronomy casts light on the 40th Psalm and its reference to our Lord Jesus as being a man with pierced ears. Because in the 15th chapter of Deuteronomy, along with a comparable chapter in Exodus, you have some insights into the way that slaves were treated in the time of the Old Testament. Every seventh year was a happy year in Israel.

If you'd contracted a debt, you were freed of your debt. If only the Abba national would run their mortgages on a similar system. If you had entered into slavery, you would be freed of your slavery.

But let's imagine that there's a slave who doesn't actually want to be free because conditions in the household where he's been spending the last 2, 3, 4, 5 years have been so good. If I said Isaiah 53, a lot of you would immediately have in mind that great passage which deals with our Lord Jesus and His death on the cross. Our Lord Jesus there is referred to prophetically as the servant of the Lord, what the Hebrews call the Ebed-Yahweh, the slave of Jehovah.

And when you make your way from the Old Testament into the New Testament to the book of Mark, the second gospel especially, you discover that that was our Lord's favorite term to describe Himself. He is the Son of Man. He is the servant of the Lord.

He is the Ebed-Yahweh. He has come into the world to do not His own bidding but rather the will of God, His Heavenly Father. And so you discover Him saying such remarkable things as speaking of Himself that the servant of God came not into the world to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Now this so captivated the Apostle Paul that when he is writing his epistles and talking about the Lord Jesus he says, you know, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus. How though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor. And in that metaphor, and it's more than just a metaphor because there is literal meaning there, the Apostle has the idea of the Lord Jesus in all the glory of heaven casting this on one side and then coming on earth as a human babe and the only way to describe Him and His career is this.

He is a slave. It says the Apostle even more clearly not just in 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 9 but also in Philippians chapter 2. Our Lord Jesus though He was in the very form of God. Did the Jehovah's Witness hear that incidentally? In the very form of God.

Thought it not robbery to be equal with God? Yet made Himself of no reputation. Emptied Himself and became as a servant, as a slave. And ultimately He was done to death.

Aye, says the Apostle Paul, even death by crucifixion. So when you go to the Psalms in the 40th chapter in that 6th verse and you hear the Psalmist talk about the man with the pierced ears then you have to have in mind our blessed Lord Jesus, the slave of God. And inasmuch as you and I are called to belong to God through our Lord Jesus says the Apostle Paul that word slave, that word servant must be descriptive of us.

So despite the humor of my introduction it's true to say I want to be a man with pierced ears as Jesus from Nazareth had His ears pierced. So let's find further light from this wise book of Deuteronomy in which the distilled knowledge of Moses is set down and treatment is given as to how slaves should be handled in yesteryear and very humanely compared with the rest of the nations as far as the Hebrews are concerned. What about that man who has so much enjoyed being in the service of his Master that in the glad year of Jubilee he does not want to be released from his bondage? The first thing my text will speak to you of is a choice that's freely entered.

A choice freely entered. Verse 16. If your servant says to you, I do not want to leave you.

There is a sense in which our Lord Jesus Christ very willingly came on this earth as God's slave. There's a reference again in the book of Isaiah to the Lord God's perceiving the problems that confront mankind, that will confront mankind and the necessity of someone to come in and to bear upon himself the consequences of the sins of the sons of Adam. He says, whom shall I send and who will go for me? And here is the Lord Jesus.

I don't understand this, but I tell you as Scripture relates it because Scripture sometimes blows my mind in terms of comprehending all that God has done for the human race. But the Scripture says that the second person of the Trinity responds, I will. I will leave the glory of heaven.

I will assume the rank of a slave. I will ensure that my will is subservient to your will as I live out 33 years or so on this earth. If your servant says to you, I do not want to leave you.

If there is a free choice entered for all to hear, then that servant can continue in the employ of his master as our Lord Jesus on earth continued to do just the will of the Father. He is the man with the pierced ears. And when as a youngster of the age of twelve he is remonstrated with in terms of staying at Jerusalem when he should be northward bounced towards Nazareth, his response is, don't you know, I must be about my father's business.

As though he was fingering his ears. As though there were some scars there indicating a wound that had been deliberately inflicted, indicating that his will was not his own. The evil one slides alongside the Christ, now a mature man.

And he offers him all the kingdoms of this world. If only he will bow down and worship him. And our Saviour says, it is written that man shall worship the Lord, his God, and him only shall he serve.

My ears are pierced. The choice I have, I push on one side. And when they came at the height of his popularity, those Galilean people and would have made Jesus the King when they wanted to crown him publicly, he resisted the attempt.

Why? Because he was not seeking the adulation of the crowds. He was not seeking to promote himself. His ears had been bored.

His will was bought voluntarily, given into the sovereignty of his Father as he continues on this earth, the man with the pierced ears. And the choice was freely entered into. And I thank God from the depths of my heart there was a time when my ears also were pierced.

And I surrendered my life to the Lord and said, no longer me. Into your hands I commit my spirit, my life. The bottom line is this.

Christians are slaves of Jehovah. A choice freely entered. Secondly, a reason logically supplied.

I do not want to leave you. Why? Well, because he loves you and your family and is well off with you. If time would allow, which it won't in this evening service when we have so much to do, I could have told you of the benefits for our Lord Jesus in continuing to enjoy the relationship that he had with his Father in heaven while he is on earth.

I could have told you a great deal about the family name of Jehovah and how our Lord Jesus Christ delighted in the authority of the Father and in the inspiration and the power of the Holy Spirit. I could tell you how he used to reminisce about the glories that were once his with the Father in heaven and how he still basked in the sunshine of God's blessing on the earth. There was a reason logically supplied as to why our Lord Jesus would stay in the service of Jehovah God.

But time will allow me to argue with your mind and to appeal to your will and to move your emotions when I say that there is a logical reason why you ought to be an Evethiawe yourself. I do not want to leave you, great God, because you love me, because you love me. Oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I am constrained to be.

Let thy love, Lord, like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. You can do no better for yourself as you progress through life than staying in the company of God because He loves you. And what's more, He's brought you into a family that likewise you can love and can love you.

For Christians though saved on their own are not saved to be hermits. They're brought into the household of God. One of the greatest attractive features, one of the secondary blessings of belonging to God, of being in His household, is that there are many other brother slaves and sister slaves.

And to leave them would be an absurd thing to do. Almost as absurd as leaving the Master who loves you. I do not want to leave you because you love me and your family and because I am well off with you.

When our Lord Jesus was on planet Earth quite a number of His disciples who'd only committed themselves to Him at a sort of shallow level of their lives, they left Him. They melted into the distance and our Savior turns round to those 11 men and He says, Will you also go away? And full march to Peter who says, To whom should we go? We're better off with you. The slave of our Lord Jesus Christ has a far better passage through this world than those so-called free men out in society who have never bowed their proud knee to anyone or to anything.

Here I say is a choice freely made. Here, I argue, is a reason logically supplied. But finally here is surgery graphically described.

Then take an awl and push it through His earlobe into the door and He will become your servant for life. Do the same for your maidservant. If you want a fuller comment on that you need to turn back to Exodus 21 where in the fifth verse or thereabouts you find almost the identical reasoning.

If the servant declares, Exodus 21 5, I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

Now you see my point. I claim to follow the man with the pierced ears. And if I'm to follow him precisely then I have to go through the same experience as he went through.

He bears his earlobes to the awl of the Master, Jehovah God, as you must bear your earlobe to your Master, the Lord Jesus. He only can perform that surgical act. The whole business of regeneration is very much in the power of God.

He brings you into a knowledge of sins forgiven. He makes you one of his sons. And as a result of that you opt for not the designation of son, but while you're on earth you particularly opt for the designation of slave.

And there will be times in your life when you'll rub your ear. For the devil will come along and offer you many things and there will be many temptations, many things to cause you to swerve from the path that the Lord Jesus wants you to go along. And when those temptations come you'll say no.

My ear has been surrendered to the awl of Christ Jesus. What's more, it has been surrendered in front of the judges. That's what Exodus says.

And there is a sense in which when you come before the Lord Jesus and confess him as Saviour, the judge of all the earth pronounces you free from all the penalties of your sin. When you become a Christian there is no law to answer for in terms of sins that have been committed because those have been cancelled. But what one day you will be tested on is your allegiance to the cause of Jesus.

And Jesus is out looking for slaves. Slaves who by his grace have surrendered themselves to him and said I'm better off with you and in your family. It goes well with my soul there.

He takes the awl and your earlobe and he pushes that pointed instrument through onto the doorpost. And the doorpost is surely significant. It was the doorpost that was coated with the blood of the animals at the time of the Passover.

There was red blood that daubed the cross of our Lord Jesus. He said I am the way, the truth and the life. He said I am the door, the way through which one enters into the Father's house.

Don't you see? If your ear has been surrendered to the awl of Jesus, if the hole has been bored into the door, it means that you have free access into the Master's house. It means that all the blessings that belong to your Master, for he is not a callous Master. The slavery of the Old Testament, though curious to us as we analyze it today, was not that slavery over against which Shaftesbury and Wilberforce took legislation to Parliament and were constantly defeated.

The slavery of the Hebrews was a slavery in which Masters, if they kept the law of God, would handle their slaves with love, would feed them, would clothe them, and when seven years were through, they would send them on their way with sufficient shekels to set themselves up again in life. But here is this slave who has been so well treated by his Master, he cannot feel that being freed from his Master's will would be an improvement upon his lot. And so he says, No, I won't go free.

Don't you know? Has it never been told you that in the service of God there is the fullest freedom? Incline your ear to me, says the psalmist speaking for God. Move on into the New Testament. Read those last letters in the book of Revelation directed to several of the Asian churches, and constantly there is that repetitive phrase, He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

God can only speak into your ear when it bears the mark of the all that's been in the hands of Jesus. When he whispers into your ear what it is that he has in store for you, all the glories of heaven, and what his purposes are for you on this earth. And he leaves you with a hole in your ear, a place for an adornment to be put, an earring that speaks of holiness and righteousness and beauty of character and consistency in behavior.

You see the point? I follow the man with the pierced ears, the man with the pierced heart, the man with the pierced hands, the man with the pierced feet. And as he was pierced, so I must be pierced too, to surrender my own will to his sovereign will, and say, Lord, take me. And as he does, I discover I'm better off in his company, with his household, far, far better than I could ever be as a so-called free man.

Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's just listen to one of the most lovely modern hymns being played about our Savior, the Servant King. Servant King, volunteer yourself again in his service.

We're going to be coming around the table of our Lord. There's going to be a bit of movement in a while as people position themselves to receive bread and wine. We want the holiness of the moment to be retained.

As we take the emblems this evening, we want to do it in a very intelligent fashion. For we take the bread from the man with the pierced ears. We take the wine from the suffering servant.

And as we eat and as we drink in remembrance of him, so we say, Here, Lord, is my lobe.