Being a Servant

Thank you, Mr. Ciac. Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. It's funny, when I'm not at a university or anything, it seems I'll have to be called doctor, but I don't take offense. Just don't ask me if you've got a cane or an ache somewhere. I'm probably not going to be able to help you with that. But I'll often say, though, if you want to talk about the causes of the Civil War, now, I've done a lot of studying to that.

And fortunately, I've been provided some extra water, so Mr. Brann hasn't been able to take it all. Hmm. I find it interesting. I was reading last night, yeah, the R, did it come even Thursday? It seemed like it came early. I got used to Mr. Seiber, of course. The Friday afternoon announcements were always to me the Saturday morning announcements. That's when I'd usually first see them. But Mr. Cardro called my house last night.

He said, I wanted to make sure. Are you going to Cambridge tomorrow? As far as I know I am. So sorry we didn't get here a little earlier to fellowship beforehand. But, for some reason, I've been learning what it's like to have a whole other person who can't get himself dressed very quickly, or at all. But, it is a pleasure, and we'll be planning to stick around a little while to visit. And, you know, I was telling him this morning, although I'm not sure he quite got it, you know, you're going to meet a whole bunch of new people that are dying to meet you and fall in love with you.

You've got a smile that will just melt your heart. Also wanted to mention, just to thank Mr. Fiok publicly. He had lent, he's helped a lot as we were looking for summer camp facilities, and I got to be involved in that. It's interesting. I learned that people were putting out feelers all over the place, and different people sending me information, and sending information down to the home office, and to different people. And, it's only about a week ago, I found out that the final decisions had been made.

I was working with Gary Smith, and at Central, looking at various camp facilities. We ended up choosing the one named Camp Catubic, out near Bell Fountain, even though there were a couple very good facilities near or here. And, the reason we ended up not using them was scheduling clashes. And, of course, the pre-heme camp will be more in this area of the state. But, for those of you that are younger, or teens, and young adults, if you're interested in serving, we'd love to have you out there. Matt Fential is going to be the director this year.

And, if you haven't had a chance to be with him at camp, he's a lot of fun. I've worked with him out in the Northwest, and I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to serve with him this year. I suppose I should talk about my sermon eventually.

It's more fun to talk about camp. But, Mr. Brandt gave me a terrific lead-in, because, with so many people, we've had so much going on in the church, and we've really been focusing on servant leadership, or Christ-like servant leadership. The Bible says so much about serving. It says a lot about servants and giving. And, if you look in your strongest importance, which I tend to do when I'm working on a sermon like this, if you look where you see servants, serving, servants, it'll fill pages. It's referred to over and over again.

Interestingly, if you're reading the story of a person in the Bible, if there's anybody of any significant significance, or if they have a little bit of wealth, you can bet they're going to have a servant serving them, sometimes several of them. I look at another perspective, though. We're to be servants, especially servants of God, but also servants of each other. You might wonder, is there a contrast? Is it difficult to do both? We know Christ is referred to as a servant of God. Several of the prophets are referred to as servants of God. So, there's something to this. But, can we be servants to other people as well? I think in the United States, we're very particular about that, because we're going to get into some of the words that were translated as servants.

But, in the New King James, you'll sometimes see the word translated slave. And we're touchy about slavery in the United States. I don't know if you're not keeping track. In April, we'll reach the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. And slavery was certainly a major part of that. And we've had problems ever since. So, it's not hard to think that we might be slaves, even, to God. But, should we say, well, I'm not going to be a servant to anyone else.

I don't know. In Romans 6.22, Paul said, he tells us to be servants of God. I'm going to refer to a couple of scriptures before we start turning, because I've got several places in the Bible I want to go to. But, in 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 19, he said that he himself made himself a servant to all men. I think that we can do both. I want to look at several examples. But, I think, if we want to be servants of God, but we also might have to be servants of other people, are we going to run into problems with our pride and vanity?

We all tend to have that. And I'm certainly not an exception. It's funny. I've had discussions with people lately. It seems like every time, as I've looked back on my life, I found something that I thought, I remember one, it was two or three years ago, I'd been saying, you know, I don't have a problem with patience like other people.

I'm really a patient person. And it seemed like as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I started getting shown how impatient a person I was. And so, God is showing me that the very thing that I thought I had down, not at all. And similar to this, with pride and vanity, my ego, I started thinking, boy, I'm having trouble serving other people. But we, as Christians, we need to conquer our vanity and pride, right? We want to be a servant of God. We want to put to death the old man and become a new creation in Jesus Christ. And that's why I think the examples I want to look at in the Bible today will be very useful in helping us see how we can do that.

How we can be a servant of God and also be good servants to other people. Now, it's not likely that any of us are going to be enslaved to other people. Not unless some of the prophecies that we look at might come to pass. But I don't want to get into that today. But, you know, some of these lessons are very accurate for anybody who's an employee. Before we look at some adventures, let's discuss terms. It's always good to look at the definitions and know for sure what these words mean.

Because there are some different Hebrew and Greek words that in the King James, as well as in some places in the New King James, are translated as servant. We read the word servant, but what did that word come from? You know, did it come from a word that really should mean executive assistant? Or perhaps it could be translated as highly respected, well paid, administrative, assistant who is not really in a very inferior position.

And that came out as servant? Or maybe it means companion, traveling buddy, friend. Well, I wasn't going to say would that it were so, but it's not. Maybe we shouldn't wish that it were so. Let's talk about Hebrew first. There's two main words. The first is ebed. Now, I'm not sure of the pronunciation, but it's spelled E-D-E-D.

And if you've got an exhaustive concord, the strong number for that is 5650. And it means literally bondage, or a person that's held in bondage. That could be physically having chains or ropes holding you, or at least a legal bondage. You're bound to another person, oftentimes in a case of ownership. And of course, the best translation of that is slave. Ebed is the word that's used the vast majority of times in the Old Testament where you see the word servant.

It sounds pretty strong. It doesn't have to be all bad. I want to turn to our first Scripture in Proverbs. We're going to look at Proverbs 17 and verse 2. I thought I wanted to come out very strongly and say, look, this word means slave. But the way slavery is described in the Old Testament often isn't the way we think of it.

You know, if you've seen the mini-theories of roots or read the book. How many of you saw that? It was quite a while back. I think it was on in the 70s or 80s when I was a teenager and I've seen sections of it.

But, you know, it's a pretty stark portrayal of what slavery was like in the Antebellum South. And the Bible portrays things a little different. Proverbs 17 verse 2 says, In the biblical terms, it's not necessarily bad if you're wise and act properly. And this reminds me of a person we're going to discuss later, Abraham's chief servant named Eliezer. He was an e-bed, a slave. But he had that potential of sharing in the inheritance. Another Hebrew word we want to consider is shirat. That's strong as number 8334.

I thought it is S-H-A-R-O-T-H. And it means menial service. It means like an attendant, a waiter. You know, someone who is doing the menial personal service that you don't want to do. Another way you might look at it is someone you call a gopher. Now, not a gopher like the basketball team up in Minnesota. But a gopher like when you say, hey you, go for that and bring it back to me.

You know, someone who's on maybe a construction site who hasn't learned the skills yet and you're just sending them to fetch things. That word can mean be applied here. Shiret was the term used to describe Joshua for many years when he was Moses' assistant as the New King James renders it, or Moses' servant in the Old King James. So it's still someone that's held in low service, but it doesn't have that implication of bondage like Edad does. Now, let's consider the Greek. I didn't want to bog down too long giving you terms, but I wanted to make sure we were clear on these. Once again, there's one word in Greek that is the most common word that ends up translating the servant, and that's duos. D-U-O-L-O-S.

Or, I could say, if I wanted to give you the Greek letters, it's squiggle, squiggle, squiggle. I can never forget what those Greek things are. We would pronounce it duos. The strongest number for that in the Greek lexicon is 1401. And it means the same thing as Edad. It means slave, someone who's held in bondage. One of the things I like is that sometimes you get Hebrew in Greek and they don't match up. The four terms I want to look at here match up pretty well.

But the scriptures I referred to earlier where Paul said that he would become a servant to one man, he was using the word duos. He was saying he would make himself a slave to one man. But he also, and the other scriptures, said we should be a slave to God. Likewise, in Matthew 20, verse 27, let's turn there.

I think I have a few scriptures in Matthew I want to look at, and I'll try to bunch them together if I can. Matthew 20, verse 27.

While I'm going through this section again, I can express appreciation to Mr. Brandt even though he's on his way back to looking on his ill wife. He set me up pretty well today. I guess we were on the same wavelength. Matthew 20, verse 27, whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave. I've got the new King James up here, and it's translated slave. So if you want to be the chief, make yourself a slave to everyone. Don't think about making them a slave to you, but you make yourself their servant.

The other Greek word we want to consider is diaconos. Diaconos. D-I-A-K-O-N-O-S. Or Strongs number 1249. And once again, it matches the Hebrew Shiret. It means a menial servant, an attendant, a waiter.

Jesus used that term in Matthew 23, verse 11, if you want to look there.

This is very similar, but on a different occasion. Here he didn't use the word slave, but he used menial servant, where he said, He who is greatest among you shall be your servant, will be your menial servant. Whoever is going to be the greatest, he's going to be the one going out doing that menial service.

And it's interesting, Mr. Brant, to talk about the foot washing, because how many times have you sat in on sermons or sermonettes leading up to the Passover where they talked about how washing feet in that Greek-era society, that was a job that would be given to the lowest servant on the totem pole. Perhaps the youngest or the one who was in trouble, he was getting all the dirty jobs to do. That's the type of servant we want to make ourselves be if we want to be great in God's eyes.

Make yourself the one that's the lowest servant of all.

You might wonder by this time, Boy, you know, Frank's been an awful lot of time talking about these words, you know, and we've heard it before. We know it doesn't matter. Well, I think it does largely because Christ said it matters. He used servants and serving a lot of times in many of his proverbs and stories. Let's turn back to Matthew 10, verse 25.

He said he uses these over and over again. In Matthew 10, 25, he said, It's enough for a disciple that the student to be like his teacher and a servant or a doulos. It's enough for a slave to be like his master. So a slave should be striving to be like his master. He says that they've called the master of the house to be eligible, but how much will they call those of the household?

Now, it's important to realize the context. He was telling his disciples, You're going to be like me, your teacher, and you also called me your master. What he was talking about up in verse 22, he said, You're going to be hated by all men for my name's sake, but he who endures at the end will be saved. When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. You're going to go over all of Israel before the Son of Man comes. But he's saying, okay, you're going to suffer because you're my students, but you're also my servants, and it's enough for you to suffer because I suffered.

I thought I had another scripture in Matthew, but I don't... Let's turn to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19, another well-known passage dealing with those who are servants.

But again, it'll remind us of why this is so important for us to get that attitude in our heads. Partly because we want to train to be leaders, but also because we want to be willing to be good servants. One of the things I'm going to emphasize as we go along is that we all have someone over us. We're always going to be a servant or in a lower position to someone. Luke 19 will begin in verse 12.

Therefore, he said, of course, that's Christ said, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself the kingdom. This is representative of Jesus after the crucifixion, going back up to the throne of his father to receive the kingdom.

So he called ten of his servants, his doulos. They were in bondage to him. And he delivered them ten minus. That's the new king James again. He said, Do business till I come. But while he was up there to receive the kingdom, the citizens hated him. They didn't want to have him rule over them. He took care of all that. Down to verse 15 it says, So when he returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded those servants, to whom he had given them money, to be called to him that he might know how much they gained by trading. So, okay, they had to go do this because he gave him orders. It wasn't, you know, if you don't mind while I'm gone, how about maybe you do this job for me? You know, and they said, Well, you know, I'm not doing anything better. No, it's like, you're my servants. You're my slaves. I'm giving you an assignment. And I'm not going to be here looking over you, but you better do it. And of course, what we want to focus in on is their perspective. The boss calls us in and he says, Okay, I'm going away. I'm not going to be watching over your shoulder while you're doing this, but I'm going to check up on you later. So, okay, boss, I want to do a good job for you. And of course, the first one he talks to is the example that we want to emulate the most. Verse 16, then came the first and said, Master, you know, boss, owner, your mind has earned 10 minas. And then the master said to him, Well done, good slave, because you are faithful and very little, have authority over 10 cities. You know, you were a good, faithful employee. Even when I wasn't there watching over you, now you're going to get the reward. And it's a reward that he didn't tell him ahead of time they were going to get, did he? I mean, he doesn't...there's nothing here that says he brought him in and said, Okay, I'm going to give you a bit of money. And if you do real well, I'm going to make you a ruler over various cities. He just said, I'm going to give you this money and here's your job to do. Just do it. Just want to be a very faithful service. And of course, you know, that's what we want. I think it's interesting, as a student of American history, I think this is part of the heart of American mythology, isn't it? That all of us, you know, we have this dream of coming from very low estate or humble position and doing good work and service because we feel like we should. And then eventually suddenly being raised to a high position.

I think I'd love to tell the story of Andrew Carnegie, who came over as the son of very poor people and started out working in the basement factory and become the richest man in the world before he was done. And what I'm emphasizing here is it's just part of our mode of thinking that we want to serve well when we're low and hopefully have something good to come out of it. But we should be serving well even if we don't have that hope of what's to come.

Now, one of the things I want to move towards talking about now, it might be easy to say, okay, we want to be good servants of God. Of course, if God, you know, Jesus Christ called you and said, here, I'm going to go away for a while. I'm going to give you a job. You think, well, of course, you want to do it to the best of your ability, right? I mean, this is Jesus Christ. He's our boss. But sometimes being a good servant to God includes also being in a subservient position to another man or woman.

You might have someone that's over you. Let's turn to Ephesians 6.

I want to get into how much can we make ourselves be a good servant to another person? Because serving God in some ways is easy because He's perfect. He promises we'll have trials and tests, but we know He's perfect. He promises He'll never give us more than we can bear. A human master can't promise us that.

Ephesians 6 and verse 5. Sorry, I'm not there yet.

Okay. Bond servants. That's in the New King James. You slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh. Paul inserted according to the flesh because we have one master in the spirit. God is our master, the Father and Jesus Christ. So we always have that higher master. But he thinks, be obedient to those who are your master according to the flesh with fear and trembling and sincerity as to Christ. So that imperfect human master that you have, or in the case of your employee, that imperfect boss who might give you bad orders, you still want to be a good servant and try to imagine you're doing it as though you're serving Christ.

Let's turn to 1 Peter. There's a scripture. I'll tell you a little of my personal experience. I've looked at this and read this many times. 1 Peter 2 and verse 18 is where I'm going.

I've been trying to make myself give the whole scripture. I tell you to turn and I'll give you a scripture when you get there and it will remind me. Some people like to write it down and then turn. So it's nice to write the whole thing out. 1 Peter 2 and verse 18, once again, this is the word that could be translated, slaves.

But here it says, servants, be submissive to your masters. That's not talking about God, but your physical masters, with all fear, and not only to the good and the gentle, but also to the harsh. How many of you have new King James? Any with the old? I like the old. The old King James says, not only to the good, but to the froward. And froward is in addition, you never hear froward come up in conversation.

It's even hard to say, but it can mean harsh. It can also mean overly strict. It can mean foolish, even. I like that because it's got a wider definition in some ways. And I told the people in Columbus last week, I've been reading this again and again because... Oh, well, let me read in verse 20, or starting in verse 19. For this is commendable. Commendable if you serve even a froward master, if because of conscious toward God, one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.

You know, being punished when you didn't deserve it. For what credit is it if you're beaten for your faults and you take it patiently? You know, you do something wrong and you get punished for it. Well, you got what you deserved. But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. That's interesting because if you're doing what's good and being punished for it, you're probably not being commended before the boss who's punishing you because they're punishing you. But he's saying God knows that you did the right thing. And he appreciates, you know, he's going to reward you eventually for giving good service to someone who's your physical master even if they make a mistake.

The situation for me, like I said, I've been looking at this over and over again because in January, early in the year, my boss of twelve and a half years retired. And it's funny, during the time it was my boss, there were some times when I thought he was being a little froward. But I've been missing him a lot ever since. We had a new hire come in and it's been a difficult transition for everyone in the staff. You always have that and I don't want to get into all that. But it's given me a personal appreciation for people who have a boss that they disagree with at times or they feel like they're doing things right and you're still not getting credit.

I've had to read the Scripture and say, well, God is telling me to give good service. Do my best for this boss even if I think she's being a little froward. Because it could turn out that I'm wrong. Sometimes I think, boy, she's just doing something ridiculous and she doesn't know. And then later on, oh, maybe I didn't know. So I'm preaching to you and I prepared this partly for myself. Although, to be honest, I even started on this message well before that happened.

When I saw this on the schedule, I said, oh, I got a sermon and it was right about the time Mr. Seiber was transferred down to the home office. I thought, how interesting. And I thought, how big of a challenge might it be to go from being a pastor where you're in a position of leadership and you're thinking, I'm going to be a servant to all these people.

But now he went down there to become a personal assistant to someone else. He's not pastoring in congregation. He's doing a lot of work and going out preaching. But now I thought, what a challenge is it? How tough is it to go from being sort of the top position in a certain manner of speaking in a congregation to go and be someone else's assistant? To go and be a charade or a diaconos to some other person who's going to make mistakes, who's going to have faults?

So I said, let's look into that. Let's see what some of the people in the Bible who have been in that position have done. So you could consider that a very long introduction or an examination of words and scriptures. Now let's look at some real examples in the Old Testament. I want to start with a story that's always been one of my favorites because I think it's inspiring and a little bit romantic.

So if you want to turn back to Genesis, we're going to start in chapter 15. We'll start in Genesis 15 and verse 1.

I just thought in Columbus, directly behind the speaker, there's a clock with a large face. Because when I gave this last week, I discovered I was having to speed up a little towards the end. So I'm going to keep an eye on the clock and try to not do that. Okay, Genesis 15. This is one of many times that God appears to Abraham. It's not the first time. And he says, after these things, the word of the Eternal came to Abraham. He's not Abraham yet. And the vision is saying, do not be afraid of Abraham. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. That alone is really inspiring. God is going to be your shield and he's your reward. If you're not getting anything else, you've got God. But Abraham said, Lord God, what are you going to give me, seeing I go childless? And the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, look, you haven't given me offspring, and indeed one born in my house is my heir. What he was referring to was in the culture of that time, if you had no children, your stuff needed to go to somebody when you died. And it was the culture that your senior servant... Now, Abraham owned many servants. We know when Lot was taken captive, Abraham armed the servants in the house. He had like 200. Okay, so he had several, but the top one. The oldest one who was born in his house was this Eleazar. And sometimes wondered why he's Eleazar of Damascus. If he was born in Abraham's house, I thought, well, maybe Abraham was traveling through Damascus when he was born, or perhaps Eleazar's parents were from there, and... And me speculating on it doesn't matter, because we'll probably never know until we can meet him and ask him. But anyways, Eleazar was one of Abraham's ededs. He was a bond servant.

But because Abraham had no children, he was going to inherit all of Abraham's substantial wealth after Abraham died. Now remember, Abraham's not a young man at this point. But God has other plans. And verse 4 there says, Behold the word of the eternal kingdom thing. Now, this one will not be your heir. Sorry, Eleazar, it's not going to be you. But one who will come from your own body will be your heir. God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child together. And we know that he worked this out miraculously.

We're not going to read the account, but in chapter 21 it goes through where they did have a child. Now, where did that leave Eleazar? Well, he didn't say, well, I'm going to move on and try to be someone else's chief servant so I can be his heir. No, he was a bond slave. He was going to belong to Abraham. Could he have gotten a bad attitude about this? You know, I was on top of everything, and now suddenly this little kid who's crying all the time and messing his diapers.

And I can speak from experience here. As wonderful as children are, there's times when you get a little cranky about it. Even though it's the most wonderful thing in the world, I'm sure a lot of you know. Let's look at chapter 24. This is quite a few years later. So many years later that Abraham was old, advanced in age. And Sarah had recently died.

So Abraham's starting to think, my time's coming soon, and I think it's still a single guy. So Abraham says to the oldest servant of his house who ruled over all that he had. Now, I'm presuming that this is Eleazar, even though it doesn't specifically say this. But Eleazar had been the oldest servant, the one that was going to inherit everything.

We haven't heard of him dying. And, well, if it turns out, you know, when we find out in the kingdom that wasn't Eleazar, I'll find out the servant's name and I'll congratulate him. But for now, let's assume that it's Eleazar. Abraham calls him and says, Put your hand under my thigh, and I'll make you swear by the eternal, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife from my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell.

But go to my country and to my family to take a wife from my son Isaac. So remember in that parable where Christ said, you know, the man's going to receive something and he gives his servant an assignment, Abraham now is giving his chief servant a very important assignment. And he's not going to be there to watch over him, so he's trusting that he's going to be a good and faithful servant. So I want you to go and take a wife from my son. And the servant's concerned. He says, Well, what if a woman's not willing to follow me back here to this land?

Should I take your son back to the land from which you came? And Abraham says, No, no, don't do that. Don't take my son back there. The Lord God of heaven who took me from my father's house, from the land of my family who spoke to me, and swore, saying to your descendants, I will give this land. He'll send an angel before you, and he'll take a wife from my son from there.

And if you find a woman and she's not willing to come back here, then you'll be free of the oath. So Abraham, you know, he set his priorities. He's giving the LEA's an assignment. He says, Here's the top priority. You've got to have, find a woman that'll come back here. And if you can't, Isaac's staying here where God told us to go is the chief concern. And verse 9, So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning the matter.

Now, since I was a little kid, I've wondered why he stuck his hand under his thigh. We don't know if he was sitting there, and that was an act of submission. I've heard some speculation that it might have meant even that he took hold of his genitalia in some way. I mean, it's something where they were at a very close bond and a measure of trust. You know, he had to be willing to do it, and Abraham had to be willing to let him to take this oath to say, Yes, I'm going to follow your instructions.

But then in verse 10, the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed. And this is him. For he had all of his master's goods in his hand, and he arose and went to Mesopotamia to the city of Nahor.

Now, remember, I said that Eleazar was going to inherit everything, and now he's been displaced. As far as we know, he's not going to inherit anything. He's just going to be a slave the rest of his life. Do you think it would have crossed your mind if you were in his situation to load up ten camels' worth of jewels and gold and stuff, and hit the road, and never come back?

Ten camels' worth of stuff could let you live pretty high on the hog for probably the rest of his life. I think, you know, the prodigal son in the parable, he took his inheritance and went out and lived it up. And this guy is obviously smart enough to make it last a little bit longer. But there's no indication of that. You know, it doesn't seem like he had much in the way of sour grapes or resentment. He went all the way to Mesopotamia and reached the city of Nahor. In verse 11, he made his camels kneel outside the city by a lull of water at evening time when the women come out to draw water.

And he does something interesting. He says, Oh, Lord God of my Master Abraham. Now, he's still acknowledging Abraham is a master, even though he's way away. Abraham doesn't know what he's saying, but he's praying to God. And he asked him, you know, give me success this day and show kindness to my Master.

That is interesting. I suspect that this was not the first time he prayed to God. You know, he says the God of my Master Abraham because Abraham and, you know, God had a special relationship, but it looks like Eliezer had developed a practice of praying and worshiping the true God. And I think that might have been why he was such a diligent and good servant. So I'm not going to read word for word all of this, because what he does is he's admitting God.

I don't know who's going to be the right one for Isaac, so I'm going to propose something to you. Now, when the women come out, when I see one holding her pitcher of water to be stained by the well, I'll ask these women, various women, to give me a drink. And whichever one that I ask to give me a drink, if she says, well, I'll pour out water for your camels also, let her be the one. And it turns out that the very first woman that comes out is Rebecca.

And so he's thinking he might have to go through a whole bunch of women. I'm speculating that that's what he's thinking. But I suspect he thought there's going to be a whole lot of women here. I'll keep asking until one does this. But the very first one, he says, give me a drink of water. Now, she's got this pitcher. I'm envisioning maybe a gallon or two or three gallon jug that she carries. You know, you fill it up now.

And she says, will you give me a drink? She lowers it down and gives it a drink. She says, oh! She must see these 10 camels. They're like, well, let me get some water for your camels. There's probably a trough. And she goes, pour it out. Now, what's left in that jug is nothing for 10 camels. Now, I haven't been around camels a lot, but I know they can go a long time without drinking.

And so when they do drink, it's probably considerable. And a matter of fact, a story came back to mind when I was a student down in Big Sandy. I worked for the water treatment plant, which also we also did the sewage treatment plant. So it's interesting. We got both ends. But, you know, we had water lines that went out and filled troughs for the cattle. And we'd have to make sure that they were still running properly. And I was surprised, like if one of the pumps broke down, those wells would be gone, or the troughs would go down in no time.

And the boss wants to say, where is the water going? Can it evaporate that quick? And he said, no, you don't know about cows. He said, a cow comes up there and they just, you know, they're drinking gallons of water at a time. And that's where the milk comes from. I think camels are probably like that. And when she said, I'll get water for your camels also, she didn't go over and turn the spigot and the water runs out.

She was pulling it up from a well and pouring it. This water that weighs eight and a half pounds per gallon. And she probably drew, I don't know, maybe even a hundred gallons or more. I'm just speculating, but what I'm saying is, she did some really hard work for somebody that she didn't even know. I mean, she was showing the attitude of being a servant and giving to someone who she perceived had had a hard journey.

And, of course, perhaps God had put it into her mind to fulfill the request of El-Eazar. So, anyways, now I've lost my place in the Scripture. In verse 22, so it was when the camels had finished drinking and the man was kind of amazed, and he took a golden nose ring weighing half a shekel and two bracelets for a wrist weighing ten shekels of gold.

Now, I don't know nowadays if somebody pulled out a nose ring to give you as a gift. I'm not sure if we would see that as much of a gift, but it must have fit in then. He says, whose daughter are you? Tell me, is there room in your father's house to lodge? And she said, well, I'm the daughter of Bethuel, Milka's son, whom she bore to Nahor. She was Abraham's great niece, which I'm not sure if any of you are expert in this kind of thing.

I think that would make her Isaac's second cousin. Second or third. They would be cousins in some way, but obviously distant enough that getting married wasn't a big problem. And the servant knew. Again, in verse 26, then the man bowed his head and worshipped the Eternal. Once again, his close relationship with God, and he said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his mercy and has trooed towards my master. And as for me, God's showing mercy to Abraham, but apparently He's showing mercy to me too.

For He led me to the house of my master's brethren. And I think, well, Eliezer must have known Abraham well enough to know the names of his brothers and such. Because as soon as she told him where he's from, he didn't say, oh, have you ever heard of this guy named Gibran that came from this area?

He knew that they were family. So, to skip ahead once again, they go back to the house. Things are looking, you know, he's feeling like God is responding to him. So, when we get to verse 33, the whole family's there. Food's set before them, but He says, here's the diligence. Abraham sent him on a job, and instead of worrying about eating, even though he might have been pretty hungry, he says, I'm not going to eat until I've pulled my errand. You know, I've got to take care of business first. And they said, well, speak on. He said, I'm Abraham's servant. Once again, he's got ten camel's worth of wealth here.

He could have said, I'm somebody important, but he didn't. He said, I'm Abraham's slave. I'm here on his behalf. And the Eternal has blessed my Master greatly, and He's become great. He's given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. And Sarah, my Master's wife, bore a son to my Master when she was old. And this is important. I want to come back to this. But he said, and he, meaning Abraham, has given him, Isaac, all that he has.

So Abraham, before he died, said, Isaac, all this belongs to you now. You know, taking care of it in advance. And then he tells the story of how his Master said, I want you to help get a wife for Isaac. Go back and take a woman of my ethnicity from my homeland and bring her back here. And so he tells him, you know, this is my mission. Let me know if you're going to cooperate with this. And if not, I can turn aside and try to find someone else.

And of course, he tells the story about how they were going to, he prayed that God would lead her to draw the water for the camel and all that. And in verse 49, this is where he says, let me know if you're going to do this. And in verse 50, Laban and Bethuel answered, well, this thing comes from the Eternal. We can't speak either good or bad. Here's Rebecca before you. Take her and go. Let her be your Master's son's wife as the Eternal was spoken. And what was Elieir's reaction? I like that name, but it's hard to, it doesn't just trip off the tongue. When he came to pass and Abraham served and heard their words, he worshipped the Eternal, bowing himself to the earth. Once again, his priorities are right. He'd asked for God to provide this for him, and he didn't care who knew that he was worshiping the God. Okay, so now it's time for a party. Everything's going to work. She's going to, you know, Rebecca's going to go off and marry Isaac. You know, these people are thrilled. And so in verse 54, you know, the men who were with him ate and drank, and they stayed all, I was reading over the first, I'm going to say they stayed up all night. No, they didn't party all night. They ate and drank. He went to bed. And then he arose in the morning and said, send me away to my Master. That's how many servants are saying, let me get back to my Master. You know, any of you that have employees, how many of them, you know, if you send them out on a task are just beating their feet to see how fast they can get back to you, so you can give them the next job. I've got to admit, I haven't always done that. You know, I've got to work on being a better servant. And in verse 55, you know, here, Eliez has got a chance for a vacation. His mother or her brother or mother, they said, well, let the young woman stay with us a few days, at least ten. And after that, she may go. Eliez may be deserved a vacation. You know, he went on this journey. He's been working hard. He could have said, well, I'm not Laban servant or Bethul. So I'm going to be, I'm going to have it made. We're going to be feasting and resting and doing fun things. But he didn't. He said, no, send me on my way. I've got to get back. You know, I want to complete this job. He wasn't thinking of his own comfort. He was thinking of doing the job he was given to do. And he wasn't thinking, it seems like it never crossed his mind, hey, if I don't find a wife for Isaac, maybe he'll go childless and I'll still be the heir.

No? So they end up heading out on their way. And as they approach, we'll get down to, in verse 61, or verse 60. Now Isaac came on the way from Bir Lhahiroy. Someone last week said, see, there was drinking beer in the Bible because it's right there. Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening and he lifted his eyes and looked and behold there were camels coming. I imagine it's evening, maybe the sun setting, and he sees these silhouettes of this trail of camels coming. This sounds romantic to me. It would be filmed in television with swelling soundtrack. And from the other perspective, at the camels, they see there's somebody walking, you know, a very small figure, and Rebecca asks L.A. Azar and says, who is this man walking in the field? Interesting what he says. He says, it's my master.

He didn't say, it's my master's son. He said, that's my master. Now, remember in the earlier chapter when I pointed out that when he was explaining that Abraham had become wealthy and then had a son in his old age and had given everything to that son? Everything included all of the slaves. L.A. Azar was serving Abraham because he was still alive, but legally he belonged to Isaac, the man who had replaced him as heir. And L.A. Azar seems to be fine with it.

There's my master. And the servant reported to Isaac in verse 66. The servant told Isaac all the things that he'd done. So he comes back and says, here's what's happened, probably laid out the whole story. And of course, we know they lived happily ever after. Isaac marries Rebecca, and they'll have their own children, and of course, new stories come out of that. And we don't really hear about L.A. Azar again. But what an amazing story to have here in the Bible for us.

I've got two or three pages of notes that I didn't look at, but... What are some lessons? Just a couple I want to point out, and I've been talking about them all along, but... L.A. Azar was loyal, and he was diligent. He had no intention of trying to get out from being a servant. He never even took justifiable excuses to vacation or take a break from his duties. And then, of course, the thing that I think is most important is that even though he was a servant, he worshiped God, and he developed that close personal relationship with God.

He didn't trust that he was getting into the kingdom on Abraham's coattails, because if Abraham does well, I'll be okay. No, he prayed to God, and he was obedient to God himself, even though he was just a slave. No, I think those are traits that we want to emulate.

And I say we, because the sermon is as much for me as it is for you. It's been very inspiring for me to work on this and look at these stories. I want to switch now to a different person who's kind of unique in this, because we're going to see this person first as a servant, and then as the master who has a servant working for him, because as he goes through life, things can change.

Now, the person I'm talking about is Elisha the prophet. Now, of course, Elisha and Elijah have similar names, and I'm not sure if God did that just to trip us up at times, but we'll first meet him in 1 Kings 19 and verse 16, so let's go there. Because we refer to him as Elisha the prophet, but he wasn't always a prophet. We're going to meet him in 1 Kings 19 and verse 16.

Yes, I did. Now, when we first meet Elisha, it's coming in at the end of another huge, epic story, the story of Elijah and how he confronted the priest of Baal. I'll just give you a very brief synopsis, because we don't want to focus on Elijah's story, but you might remember that God worked through him mightily as a prophet.

He caused the drought to happen for three years in Israel, and when it was time for the drought to end, he showed himself to King Ahab and said, okay, get all your priests of Baal who think they're so great. Bring them up to Mount Carmel and we'll have a face-off. I don't think the term face-off is in the Old Testament, but he challenges them.

He says, you guys build an altar, put a sacrifice on it, but don't light the fire. I'll build, you know, there's 400 of you, or was it 300? But I'm going to build an altar and put a sacrifice on it. I won't light the fire, and we'll both take turns calling on our God to send fire.

And of course, you know the story of the priests of Baal. They chant and they sing and they cut themselves all day. And Elijah's having a good laugh at them because nothing happens. When his turn comes, he gives a very brief humble prayer, and God sends fire down from heaven that not only burns up the sacrifice, it burns up the wood, it burns up the stones of the altar and leaves a scorched mark on the ground. But Elijah's not done working miracles. Next he says, now it's time to end the drought.

And he goes off in praise, and God doesn't just send a little sprinkle, he sends a huge thunderstorm. Boy, Elijah's riding high! What powerful work he's doing! But then the letdown comes, and you all know how emotional highs and lows can go. And here's where we're coming towards the part of the story I want to focus on. The king's wife, Jezebel, sends a message to Elijah saying, I'm going to kill you the same way you killed my priest.

And Elijah loses heart. We don't know exactly what it was. He was exhausted, probably emotionally and physically, and he just can't bear up under this, and he flees. He hiked up his down, or whatever they wore back then. I like to think they wore kilts. He doesn't say that in the Bible, but they were wearing something like that. Anyways, he runs all the way down to the desert to Mount Sinai and says, I'm ready to die.

And God isn't done with him yet, and of course we know God comes and will speak to him. And God shows his power in an earthquake, and in a strong wind, and in thunder, and earthquake, wind, and fire. Oh, it's like earthquake and fire, the group, but... Funny how things will come to you when you stand up here. And of course then, God speaks to him in a still, small voice. He says, Elijah, what are you doing here? And Elijah's like, well, I'm the only one left, and they're trying to kill me, and I've been zealous for you, but I can't take anymore.

And God says, later he'll tell him, look, you're not the only one left. There's 7,000 more men that are worshiping Baal, and I've got some work for you to do. And that's where we're going to come into verse 19. Actually, chapter 19 will start in verse 15. One of the best things, I think, when you're exhausted and you think you're at the end of your rope is sometimes focus on the next job.

And the Eternal said to him, go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you arrive anoint Hazael as king of Syria. And also you'll anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And this one might have come as a surprise to Elijah, because and Elisha the son of Shabbat, of Abel Mihula, you'll anoint as prophet in your place. So I'm telling you to choose, or not choose, because God chose him, but I want you to anoint the person that's going to take over for you. So Elisha knows ahead of time that this is going to happen. And we'll see that he finds him down in verse 19.

He departed from there, and he found Elisha the son of Shabbat, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him. And he was with the twelve. I always think we wonder, what about Elisha? I mean, twelve yoke at oxen, that's a lot of, I want to say horsepower, it's a lot of ox power. And he's down there with him. He must have been a really burly, strong guy.

And Elisha comes by and throws his mantle on him, which symbolically meant, come follow me. It's sort of like when Jesus Christ came to the apostles and said, come with me and I'll make you fishers of men. And they say, okay, it's time to go. But Elisha does this. Well, please let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I'll follow you. I say, oh, go back, what have I done to you?

You don't have to leave this moment. You can still, they slaughter a couple of yoke of oxen, have a big feast that did Elisha goodbye. And what I'm getting to is the bottom of verse 21. Then he arose and followed Elijah and became his servant. That's in the New King James, he became his servant, or in the Old King James, I believe it says he ministered to him. He became his charas, or if it was Greek, it would have been his diaconis.

He became his menial servant, his personal attendant. So, how do you train to become a prophet? Someone who might call fire down from heaven? Now, you might think, oh, he's there with him, he's getting high-level training because he's going to be chief. Well, we can see a little bit of how he trained if you turn ahead to 2 Kings chapter 3.

It should be just a few pages ahead. We're going to look at 2 Kings chapter 3 in verse 11. This isn't real elaborate, but it's interesting because everybody, or at least a lot of people, must have known how Elisha trained because this is after Elisha has become a prophet, and Elisha has gone and left Elisha to do the work.

And the situation here is the King of Judah had come up and was consulting with the King of Israel, and they were going to go to this battle, but they got lost and they needed help. So, the King of Israel is not following the true God. He's got these false prophets telling him stuff. Jehoshaphat said, isn't there a prophet of the Eternal here that we can inquire of the Eternal by him?

So, one of the servants of the King of Israel answered and said, well, Elisha, the son of Jehoshaphat, is here, who poured water on the hands of Elisha. And that's a brief little phrase, but I thought, he poured water on the hands of Elisha. He became his menial servant. Elisha needed to wash his hands. But Elisha, go over for you. Get the picture, and they didn't have a spigot to run water, so he's holding the picture while Elisha washes his hands. Once again, remember water is heavy. If you're the water carrier, you're doing heavy work. You know, that's pouring water on someone's hands, isn't saying, I'm going to study and I'm going to give you all this advanced level training.

No, he became a menial servant, doing whatever was needed. And of course, he was learning from the Master as time went by. How important is that to us? Because, of course, we aspire to be kings and priests. Do we not? And not, it's not from false vanity. God tells us, you're going to be kings and priests. Those are high level positions, somewhat like being a prophet is a pretty high level position. If the way you train and prepare to be a prophet is by doing menial service, then perhaps a good way to train to be a king and a priest would be to act as a charade or as an e-bed.

Make yourself be willing to do menial service as preparation for what's ahead. I don't have my notes here, but I appreciate one of the members of the Columbus congregation pointed out to me last week after I did this. He was mentioning the only Old Testament they had that the system of if someone got into debt and they just couldn't pay, you know, instead of declaring bankrupt and letting you eventually run up your debt again, you would be sold to be a servant for someone for basically six years, you know, until the seventh year you'd be released.

Well, who has the money to be able to buy someone and make them serve them for six years? Probably somebody that's a pretty successful person that knows how to handle their own money and such. So I thought that successful person brings this person that doesn't know how to manage their own money in and that, you know, the person serves as a slave to the successful person and perhaps along the way he starts learning better habits.

You know, watch as this guy who bought his service and says, I'm going to learn to do things like him so I won't end up back in this situation, you know, once my term service is over. And of course in the Old Testament they had it, if you never could learn it then you could bore your ears through with an all and say, I'm going to save this guy's servant forever because I'm just inept.

Of course, I've never heard anybody say, I'm inept. Anyway, I'm gotten off track. Let's look ahead, though, because now Elisha has done the service, he's the prophet and we're going to see that in time he's going to acquire a personal servant. Someone, a fellow named Gehazi, I'm not sure if it's Gehazi or Dahazi. Gehazi rolls off the tongue a little easier. We don't know when this happened, but we're going to meet him in 2 Kings chapter 4. Now one of the things we'll see that Elisha traveled around a lot. So let's begin in verse 8. Set the stage for why, you know, where we meet him. It happened one day that Elisha went through shewn him where there was a notable woman, and she persuaded him to eat some food.

She said, you're traveling through, come on and have some food. And so it was as often as he passed by there he'd turn in, you know, he'd have him in for dinner. And she said to her husband, look now, I know that this is the holy man of God who passes by us regularly, so let's make a small upper room on the wall and let's put a bed for him and a table and a chair and a lampstand, and he'll turn, whenever he comes by he'll turn in there. So remember, there's no motel six in the area, so they're going to set up a guest room where Elisha can just come and stay with them.

And they say, because he's a man of God, you know, this is their way of supporting the work. And what happened one day, he came there, and he goes to the upper room, he lays down, and then he says to Gehazi his servant. That's a shiroth, a personal attendant. And what did he tell him to do? Go call this Unumite woman. Just go get her. He said, you want a simple errand.

Okay, so he does that. And he called her up and said, you've done all this stuff for us. What can we do for you? Do you want me to talk to the king on your behalf or the commander of the army? And she says, no, I'm fine. Apparently, he goes away. It's interesting. Gehazi we've seen is a personal servant. He's sent as a messenger, but he doesn't have to be silent, because here we'll see he speaks. And then he says, Elijah. Well, what can we do for him?

Gehazi says, well, actually, he doesn't have a son, and her husband is old. So, the personal servant doesn't have to always keep his mouth shut. You know, he can get some input. And Elijah calls her back. And he says, call her. Okay? Nice advice, and I'll go do this menial job again. Go get her. And he says, you're going to have a son. No? Pretty good for Gehazi so far. Unfortunately, the son lives, you know, they have the son.

Several years later, he falls ill. And, you know, we don't know exactly what happened. He had a splitting headache. Maybe he had an aneurysm or something. But he dies in his dad's arms. And the woman has a hope that perhaps Elijah, the man of God, can help. So, I'm looking. Basically, she tells her husband, I'm going to go see Elisha, even though, you know, this isn't the time we normally speak to him. So, in verse 24, she paddled a donkey, and she said to her servant, remember I told you, everybody in the Old Testament seems to have servants.

I think even some servants have their own servants. She said, drive forward. Don't slacken free unless I tell you. So, she departed and went all the way to Mount Carmel to find the man of God. And when he saw her afar, Gehazi's still with him. Wherever you see Elisha, Gehazi's there. He said, look, there's that Shunammite woman. Did you ever do that where you see someone you don't expect?

I've done that. You might be in program. You say, oh, look, there's so-and-so. You don't expect to see them there. In other words, Gehazi, go meet her and find out.

Ask her if it's well. You know, I'm not going to run down there. I'm going to send my servant. And he does. And of course, she doesn't tell Gehazi because he's just a servant. Okay, you know. But she comes up to the top of the hill and she catches Elisha by the feet. She's basically going across states to beg him for help. And Gehazi, in verse 27, comes here to push her away.

Now, why does he want to push her away? Well, because he sees some person unexpectedly go to lunge at his master, so he's trying to protect his boss. Gehazi, that's the job of a servant. We can see sometimes you have to intercede physically to protect your boss. And as it turns out, she's not really attacking. Elisha says, well, let her alone. Her soul is in deep distress and the Eternal hasn't revealed it to me. And she basically tells him, my son died, I didn't ask for this. And then Elisha, Elisha, I told you I get him confused sometimes.

He's going to give Gehazi a little more important assignment than go ask somebody something or go get me some water. And he says, Gehazi, get yourself ready and take my staff in your hand. Go ahead. If you need anyone on the way, don't greet him. If anyone greets you, don't answer. But go to this child and he tells him to lay his staff on his face.

Basically, he's asking Gehazi to go ahead in my place to work this miracle. And I'm sure Elisha was praying that God would work through him in that way. So this is interesting. You know, a personal servant can be a gopher just going for this or that. But he can also be asked to go do something as important as working a miracle to bring the dead back to life. Now, in this story, God did not bring the child back to life after Gehazi did this. And we can speculate why.

Did he want to make sure the miracle happened at the hands of Elisha? Or did God know that Gehazi was having a little bit of a problem with faith and obedience that God requires to work in miracles? We don't know for sure, but we know that Elisha would come and he would resurrect the child. Like, God would resurrect him using Elisha.

I keep doing this. I'm looking on my notes and I'm still talking about him going down to call the woman to see if she has a son. So that happens. Let's skip ahead in chapter 5.

Because we're going to see so far it's been doing great. Gehazi might not have been able to bring someone back from the dead, but that's hardly a bad mark on an employee evaluation. If any of you have a boss, you get called in once a year for your review. And if the worst thing they can say of you is, oh, you couldn't resurrect the dead, it's probably a pretty positive review, right? I didn't claim that out. I thought I'd get some chuckles out of that, though.

Anyways, we're going to meet one more very interesting character in chapter 5. It's followed by the name of Naaman. Now, Naaman is not an Israelite. He's a commander of the Syrian army, a great noble person. And honorable in the eyes of his master, the king, because the eternal given him victory to Syria is a mighty man, but also a leper. So this great general had this skin problem. Now, there are various diseases that the Bible would interpret as leprosy. So apparently, this wasn't the one that was so bad. He had to be completely isolated and never-round people. But it's something that was pretty bad. Now, it turns out, I'm going to summarize here, but Naaman's wife has a little girl who's a servant to her that was captured from Israel. And this little girl, when she realizes that Naaman has leprosy, says, oh, it's too bad that he's not an Israel, because there's a prophet there that can heal him of his leprosy. Now, the little girl is on track, but the one thing she had wrong is it's not the prophet that can heal, it's God who can heal. But so Naaman's thinking, hey, I can heal the leprosy if I go to Israel. So he goes to his boss, the king says, send me to Israel. I want to meet this prophet. And so the king sends Naaman with a letter addressed to the king of Israel, and I'll always love this.

When you read this letter, you'll see I've got Naaman here, and I want you to heal him of his leprosy. In the king of Israel, in verse 7, it happened when the king of Israel read the letter that he tore his clothes. He said, what, am I God to kill and make a lie? See, this guy's trying to take a fight with me. He wants me, he's asking me to heal this guy of leprosy. But in verse 8, it says, when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king had torn his clothes, the king of Israel, he sent to the king, saying, oh, why have you torn your clothes? Please let him come to me, and he'll know that there's a prophet in Israel. I read this, I wondered, how did Elisha know that the king tore his clothes? Nowadays, we might be watching it on CNN. There'd be a live report. The king tears his clothes, and they'd be interviewing the servants. But how did Elisha know? My guess is that God revealed it to him, because we'll see later that God showed him things that were going on.

And anyways, the king complies, and Elisha goes down to Elisha's house, holds up in the chariot, and Elisha, in verse 10, sends a messenger down to him. This might well have been Gehazi. Elisha likes to work through messengers. So, Gehazi, just go down and tell him this. Go down to the Jordan River, not Wiver. Dip in seven times, and you'll be healed.

And Nehemin is pretty annoyed at this. What? I thought he was going to come down and wave his hands, or ask me to do some big things. And, you know, can't I go wash him? And he says, are not the Yavanna and the Farpar, the Rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Israel? I want to make sure I read that scripture, because I just love the word Farpar. But there's some cool names in the Old Testament. Farpar, if I get the name of River, I'd want to use that one. But he says, you know, I'm not going to bathe in this dirty Jordan River when he's got good ones at home. So he's about to store them off. And we see he's got servants. One of his servants came here and spoke to him and said, well, if he'd asked you to do some really tough thing, some great chore, wouldn't you have done it? How much better when he says, go take a bath? You know, he's just not asking you to do anything tough. Go take a bath seven times.

He goes, well, okay. And he does it seven times in and out. And suddenly a splash comes. It feels like it's a little baby's splash, which we know now is very soft and nice. And apparently smell is really good, because the dog can't stay away from him. I don't know if you guys have babies have that problem. Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked. But interesting, though, that remember Naaman is a servant. Naaman has a boss, the king, but he has servants under him. For all we know, some of those servants had servants under them. But in verse 15, he returned to the man of God, he and all his aides, and he came and stood before him and said, indeed now I know there's no God in all the earth except in Israel. Now therefore, please take a gift from your servant. I got all this riches I came to pay for this healing. But he said, Elisha said, as the eternal lives before him I stand, I'll receive nothing. But he urged him to take it, but he refused. Why did he refuse? I mean, we all know the work always needs money. But he was doing it for a different reason. Up there in verse 8, when he told the king to send Naaman to him, the reason was so he would know there was a prophet in Israel. Basically, Elisha was doing this as a witness to show where God did his work. It wasn't about money. He had his eyes on a higher prize, because he knew God could provide any time. God can provide all the money we need, so we don't have to do miracles to get it. And Naaman goes on, he said, well, at least give me some dirt so I can worship your God when I get back to my land. Of course, they had this belief that God was attached to the land somehow. And I loved that. He asked, well, but please pardon me if I have to go with my master into this other idol's house. I'm still worshiping God. And in verse 19, he said, go in peace. It's like Elisha said, whatever. Go do your thing. I don't think he believed that he was converted, but he was okay with this. But now, Gehazi comes into the story in verse 20. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said, well, look, my master has spared Naaman in Assyrian while not receiving from his hands what he brought. But as the Lord lives, I'm going to run after him and take something from him. So Gehazi pursued Naaman, and Naaman saw him run after him. So he stopped the chariot from God's hands. It is all well. And he said, yes, all well. My master sent me. Now, here's the first lie he tells. Elisha didn't send him, but he said, my master sent me. And he said, indeed, now two young men from the sons of the prophets have come from the mountains of Ephraim. Please give them the talent of silver and a couple changes of garment. So here's the second lie.

Naaman, he was prepared to give him ten talents. So he said, here, take two. And he took the two talents of silver and the changes of the garment, and they go back. They carry him on ahead. And Gehazi comes to the sigil. I'm in verse 24 now. He took them from their hand. He stores them away. He let the man go. And in verse 25, he came and he stood before his master Elisha. And Elisha said to him, where did you go, Gehazi? He says, I didn't go anywhere. I imagine he was like a little kid where he's shuffling his feet. And he said, oh, I didn't go anywhere. And Elisha said, didn't my heart go with you? And when the man turned back from the chariot to meet you, is this the time to receive money? And to receive gifts to get vineyard, oxen, and the ale and female servants? Remember, he's looking back to verse 8 where he said, the reason we're doing this is to show where God is working. And by the way, I mentioned this. I think this, once again, that's how he knew that the king had torn his clothes. God was showing these things like God showed him what Gehazi had done. And now Gehazi's going to pay a price for this basically greed for lying. And by the way, Gehazi, the third lie, when he comes back and Elisha asked him where he went, he said, I didn't go anywhere. And Elisha knew very well that he did. Because therefore, the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants forever.

He went out of his presence. Leprechaun is the whitest known.

That's pretty bad stuff.

I'm looking for my watches up here. Maybe summarize some quick lessons we can learn from Gehazi's episode. Some of the minor ones are ones we already know. You know, sometimes a servant has to be a gopher. You mean your work. Sometimes he has to defend his master physically, like when this woman is grabbing a hood of Elisha's feet.

And sometimes he'll be given high responsibility. You might be given the highest responsibility of all, like going to try to resurrect someone. But the most important lesson I want to focus on here is that the servant has to live up to as high a standard as his master does. Just like Eliezhar was worshipping God, not just because of Abraham, and he wasn't counting on getting into the kingdom on Abraham's coattails, Gehazi needed to be doing that. Gehazi thought, well, Elisha's living by those standards, but I don't have to. And Gehazi was wrong about that. Gehazi needed to live by the same godly standards that Elisha did, and that all of us do. And when he didn't, there was a punishment involved. Now, before we leave this, though, I want to mention something else. If you'll turn ahead to 2 Kings 8. 2 Kings 8 will begin in verse 4. Now, this is quite a bit later. We don't know exactly, but this is later on in the process. And we see the king, this is the king of Israel, talked with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God. And he says, please tell me of all the great things that Elisha has done. What I want to point out, though, is apparently Gehazi was still the servant of Elisha. I suspect that this means he repented. He was pointed out his error when he had a punishment, and I think he said, oh, that's right. And he probably repented. Perhaps he fasted and prayed and got his act together, because he remained in Elisha's service and was representing him well. We don't know all the details, and maybe on being a hopeless romantic, but I want to believe that Elisha, or Elisha, that Gehazi did repent and was able to continue in his service. Perhaps even he was able to be healed of the leprosy. We know that happened to Miriam. When Aaron and Miriam were critical of Moses, and God punished Miriam by giving him a leprosy, he did heal her afterwards, although he made her go out of the camp for a week. One last thing to say about Gehazi, that unlike Elisha, after he trained with Elijah, Gehazi was never training to become a prophet himself. He was going to be a servant. Now, he had the hope of being in God's kingdom, and hopefully he still does. I don't know if we'll see him in the first resurrection, the second resurrection, or what, but he wasn't training for high leadership in this life, like some servants do. It seems that you can be a servant who's preparing to have servants under you, or you can be a servant who's a servant. Which reminds me, and it seems like I knew I'd be running out of time, but one more servant I want to look at, and he's one of my favorites.

And this is the example of Joshua. Joshua fits in the category of someone who was a personal assistant, a shirah, in this case, but was trained and eventually put into position of being a great leader. Now, Joshua would be Moses' assistant, and the Hebrew word is shirah, rather than a bed. And we might say, oh, how classy, and what a great thing you get to serve Moses. And, by the way, we want to turn to Exodus 24. But is it all glamour and fun being the servant of Moses? And I should point out, like I said, I got out my concordance to look for a servant. One thing I was interested in is how many people were referred to as the servant of God. And there are various people, Abraham, David, others, but more than any other, there was Moses.

It's almost 40 times in the Bible that Moses' name is mentioned, and he's called Moses the servant of the Lord, or the servant of the Eternal. And that's a pretty guy thing, although it's still Moses the personal assistant, the shirah of the Eternal. And what happens is Moses is the servant of God, and Joshua is the servant of Moses, which is definitely a step down. What do you do when you're that servant? Let's look in Exodus 24. We'll begin in verse 12.

Now, this is after God came down on Mount Sinai and spoke to Israel giving the Ten Commandments. And remember, the mount was on fire, and the earth was quaking, and the people were practically having heart attacks. They were so scared. If God gave the Ten Commandments, and then the people came to Moses and said, Okay, okay, we'll do what he says. We want to be God's people, but please don't have him talk to us anymore.

We can't stand all this loud noise, and driving us crazy. So you go talk to God and come back and tell us what he said. And Moses said, Fine, and I think maybe that's what God had in mind. But now we're getting to the point where that's going to happen. In Exodus 24, verse 12, the Eternal says to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and be there, and I'll give you two tablets of stone, and the law on the commandments that I've written you, that you may teach them. So Moses arose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up to the mountain of God. Now, does that make Joshua sound like, Oh, he's important, he's getting to go? Well, maybe not, because in the next verse, Moses says to the elders, You wait here until we come back, and Aaron and her are with you. If anyone has a difficulty, let them go to him or to them. Well, it looks like the elders and Aaron and her are the important people. Joshua is a servant. He's probably carrying Moses' luggage as they go up the mountain. And then they're going to spend 40 days up there listening to God. And here, once again, a little speculation. Was Joshua sitting right there by Moses' side listening to all this? I have my doubts, and it's not meant to be a wrap on Joshua, but I envision it being sort of like when Christ took the Twelve Apostles to the Garden of Gethsemane. Yes, yes. That garden. And he said, You guys wait here. I'm going to go over here and pray. And that's what he did. So he went and got close to God. In verse 15, that's what I envisioned, I envisioned they were there, and Moses said, Now I've got to go over here and talk to God. And he went up and a cloud covered him. Now, I don't know this for certain, but one of the things that made me consider that is, you'll read later on, and I'm not going to turn to the Scripture there, but later on it says that when Moses came down from the mountain, his face was shining. So much so that people were scared of him, he had to wear a veil, because after he'd been in God's presence, his face was shining. It never says that Joshua's face was shining. Joshua didn't have to wear a veil. So Moses was with God, and Joshua was doing what? He was there on the mountain, doing whatever Moses told him to do. And probably if he didn't have a job to do, his job was to wait there until he did have one to do.

That comes up again later if we turn to chapter 33. Chapter 33 and verse 10. This is a little later after they had that incident with the golden calf, and God was thinking about wiping out all of Israel, but Moses convinced him not to. But God moved his meeting place outside of the camp. So Moses would walk outside of the camp to this tent when the pillar of fire would come down, and then he would talk with God. Chapter 33 verse 11 says, So the eternal spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend, and he would return to the camp. But his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle. And I think if the old King James says, Joshua waited at the tabernacle, that's the shirah. He's there to wait around until Moses gives him a job to do. Now, I'm not saying that Joshua wasn't important, but attaining that high level of what he would do eventually started with being a personal assistant, being the gopher, just waiting until Moses had a need. And he probably, not only figuratively, but literally for the next 40 years, poured water on Moses' hands, doing these little jobs. Now, as time went, he would become trusted more and more. When the twelve scouts or spies were sent into the Holy Land to check it out, Joshua would be one of them. One from each tribe, and Moses would choose him to represent the tribe of Ephraim. Let's look to Numbers 11. Note Numbers 11. And we'll begin in verse 24.

Ah, the second glass of water comes in handy. A couple things we'll see. And I'm wanting to point out somewhat the progress that Joshua made. And here, Joshua, and actually...

I'm looking for... I don't think I had this scripture here, but Moses is getting kind of worn out, eating the people of Israel. He says, God, I can't do this on my own. I need help. And God says, look, okay, I want you to choose 70 guys, and I'll put some of my spirit on them, and they'll help you. So in verse 24, Moses went out and told the people the words of the Eternal. He gathered 70 men of the elders and placed them around the tabernacle. The Eternal came down in the cloud and spoke to them, and took of the spirit that was upon him, Moses, and placed some of the same on these 70 elders. And when the spirit rested on them, they prophesied. Even though they didn't do that again. But two of the men remained in the camp. One was El-Dad and the other was Medad. But the spirit was on them anyway. God knew who the 70 were, even if they didn't show up. So they started cross-signing. And then some of the young men run and tell Moses, El-Dad and Medad, they're out there in the camp for a cross-signing, even though they weren't here. So Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, says, Moses, my Lord, forbid them. He said, they're not doing what they're supposed to do. Stop them.

I equate this somewhat to when Gehazi tried to push that woman away because she was grabbing Elisha's feet. Joshua was trying to protect Moses. In this case, not physically, but protect his position and his reputation. And of course, Moses, it don't be dullus for my sake. I wish they were all prophesying. One of the other things I skipped over there in verse 28, Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses, the assistant of Moses, one of his choice men. The first couple of times I read this, I skipped over and I thought, wait a minute, God just told Moses to choose 70 men to put his spirit on. And this is the first time Joshua was called a choice man. I suspect that he'd grown in Moses' trust and in his ability to serve, so that now he was probably one of those 70. He was chosen to have God's spirit put on him in a particular way. But he was still, even in that position where he was one of the ones prophesying, he was more concerned with protecting his master's reputation and making sure his position was secure than saying, hey, we're so great!

Let's turn ahead to Numbers 27. And I promise I'm looking at my watch and I know I'm running out of time and I'm almost done here, so... especially someone having a little one sitting in church. I appreciate more than ever not going too long.

Because now we're coming towards the end of Moses' story. He's been serving for all these years and Joshua, as I said, has been pouring water on his hands. And let's go to verse 12. Numbers 27, verse 12. The Eternal says to Moses, Go up to this Mount Abarim and see the land that I've given to the children of Israel, and when you've seen it, you'll be gathered to your people. That's a nice way of saying, you're going to die. We're going to all bury you in the ground. And just like your brother Aaron, for the wilderness of Zinn, and basically because of that time when he struck the rock when I told you to talk to it, I'm not going to let you go in the Promised Land. And in verse 15, Moses spoke to the Eternal saying, Let the Eternal, the God of the Spirit of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, who may go out before them and go in before them, who may lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Eternal may not be like a sheep which have no shepherd. So he's saying, I've been leading them all this time. I'll point someone to take my place. God, get a loyal, good person and give him this job. Now, he doesn't say who, does he? And I wonder if he was surprised when right away the Eternal said to Moses, Take Joshua. Take Joshua the son of Nun, that guy that's been your personal assistant all that time, who sometimes is doing nothing more than just wages for you to give him a job. Take him, and he's the one in whom the Spirit is, and lay your hands on him. Set him before Eliezer, and set him before all the congregation and inaugurate him. And you'll give some of your authority to him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient. Do you think Moses was surprised? And I honestly don't know. Moses thinks, set someone reliable over the people to lead them, and God says, Make it Joshua, your personal assistant, your gopher. He's the one. Maybe Moses wasn't surprised because he knew Joshua, he knew his character. Maybe he was very pleased. We know, as you read the story after this, and you go into the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recounts the law and reminds the children of Israel of what they need to do. And time after time, throughout Deuteronomy, he reminds them that I'm not going in with you, but Joshua will. Moses fully supported Joshua. And then, let's go towards the end of this. Deuteronomy 31. Deuteronomy 31, we'll read in verse 22.

Therefore Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the children of Israel. Then he inaugurated Joshua, the son of Nun, and said, Be strong and of a good courage. You'll bring the children of Israel into the land to which I swore to them. And so they had a special ceremony. Now let's go ahead a few pages to Joshua, Chapter 1.

I laughed at first when I read this, and I thought, Well, the last thing Moses did was tell Joshua, I'm giving you one last job. You've been working for me for the last 40 years and doing what I told you. I'm going to go, but I want you to bring the children of Israel in and take care of them.

And God's going to tell him the same thing, basically. Joshua 1, Verse 1. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the eternal spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, and said, Moses, my servant is dead. And it's interesting. He's dead, but he still called Moses my servant. So he didn't say, Moses, who used to be my servant. Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise. Go over this Jordan, you and all this people in the land that I'm giving you.

Verse 5, No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Now, what could be better than to have God tell you that?

The same way I was with him, I'm going to be with you. I won't leave you. Well, I think we could say God does tell us all that. And our service to God's people, to him, God is always going to be with us, because we know he'll never leave any of us or forsake us.

But I love the fact that he's still calling Moses to serve him. And Joshua, you know, timing again, Moses is the servant of the Lord, Joshua is the servant of Moses. Do you see that in Joshua? No, I'm going to, actually I'm going to skip ahead to the end of the book. Joshua 24 and verse 29.

They said, I counted up how many times Moses was called to serve him the Lord. It was 37 or 38, I didn't write it down. I don't remember how many times Joshua is called the servant of Moses, but it was quite a few times. But eventually, that's going to change. Joshua 24 and verse 29. By the time Joshua reaches the end of his life at 110 years of age. Now it came to pass, after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died being 110 years old. Finally, after being the servant of Moses, the servant of Moses, eventually Joshua became the servant of Moses. Joshua became the servant of God, the same way Moses had been before him. I think if there's one goal, like I said in life, and I've got a lot of different goals, that would be one. I'd like to eventually become known as the servant of God. I think all of us would. But knowing, and I'll give you a couple of scriptures just to mention. I pointed out Nahum, even though he was reporting to the king, or well, Nahum had lost the servants, he was reporting to the king. Ecclesiastes 5 and verse 8.

Solomon, the wisest man of all, says, you know, there's going to be trouble with this. He says, there's high officials watching over high officials, and there's higher officials watching over them. Everybody's got a boss. That means everybody's going to be a servant to someone. I think also of the time when the centurion sent his servant to Jesus, saying, my servant's sick, heal him, and Jesus was going to come to do it himself. And then the centurion says, well, you don't have to come here. He says, I'm a man under authority, and I have servants under me. That's interesting, but he points out first that I'm under authority, meaning someone's up here telling me what to do, and I have to do it, and there's people under me. I tell them what to do, and they have to do it. There is this chain. The only person that doesn't have someone over them is God the Father. All of us are going to be servants to other men and, of course, to God at the same time. I'll remind you, and I'll just refer to these scriptures rather than read them, but Colossians 3, verse 22, if you want to note this down, or make note of that, Paul wrote, servants obey in all things your masters, not just with eye services, though pleasing men, but as though pleasing God. And again, the one that was my anchor in sparing this, 1 Peter 2, 18, servants be subject to your masters, not only the good ones, but even to the froward. We've got lots of examples to look at in the Bible of how to do that. We've got Eliezer and Gehazi who were servants, and they were going to be servants. They weren't training for something higher, unless, of course, you consider being in God's kingdom something higher. So maybe I should backtrack and say they were training for something a lot higher, just not in this physical life. Now, Elisha and Joshua both were being prepared for high positions. Their preparation came largely in being menial, lowly servants, and they did that. The Bible talks a lot about being a servant. And one of the things I'll mention in one more scripture that you might want to read later, in Romans 6, verse 16-18, Paul said, you're going to be servants to whatever you obey. You're going to be servants to sin and end up dead, or servants to righteousness and end up having life. We want to be servants to righteousness. Our highest goal is to be servants of God. But along the way, sometimes we have to also be servants of men to be good servants of God. In cases like that, I'd say, you know, it serves us well to choose who we will serve if we have that opportunity. You know, I talked about employers. We're not held in bondage. You can move to a different job. And I'm following it. I have a job interview on Tuesday morning. So even though my new master might be a little froward, luckily I'm not held in bondage. You know, but choose who you will serve. Choose well and then serve well. We all need to serve well. And eventually, we'll hope to hear those words from Jesus Christ. Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord. Let us all do that.