Serving as a Witness

Pastor Brady set the scene: the disciples were gathered in someone's home for a meal. "It's kind of a party about to happen, right?" Reading John 13:3, he said John is making a big statement. For this group of people in the room, Jesus is the Messiah. The rest of the world had not believed that yet, but they completely believed the man in the room with them was the promised Messiah.

He stopped the reading several times. "The Messiah gets up." "God gets up." He said this was not just some Jewish person from Galilee, raised in Nazareth and born in Bethlehem, but the Messiah standing to his feet. "Please don't read this too quickly." "God washes feet."

He said the Jesus we are all following, the Jesus who rescued his life, the all powerful redeemer creator God, got up from a table that had been prepared for him and washed feet. Of all the stories John tells, this is an epic moment because it turns everything they believed about the Messiah upside down.

Pastor Brady stopped to ask the Lord to give the church eyes to see and ears to hear, and he prayed: "Father in heaven, we're grateful. We're so thankful. We're we're grateful, Lord, that you're with us in this room. I feel it today. From the moment I walked in today, I felt the smile of the Lord. I felt the pleasure of the Lord. You're among us today. We are your people. And Father, I declare over the Village Church, if we're calling ourselves the Village Church, I declare over this church that we are a church of servants, that we are a church who have made up our mind to serve each other, to serve our families, and to serve those around us. I pray in fact that this church will be marked. that one of the deep imprints that you would put upon us as the people of God at the Village Church is that we long to serve, that we long to go low, that we long, Lord, to give our lives away for the sake of others and the sake of your kingdom. Father, let us lead and let us follow your example. And we ask for the power of the Holy Spirit in order to do this. In Jesus name we pray. Amen."

Pastor Brady said this is a message he needs to preach but does not like to preach. "And I woke up this morning thinking I don't I really don't want to teach this." "Serving is not something that comes easy." "You're not born servants. You're born selfish." Of toddlers in a room together, he said, "They're not sharing. They're fighting."

He said something built into our nature holds on to what is ours and surrounds us with people who benefit us. It is counterintuitive in the human condition to sacrificially serve another person, especially someone who can't do anything for you. He asked how many of our friendships are transactional, and whether we would still be someone's friend and still serve them when they have nothing to give back.

He shared that over the last 18 months, he and Pam discovered they had a lot of transactional friends. "When you're the pastor of the biggest church in town, everybody wants to be around you." When something else happened, many people who said they were their friends disappeared, and they have not heard from them in 18 months. "And that is not the kingdom of heaven."

"The kingdom of heaven says, 'I'm going to wash your feet and serve you even if nothing comes back to me.'" He said Jesus did not wash their feet and then tell them what he wanted in return. He knelt down, washed their feet, and asked for nothing in return. "That, my friends, is the kingdom of heaven."

Pastor Brady explained why the moment was radical. Most of Israel is desert, especially around Jerusalem, and people wore open toed sandals, so their feet were filthy at the end of the day and no one wanted that dirt brought into the house. When a guest arrived, the lowest household servant, the youngest with the least credentials, bent down with a basin of water, washed the guest's feet, and invited them in. For Jesus, the Messiah and leader of the group, to bend down and wash their feet was radical.

He reminded the church that the disciples had just been arguing about which of them was the greatest while Jesus listened. He voiced them: "I get more likes on Facebook than you do. I have more fans. I have more followers. I'm kind of a big deal." Jesus turned and said, "Listen, dudes, that's not the kingdom of heaven." "I'm not going to build my kingdom on a bunch of celebrities."

Then he called the church by his old church's name: "New Life. New Life. See Freudian slip there. Village Church." He said, "That's going to happen a lot. Okay." "Hey, we have an edit button." Pointing to his 18 years there, he said, "That's going to come out of me every once in a while."

He said the kingdom of heaven is not built on celebrities or on who's popular: "In fact, if they're popular, they're probably not right." We will be shocked at who is celebrated in heaven: a lot of grandmas, a lot of missionaries, and a lot of pastors who traveled 30 miles to their congregation on the back of a mule that morning, and "That's still happening." "It's not the celebrities. It's not those who create big environments for people. It is those who have made up their mind, I am willing to serve." Jesus said, "I am the greatest, but I don't have to tell you. In fact, if people tell you they're great, they're not great." Then he showed what greatness is by bowing down and washing their feet.

"Number one, serving confronts our pride." "A prideful person will not serve." "And a serving person cannot be prideful." Pastor Brady said we pick on a whole bunch of sins but don't talk about pride enough because we all have it, and it needs to be flushed out every single day. The way to flush pride out of your system is to go low and serve another person without expecting anything in return.

He read from Matthew 6 in the Sermon on the Mount. After the first verse he asked, "Isn't that the whole point of living right now?" "Everything you do has to be seen." "I don't care what you had for lunch. I honestly really don't care." "Can we just be a little more anonymous?"

He said the reward from the Father is the whole reason we should be doing anything, not rewards now. Then he asked the church to answer honestly: "Do you believe that God sees your heart when no one else does?" He said believing that God sees what we are doing and our motivation, even when others do not, will help us stay out of so much trouble.

Pastor Brady anticipated an objection: he had just announced that the church is building churches in Nigeria, which seems like an obvious contradiction to giving in secret. And in the same sermon, in Matthew 5, Jesus said to let your light shine. "Well, which one is it, Jesus?"

"There's a delicate balance at work here and most of us get it wrong." "We are either self-promoting or self-deprecating when in fact we should be neither." He said four churches in Nigeria are being built, the roof just went on one, and its dedication service is about a week away, with a video coming. Telling the church that is rejoicing with brothers in Africa who have been pillaged by terrorists, showing what can happen when the body of Christ comes together, and it is informational, not self-promoting. Refusing to tell about it because Jesus would be mad would be self-deprecating.

"Our lives should be lived with pure motives so others will see our good deeds without us promoting ourselves." He asked whether someone who had never been in church, walking through the double doors and listening in on our conversations, would see anything compelling enough to come back a second time. "That's the goal of church, by the way." Church is not just a gathering or a formal religious study of the scriptures but a preview of what it will be if Jesus is king, and Jesus is king.

He described that coming kingdom: joy, unity, serving, and blessing, with all sin, death, and sickness gone, and no more war, murder, rape, or stealing. "We should neither boast nor hide." If someone asks him how the Lord is blessing him, he is happy to tell, not boasting, because God has been faithful to everyone in this room over and over again.

"Number one, we can serve to be seen by others." "If you wait until someone's watching to serve, you've already messed up." He shared that when his kids were little, the family would pick out someone in a restaurant and buy their meal so the kids would see that dad was looking to bless. He admitted he maybe shouldn't tell it: "I think after 20 years, if it happened 20 years ago, you can tell the story." They did it to demonstrate and model something to their kids.

"Number two, we can serve in secrecy, but be proud about it." He voiced it: "Boy, I'm I'm the best secret server on the planet." He called it churchy religious pride and voiced it: "I'm better at this than you are. I just wish everybody was as holy as me." Then he gave his own verdict on that attitude: "If that's you, we're not going to be friends. Okay? I just can't do that." "Number three, we can serve in secrecy as worship to God alone." God is always proud when we give and serve, but he is happier when he sees pure motives, doing it to glorify him and not ourselves.

"It takes faith to serve in obscurity." He said the enemy will tell you God's not good at holding your accounts. His son Abram, who does the slides, told him, "Dad, I'm going to put that up on the on the screen." So Pastor Brady gave permission to photograph a prayer he prays all the time: "Throughout the whole of the day, everything I do and say and attempt and think and imagine is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me. He sees everything. He knows everything. There is nothing I can do or attempt. But God is fully aware of it all." He invited the church to say "Come, Holy Spirit" and pray it every day, and he read it again, adding, "By the way, that's a massive confession." "If you believe that, listen, the gates of hell will not prevail against your home if you believe that."

He said the church is going to be heavy on discipleship. "I want to follow Jesus better, more fully." "Motivation for what you do is very important to the Lord." We must believe that God sees us and will reward us either in this life or the life to come. "So why we serve is just as important as how we serve."

The second point: serving is also a witness to the world. Pastor Brady said that 20 years ago, when people asked his life verse, he answered John 13:35. "I don't live up to it every day." He said he has tried by the power of the Spirit to live it out privately and publicly.

He said people will not know we are disciples by crazy mature spiritual language. "People don't care how much Bible you know." "They they care about how much Bible you live." He said he is talking about Bible followers, not Bible knowers, and Jesus would rather we do the things than know the things: be hearers of the word and doers of the word. He noted that this whole conversation happened among people who knew Jesus well. They were friends.

"This is where I'm going to step on some toes." Pastor Brady said he and Pam have been married 37 years and are working on 38, "Because every year it's work." They didn't get there by floating around on clouds. "And listen, I know this is going to shock you, but we fuss." "We disagree. We clash. Men and women are different."

Like storms at the changing of the seasons, he said, there's a storm at his house about four times a year, and that's normal and natural. "In fact, I don't trust couples who say we never fuss. Then one of you is lying." "One of you is a doormat. I'm just telling you. Somebody's wearing the pants. We our p our pants at our house have four legs. We both wear them."

Warning that the air would go out of the room, including at his house, he asked, "Would the people who know us best call us servants?" Not the people we're trying to impress, but the people who know us when we're tired, hungry, and hangry. "Before, listen, before we can ever reach the world, we must first become a congregation and a home that cares for one another." The only impact we will ever have on the world is what spills out of our homes and overflows out of our church.

"In fact, the church, this the Village Church, we will never be any greater than what's happening at our house." "You can't come here on Sunday and fake it." He said holiness, godliness, prayer, worship, and serving one another start in the privacy of our homes, in our inner circle and our hearts, and then spill out at church and into the world.

Pastor Brady said it might sound cliche, but it works: if your marriage is struggling, get into a serving contest with one another. "Turn off the scoreboard and serve one another." In about three to six months, he said, you will find you like this person again because they have been serving, encouraging you, holding your hand, and praying for you.

He said Focus on the Family just did its most exhaustive marriage research, and Jim Daly told him, "Brady, this is going to shock you, but in homes where men and women hold hands and pray together, there's like a 2% divorce rate." "I just saved you tens of thousands of dollars of therapy." "Now, I didn't say curse them either." He voiced the wrong kind of prayer: "Oh, God of heaven, you see the sin and unrighteousness in their heart. Lord, if there was ever a person that deserves your judgment, I'm holding I'm holding their hand right now. That's not the prayer."

Then he gave the prayer: "Father in heaven, I'm holding hands of someone created in your image who is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And they are a gift to me in my home. And I bless them. I pray strength over them. I pray grace over them. I pray you would lead them in the paths of righteousness for your name's sake. I pray you'd lead them beside still waters. I pray you'd make them lie down in green pastures. And I bless them as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Bless them. Strengthen them in Jesus name." "Pray that prayer every night, every morning." "You know, it's really hard to hate someone that really loves you and serves you."

He asked the church to think about the people they despise. "Yeah, I know you got a list." If someone honestly loved you and looked for any reason to serve and bless you without manipulation, you couldn't hate them. He called this the secret sauce of friendship: love them, serve them, pray over them, call them, and check on them with no motive but to bless them. "You will have a crowded funeral at the end of your days."

"One of the most effective strategies for evangelism is to live out the teachings of Jesus among ourselves." Pastor Brady said no one wants to spend time with a dysfunctional family, and the outside world will argue with us about our doctrine. "Don't let that upset you." "They're always going to believe there's 12 genders when there's only two." "But what they cannot argue with, and they can argue with all of that, but what they cannot argue with is how much we love one another."

"That's why we say church starts at 9:30 and the service starts at 10:00 because church is not this. Church is all of this." He said he has been praying this over the church and the community: "It's the house of calm that attracts those living in chaos." Chaos is waiting out there, but there is calm in this house. He said he came in at peace with no storm brewing inside him. "My my LSU Tigers won yesterday. I slept really good last night."

He said that when people walk into the Village Church, there should be no fussing, no complaining, and no gossiping, because we are here to serve and be a blessing to each other. Whether here or at the Marriott, he asked everyone to walk in saying, "I'm here to be a blessing."

Pastor Brady asked the church to hold their communion cup while he read Philippians 2. He said the cup costs 50 cents or a dollar. "We buy these on Amazon. They deliver them to my house." Yet it is sacred in the spiritual realm, symbolizing something that changed the world. In the middle of the reading he added, "but made himself nothing, humbled himself, bathed dirty feet, blessed them, died for them, went to the cross for them."

He asked the church to confess verse 11 out loud, saying this is salvation. At some point, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you recognize you need saving because you can't save yourself, and you humble yourself and say, "Father in heaven, I need a savior. I'm lost. My life is a mess. I can't repair it on my own. So Jesus, would you come and be Lord of my life?" Whether someone had been following the Lord for 40 years like him or for 40 minutes, he invited everyone to say it together. After the first time he said, "Come on. You can do better than that." and the church confessed it again: Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Pastor Brady asked the church to stand, hold up the bread, and break it, reminding himself that we live in a very broken world and Jesus' body was broken to repair it. "Listen, Village Church, Jesus Christ is returning." "He will return and he's coming for a not a perfect church, but he's coming for a humble church." "He's coming for a church that serves." Pastor Brady prayed: "So, Father, we lift up this bread. We're grateful for you, for what you've done for us. We receive it. We can't earn it, but we're grateful for it in Jesus name."

Holding up what he calls the cup of grace, he said, "Can't do good works today to earn it. Can't go out and be a good person to earn God's favor. He's already given you his favor. He's already given you forgiveness." Then he invited everyone who believed it to take the cup.

He said he wants to bless the church more often, admitting he sometimes forgets, and asked everyone to hold out their hands to receive it. Pastor Brady spoke the blessing: "The Lord bless you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." "If you receive that, would you say amen?"

He announced that the church meets there again next Sunday, and then "we're team Marriott for the rest of the year." Then he called up Pastor Joseph: "Come on up, Pastor Joseph." "God bless you guys."