Serve as Abraham Did
October 19, 2020:
Eleven
attendees listened while sitting around a long table in the conference
room during a recent 10 a.m. Tuesday Bible Study at Faith Temple Church,
Taylors, SC.
Pastor Raymond D. Burrows sat with the group and talked about “serving” and how Abraham reacted to three visitors. The account is recorded in Genesis, chapter 18.
Three
“men” visited Abraham to confirm that he and Sarah have a promised son.
The three would then go on to Sodom and investigate that city’s
wickedness. Pastor Burrows concentrated on how Abraham acted as a
servant to the visitors.
“And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day” (Gen. 18:1).
Verse 2 tells us that “three men stood by him” or “were standing in front of him.”
From
his tent door, Abraham saw three men, ran to them, and bowed before
them. (One of the three men is thought to be Christ in human form.)
“The
language suggests that they ‘appeared.’ Seems like there’s some
recognition by Abraham that he was in the presence of divinity,” Pastor
Burrows said
Abraham
said, “My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away,
I pray thee, from thy servant. Let a little water, I pray you, be
fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I
will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye
shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said,
So do, as thou hast said” (Gen. 18:3-5).
Abraham
hurried to Sarah, his wife, and asked her to “make cakes.” He ran to
his herd, found a “calf tender and good,” and gave it to a young man who
quickly dressed it.
Abraham set the meal, with butter and milk, in front of the men, and “they did eat.”
Abraham acted as a servant, Pastor Burrows said, adding, “Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve.”
James,
a half-brother to Jesus, begins his New Testament message with this
salutation: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to
the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.”
James
calls himself a “servant” of Jesus. He uses the Greek word “doulas,”
meaning “servant. “Doulas” is masculine for “doula.” The word “douleia”
came into being from the forced labor that slaves were expected to do in
ancient times, internet sources say.
In
modern language, a “doula” is a person “who provides physical,
emotional, educational and practical support to a birthing mother and
her family before, during, and for a time after childbirth.”
Isaiah
emphasized serving when he wrote, “Also I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ Then said I, ‘Here
am I. Send me’” (Isaiah 6:8).
“Servanthood
comes from our engaged relationship to Christ,” Pastor Burrows noted.
“John the Baptist said, ‘He [Christ] must increase, but I must
decrease.’ The greatest roles we fill for the Kingdom of God are in
serving.”
Abraham had servants, but he acted as a servant, himself, saying to the visitors, “I will fetch a morsel of bread.”
“Serve
the family of God in the role that he’s given you,” Pastor Burrows
said. “I don’t think that we get to the place where we can’t serve in
some way — maybe in intercessory prayer.”
Abraham
asked his servants to help him serve the three visitors. He asked his
wife to make food and asked a young man to prepare the calf.
“Not
that Abraham was too good for it [dressing the calf],” Pastor Burrows
said. “Sometime, in serving, we can’t do it ourselves, so we solicit
others. We incorporate others in that equation. And I wouldn’t want
anyone else to do what I wouldn’t do myself.”
In
the “old days” in America, adults ate first and children ate last, in
many cases, Pastor Burrows said. He recalled, however, that in
Williamsburg County — one of the poorest counties in South Carolina —
the children in his birth family ate first.
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