Serving God is dangerous because there’s a way to do it that would contradict the incarnation. The Son of Man did not come to be served (Mark 10:45). And there’s a way to serve God that would contradict the deity of God. God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25). So you have two massive warnings in the Bible, and they’re not the only ones, that warn you not to serve God in a way that would dishonor God. So what is that? How do you do that? What’s the wrong way and what’s the right way?

Living by Faith in Future Grace

I wrote a book called Living by Faith in Future Grace, and that book is my attempt to answer that question. What does life look like when you’re not serving God but letting God serve you, trusting God to serve you every moment of the day? What does life look like when you are the beneficiary every moment of your life and God is the benefactor every moment of your life, and he is therefore getting the glory and you are getting the help every moment of your life? What does life look like when you conceive of it that way? I have a big concern about this because all over the world and the American church, it seems to me, we have done a massive and blasphemous role reversal with God on this issue of service.

We have constructed a theology — it’s not usually articulated in any kind of heretical way but it’s just kind of informal theology, which comes out in hymns sometimes, our little talks, the way we conceive of things, and the way our minds work — that God has done a lot of things for us and that the way to respond to that is to do a lot of good things for him, to pay him back. So the Christian life becomes an amortization schedule. The thought is, “He’s loaned you a lot and given you a lot, now it’s going to take you an eternity, but get on schedule and pay your monthly payment. You’ll never get it paid off, but you should try.” The thought of this is tit for tat. God does for you, you do for him. God does for you, you do for him. There’s a hymn that says:

He gave his life for me, what have I given for him?

Now there are some problems with this. I call it the debtor’s ethic, and it’s very dangerous. I’ll give you three reasons why it shouldn’t be pursued. Here’s another name for it. For those of you who are maybe over 50, I call it the Tonto ethic. Raise your hand if you have ever heard of Tonto? It was Lone Ranger and Tonto. He used to say, “Hi-ho, Silver! Away!” I should ask for hands if you’ve never heard of them, but well, I watched it. I watched it every Saturday, and there was one episode where it explained the relationship between Tonto and the Lone Ranger. Those of you don’t know, you young folks, there was the Lone Ranger and he rode his white horse, had silver bullets, wore a mask, and he had this Indian friend named Tonto, and he was always at his side and the poor Lone Ranger would get himself into scrapes over and over again, and Tonto would get him out of the scrapes.

That was pretty much the gist every week in this cowboy show. Now, the way Tonto got himself into this relationship was this. It was an Indian cultural thing. There was one program that showed it. When the Lone Ranger was a little boy, before he had become the Lone Ranger, he rescued Tonto from some deadly circumstance. I don’t remember the details, but he rescued the little Indian boy and saved his life. In that culture, if somebody saved your life you would devote the rest of your life to saving their life. So he lived for the Lone Ranger and he served the Lone Ranger.

If you conceive of service that way, you will continually dishonor God. You will think, “Poor God, he’s in a scrape. I have to get him out of his scrape. I’ll help him out over and over again. He got me out of my scrape. I’ll get him out of his scrapes. I’ll be there when he needs me. I’ll go to the place where he can’t get anybody else to go and I’ll help him.” So another name for this debtor’s ethic is the Tonto ethic. Now, what’s wrong with this?

1. The Impossibility of the Debtor’s Ethic

The first reason is that it’s impossible in this sense: when God gives grace to his people to save them, fill them, and strengthen them, he doesn’t stop and say, “Okay, now I gave you 10 gallons of grace, so run your car on yesterday’s gas.” He doesn’t do it like that. Rather, grace is not just a past thing, it’s a future thing, and you can’t run your car on gratitude for yesterday’s grace. There’s a whole theology built on the gratitude ethic. That’s another name for it. I abandoned that name because I got scolded so often by dumping on gratitude — which is a glorious and beautiful biblical thing — that I decided to quit. But I’ll dump on it here a little bit.

Gratitude is not a good motive for human obedience. Now this should shock you because most theologians say it’s the only motive. I could name some very famous theologians that you all admire who would say that. I just read one the other day who said this sentence, and I think I can almost quote it verbatim because it disappointed me so much: “Therefore, the only motive for Christian service, of Christian obedience, is the heart of gratitude, not the hope of gain.” I think that’s dead wrong. I’ve written everything I’ve written to prove that sentence wrong.

Now, the heart of gratitude is essential to being a Christian. You can’t be a Christian without a heart of gratitude. If you’re not grateful to God for all he’s done for you, you will not be a Christian. But if you try to turn gratitude into performance, or labor, or service for tomorrow, or into work that you do for him tomorrow or this afternoon, you will not obey him. You will serve him in a way that shows that he is in need of you. Here’s the text. I’ll give you a couple of texts on where I’m getting this.

The first one is First Corinthians 15:10, which says:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

The reason I said the debtor’s ethic is impossible is for this reason. Let’s say God gave me grace today, or 2,000 years ago, and now I have a day in front of me to live. I want to live it to his honor and to his glory and to show him to be magnificent, not myself. So I conceive in my head, “All right, he’s done good things for me. I will now do what he told me to do in order to show that he’s done good things for me, and I will then put a foot in front of another, or lift a hand, or write a letter, or say a word, or something.”

Now what’s going on at that moment? According to First Corinthians 15:10, what’s going on at that moment is grace upon grace is coming down to enable me to do those things. Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not in vain, but I worked harder than any of them. Nevertheless, it was not I, but the grace of God working in me.” So I’m not paying any debt back. I’m going deeper into debt with every step I take. There’s a song that says, “Every step I take, I take in you, Jesus.” Have you ever heard that song? Only kids have heard that song. Every deed you do by faith in grace puts you further in debt. It is impossible to get out of debt to God, nor should you ever try because the giver gets the glory.

If you put yourself in the position of a repayer, you are going to get some of the glory. If you put yourself in the position of the constant receiver of grace every moment of your life so that every word you say, every gesture you make, every step you take is a grace-gift from God, he gets the glory, you get the help, and you go deeper and deeper and deeper into the glorious experience of utter debt. So the first problem is that the debtor’s ethic is impossible.

What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Corinthians 4:7).

2. The Undermining of Grace

The second reason is that if it were possible it would nullify grace and turn it into a business transaction. If you could somehow — which you can’t because of the sovereignty of grace — begin to perform for God an obedience and a service that would somehow render back to him what he has given you, then grace would not be grace. It would be a trade and a business transaction. That’s not grace. No businessman calls a good transaction “grace”. It’s not grace. It says that very plainly in Romans 4:4:

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

Every businessman knows that. That’s not evil. It’s just evil when you do it with God. Among humans, we have to function that way. If I give you a good air conditioner, you pay me whatever, hundreds of dollars, and that’s fair. That’s just. Don’t ever deal with God that way. God gives to all men life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). You are a total debtor, you can never negotiate, and you can never barter, trade, or sell. That whole mentality of the debtor’s ethic has to go from our mind and from our heart. So the second reason not to pursue the debtor’s ethic is that if it were possible to live the debtor’s ethic, it would not be grace anymore. It would be debt. It would be a business transaction.

3. Minimizing Future Grace

The third reason we shouldn’t pursue the debtor’s ethic is because it minimizes the importance of future grace. That’s why I called the book Future Grace. I think we have in our minds that grace is something that happened at Calvary and that grace is something that happened in the resurrection. That’s true, gloriously true, and had it not happened there it couldn’t happen anywhere else. Because at the cross, all other grace was purchased for us and if I have any grace sustaining me this afternoon, it was purchased by the death of Jesus for me. I don’t deserve it and I don’t do anything to earn it. It was bought for me back there. I have one choice, I can rest in it or I can offend the grace of God by trying to earn it.

So I want to stress there is such a thing as future grace. Now I quoted 1 Corinthians 15:10 a minute ago. Let me add to that Second Corinthians 9:8, which goes like this:

God is able to make all grace abound to you . . .

Now we’re talking about the future here. So here you are facing October 23rd. Some of you have lots of work to do today, and you’re probably sitting there thinking that you should be there working on it already. There’s lots of work to do today. Now how do you approach today?

This text says that God is able to make all grace around you so that you may have all sufficiency in all things and provide abundance for every good work. Collapse that down. God is able to make all grace abound to you for every good work. Do you have any good work in front of you today? Yes, you do. You have a whole day full of good work. So how are you going to do it? Are you going to do it with your sheer willpower in order to show God how thankful you are to him for yesterday’s help? No, you’re going to do it in reliance on the promise of Second Corinthians 9:8 — that kind of help. God is able to make October 23rd grace abound to you today. There is a grace for eight o’clock, a grace for nine o’clock, a grace for 10 o’clock, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

God will make a grace there for the very good deed he expects from you and nothing else. You will never find yourself today, or any day, facing a challenge for which there is no grace to perform it, ever. There will always be the grace that you need to do what he asked you to do. That’s living by faith in future grace, and it’s the opposite of the debtor’s ethic which looks to past grace and then tries to somehow live in the strength of past grace and turn it by the crank wheel of gratitude into today’s work.

The Function of Gratitude

I don’t think gratitude was ever meant to function that way. I think the voice of gratitude whispering in our ear says something like this: “Do you realize how much God has done for you? What a great God you have. Be filled with gratitude. Be overflowing with gratitude.” And then gratitude whispers to faith, “Now, faith, brother faith, sister faith, my job is done. Let me tell you something, faith, as you go to work today, remember yesterday and remember the cross because my job is not today, my job is yesterday.”

Gratitude orients on what we’ve experienced and what we’ve tasted; faith orients on the future grace that is coming. Will you believe it? Will you trust him for it? Will you hang on it? Will you base your life on it? Faith takes promises about today’s grace that are promised an hour from now, or some doctor’s appointment you have and you wonder what that lump is, and grace is all about that doctor’s appointment and faith is all about that doctor’s appointment. Gratitude is simply a little minister to the faith that says, “You can count on him. Go ahead, faith. Go ahead, faith. Bank on it because he’s done it so often in the past and you’re so full of thankfulness because of that. Now, faith, rest on the promise. Rest on the promise.”

I think the way God gets glory in our service is that we make him the benefactor continually and ourselves the beneficiary, and living by faith in future grace is the way to do it.

Relying Upon Grace Through Prayer

Let me relate this to prayer for just a moment because we said earlier, wisely, that in missions where we face so many challenges and we need grace every moment of every day, that we need to learn to pray. Prayer is all about asking for this grace and relying upon this grace for the future. Prayer and this grace glorify God more than anything else glorifies God. Let’s take two texts on prayer, or maybe three. Let’s take Psalm 50. Picture this. This is called, in Spurgeon’s sermon, “Robinson Crusoe’s text” because in the novel Robinson Crusoe, this is the verse that he used when he got into difficulty. Psalm 50:15 says:

Call upon me in the day of trouble;
     I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

All right, now that puts in the form of a prayer everything I have said up till right now in this talk. Today is a day of trouble. If you didn’t know that you’re just not awake. The devil is alive and well. Remaining corruption in your own life is functioning. Relationships are going to be difficult today, and before you’re done you will have trouble. Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof (Matthew 6:34), and it’s always there in its measure. So today is a day of trouble.

So how do you begin a day of trouble? You begin it with Psalm 50:15, “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you . . .” That’s not yesterday. We’re talking tomorrow or five minutes from now or five hours from now. He says, “I will deliver (rescue, help) you.” And at that moment what will you do? Tell me what text says. It says, “And you will glorify me.” That is, I, a human, will glorify you, Father. So how does God get glory? Answer: by prayer of helpless people asking for deliverance or power or grace so that God is the giver and we are the getter. I am on a crusade to help people stop giving to God and start receiving from God. Let God be your servant because the one who serves gets the glory. The giver gets the glory. He says, “You call on me in the day of trouble, I will work for you and you then will glorify me.” Do you see that rhythm?

Ask and You Will Receive

This issue is really, really big. Here are two other texts on prayer. John 16:24 says:

Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

The design of prayer is the joy of the pray-er. The design of prayer is for your joy. He says, “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.” Prayer is designed to make your joy full. Then John 14:13 says:

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

So what is prayer about anyway? Which is it? Is it for my joy or his glory? What’s the answer? The answer is, “Yes.” You cannot distinguish those two. You dare not. My whole program, my whole theology, my whole life, falls under one big rubric which I got out of those two texts and a few others — like hundreds of others — God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. And the person who tries to stop pursuing satisfaction in God will dishonor him big-time, because the text says “Pray that your joy may be full,” and, “Pray and the Father will be glorified.”

You can’t choose between those two. When you look to God for help and to meet your needs and to give you strength and to give you grace, you’re saying, “I’m nothing. You’re everything. I’m hungry, you’re food. I’m thirsty, you’re water. I’m bankrupt, you’re money.” And who gets the glory in a moment like that? God.

That’s all prayer is. Prayer is the lowering and the emptying of a human soul because we don’t have any resources anymore, and we turn to God with the request, “Give, give.” And we don’t mean stuff, we mean God. We ask, “Give me yourself, give your fellowship, give me your joy.” Who needs stuff? Well, just enough stuff to do every good deed. We do need stuff if the will of God is that we use stuff to do a good deed. You might need a car to get somewhere, you might need a computer to do something, you might need an airplane to go someplace. You might need some stuff and of course he created the world. And so we do need some stuff and some of you make your living manufacturing that stuff, and if you conceive of it that way, you can turn it all into worship.

Standing on the Promises

Let’s stay for a minute with this issue of God serving us. I know that can sound very offensive and belittling because of our whole mindset, and because there are some images of service that would be belittling, but hear me what I’m saying that God wills to become our servant in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “I did not come to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). He’s not inglorious when he says that. That’s not an ugly thing. That’s not a mean thing. He said, “I did not come to be served but to serve.” Jesus wants to be your servant.

Think of these missionaries. Do you remember John Patton, the missionary in the Hebrides? John Patton lived on two promises: “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,” and, “Behold, I’m with you always, to the end of the age,” therefore, “Go.” Those are the pillars. Those two promises are holding up, “Go.” So go make disciples because of these two massive commitments Jesus has to be your servant. He is saying, “I have all authority among all the nations in heaven and on earth. And I will be with you working for you forever.”

Let’s take a few texts from God’s work for us. I love to collect texts on this. I live on this. I get up in the morning, even when I don’t have any voice, and I say, “Lord, you want the good deed of this talk to be done. If that’s part of your plan for the day, give the grace. If you don’t, it’s all right and it’s your business, but I’m available. And if you want to do this, then just give me the grace.” And so far he has been giving grace. Now here are some texts that put God in that role of the servant.

First, 2 Chronicles 16:9 is a text that I go to when I’m teaching to youth. I love this one. Youth eat this up, I’ll tell you. You can turn this into youth ministry really powerfully. It says:

The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

Now what does that say? What is that? The eyes of the Lord rove through Park City, rove through Dallas, looking for something. Does it say, “Looking for help”?

No Help Wanted

Let me put in a little parentheses here. I jog at home, and I do my little loop. It’s two and a half miles or so. And over on this one intersection there’s a machinist company, and there’s a permanent “Help Wanted” sign on the wall. It’s been there for years, and it just hangs up there. But some days they hang a big red “No” in front of it, so it says, “No Help Wanted.” And every time I jog by when the “No” is up there, I say, “Yes, that’s the gospel! God is hanging that sign out of heaven. It says, ‘No help wanted. Help available.’”

The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, seeking to show himself mighty on behalf of those who will, like little children, look to him and pray and trust him by faith in grace for that day.

So for the youth, you talk about the shoulders and the size of the shoulders and you say, “God’s got really broad shoulders, and the only way he can magnify the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his back is if you will load stuff on there.” So the Bible commands you, “Roll your burdens onto the Lord” (Psalm 55:22). Or again, he says, “Cast your anxieties on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). God is in the business of trucking loads of anxiety through the world, and your business is to load it off yourself onto him so that you get the help and he gets the glory of carrying that massive load.

Casting Our Cares on Him

George Müller was asked one afternoon — I mentioned this I think over at Dallas or I’ve mentioned somewhere recently — how he was calm and collected in the burden of the orphanage and the burden of his pastor and the burden of the mission and the burden of everything. Somebody said, “How in the world, in your busy life with so many responsibilities, do you maintain the kind of equilibrium and poise and peace and other-person orientation?” And he said, “I rolled 60 burdens onto God this morning.”

In other words, “I looked at those broad shoulders standing beside me, saying, ‘Okay George, are you going to live this day to try to pay me back by doing hard things for me, or you going to let me work for you? I’ll go before you and I’ll work for you. I clear the way. I’ll position things, I’ll make things work today, or I’ll work in and through things that break today for your holiness. Are you going to let me work or are you going to work?’” And he would just take one burden at a time and cast them on the Lord. Maybe they needed milk or they needed food. Maybe there were relationship problems with the kids, and just one thing after the other. So how do you pray in the morning? Or did you pray this morning?

I get up in the morning and do you know what’s on my mind first? John Piper’s evil. That’s my first little dot that I pray for. I pray, “God come, God help me, God cleanse me, God humble me, God restore my faith and give me joy and satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love.” And then I move out a concentric circle and I pray, “God, touch Noël and sustain her and care for her and love her and keep her close to you.” That’s my wife. And then I pray, “God please take care of Kartsen and Shelly and Millie and the new baby in her tummy.” That’s my oldest son. And I pray, “And touch Benjamin and Moody, and touch Abraham who’s not walking with you, and get him today Lord Jesus. And then please take my 17 year old Barnabus and make him mighty in the word, mighty in the Spirit, and take my five year old Talitha, oh Lord, and awaken her to spiritual things and bring her to yourself, oh God.”

And then I move out to my elders and I pray for them all by name, and I pray for my staff and then I pray for all the support staff by name every morning, and then I move out if I have time to the bigger church, and then I move out to the church in America, and then the nation. My heart just moves out in concentric circles to say, “God, I can’t do anything for you. You have to manage my family. You have to manage my staff. You have to manage the church. You have to manage the nation. You have to manage missions.” And you roll one burden after the other so that when you get up off your knees, you’re not crushed anymore. You have a servant.

The Return of Christ, the Servant

Now if you think I’m risking too much with this issue of making God a servant, did you know that in Luke 12:37 there’s a picture of the second coming where Jesus comes and serves his followers? The picture is, “When he comes, he will make you sit at table and he will bind himself with a towel and he will serve you.”

Now, I know that happened on Maundy Thursday when he washed the disciple’s feet and said, “As I am doing to you, do so to each other” (John 13:15). I expect that imagery while he’s incarnate and on his way to death. I don’t expect that at the second coming. I expect lightning, thunder, a white horse, a sword coming out of his mouth, a trumpet blast, the voice of command of the archangel, the gathering of the elect, the throne, and people bowing down. That’s my image of the second coming. And that’s right, but it’s not the whole picture because he will never, ever, ever give up the right to be the benefactor, the servant. He will always be the one who works for us and we will always be the needy, the welfare case, forever and ever and ever. So he adds to that glorious picture of a triumphant king, the servant who will come and serve us forever and ever. He will always be our servant.

The God Who Works

One of the great texts that we love at Bethlehem — many people bear witness to me over the years that this text has served them well, and it is so crucial for missions — says:

From of old no one has heard
     or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
     who acts for those who wait for him.

The first part of that verse — “No eye has seen a God like you” — means Allah is not like this. The Hindu gods are not like this. The Jewish, non-Christian distortion of the God of the Old Testament is not like this. There is one God like this, the God and Father manifest in our Lord Jesus Christ works for those who wait for him. All other gods say, “Get to work for me.” Our God says, “Humble yourself, realize you’re crippled, paralyzed, no good, and that you can’t do anything. Would you trust me to work for you? Would you let me work in you and through you?” That’s what Isaiah 64:4 has done for hundreds of people at our church. God works for those who wait for him.

Isaiah 46:1–4 talks about God being different from Bel, the God of the Babylonians, and Nebo because they are carried on carts, but then it says, “They are carried, but I am God and from your youth I have carried you. I will carry you to old age, even to gray hairs. I will bear you.” For all you gray hairs, that’s a precious promise. “Even to your old age, I will carry you. I will carry and I will save,” says the Lord.

Governing Our Pain and Pleasure

Well, we have to close. Let me see what I should use to close here. I have two texts and we’ll be done.

Matthew 6:34 says:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matthew 6:34, KJV).

What does that mean? I think it means that in the sovereign providence of God every day is apportioned its proper amount of pain. You may not know down here in the South the old Swedish hymn “Day by Day”, but it says:

Day by day and with each passing moment, Strength I find to meet my trials here. Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment; I’ve no cause for worry or for fear. He whose heart is kind beyond all measure, Gives unto each day what he deems best. Lovingly, it’s part of pain and pleasure, Mingling toil with peace and rest.

It says, “He whose heart is kind beyond all measure gives unto each day what he deems best, lovingly, it’s part of pain . . .” And Jesus says, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Now align with that text (Matthew 6:34) Lamentations 3:22–23. You have to understand that Lamentations is the most horrible book in the Bible because it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the destruction was so horrid women were boiling and eating their children.

This is not funny. This is not light. God judged Jerusalem. God brought Babylon against Jerusalem, and in the middle of that most horrid of all descriptions of judgment, you get chapter three. The hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” comes from there. It says:

[His mercies] are new every morning:
     great is thy faithfulness (Lamentations 3:23, KJV).

Now correlate, “His mercies are new every morning,” with, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil therein.” All right? Today you’re going to leave here in two minutes and you will enter a day with pain appointed by God’s sovereign kindness. But he has also appointed mercy for this day, not yesterday, and not tomorrow. This day has its pain. This day has its mercies. Don’t try to solve tomorrow’s pain, like if you have cancer and the doctor says you have five years. Don’t try to have enough grace today to handle the struggle in a year from now. That grace will be there. I promise you, on the authority of Lamentation 3:22–23, that grace will be there. A dying grace will be there, but that grace is not for today. Today’s grace is for today’s pain and there’s enough. It is super-abundant. And so, I just leave you with this. Don’t try to pay God back. Don’t try to work for God. He is not served by human hands. Let 1 Peter 4:11 be the watchword over this church and over your life:

Whoever serves, [let him serve] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The giver gets the glory. Therefore do not give to God; get from God by prayer, moment by moment, all day today and for the rest of your life, and you will rejoice and he will get the glory. And people around you will watch a kind of lifestyle of radical, sacrificial love and it will make them ask, “Where does this come from?”