Chapter 7 Jesus Served

Summary

In this episode of the Hero Worship Podcast, Troy Kennedy discusses the theme of serving others as an imitation of Jesus. He emphasizes the importance of observing the rhythms and practices of Jesus in our everyday lives. Troy explores the concept of Jesus as a servant and how we can follow his example. He also highlights the connection between serving others and worshiping God. The episode concludes with a call to action to imitate Jesus in service.

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.
Amazon Link
Christianbook.com

Takeaways

The Hero Worship Podcast is a companion to the book 'Hero Worship, A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus'
Observing the rhythms and practices of Jesus helps us become more like Him
Jesus framed his ministry as one of a servant and calls us to serve others
Serving others is an act of worship and an imitation of Jesus

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Hero Worship Podcast
01:02 The Imitation of Jesus
03:05 The Role of the Holy Spirit
04:23 Jesus as a Servant
07:14 Serving Others as Worship
10:28 Serving Those in Need
13:30 Love for God and Love for Others
14:22 Imitating Jesus in Service
15:33 Conclusion and Call to Action

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Kennedy

Husband, Dad, Pastor. A disciple of Jesus. Author of new book "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus." https://t.co/Zgr4SrEOab

What is Troy Marshall Kennedy Podcast?

Jesus always has more life for you than you have known. How do we follow him and discover what it is to flourish and thrive in today's complex, challenging world? How do we have the intimate relationship with God our hearts long for? Troy Marshall Kennedy responds to these all-important questions as a veteran pastor, teacher, and author. Join us as we explore rhythms of life and practice to help us love Jesus, become like Jesus, and share Jesus in our everyday lives. Season one episodes will accompany Troy's new book, "Hero Worship: A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus."

You can find the book "Hero Worship" on Amazon or christianbook.com to purchase.

Troy Kennedy (00:00.702)
I am Troy Kennedy.

And this is the Hero Worship Podcast. Welcome back, this is our seventh week together on a 12 week journey to become more like Jesus. And just to kind of give you a little bit of a framework, if this is your first time with the podcast, this is meant to be an accompaniment to the book, Hero Worship, A 12 Week Journey to Become More Like Jesus. And so it's meant to augment the content of that book. Hopefully it's not redundant, but it's something to kind of help you as you are walking along this journey

and the imitation of Jesus. We're learning to become more like Him, to love Him, to admire and imitate Him in the most practical ways of our everyday lives. And so we came together with this book that has got every one of these kind of imitations of these practices. It gives you a short chapter that you can read and six days of practices that you can observe in your life and that you can journal about and you can focus on and you can memorize Scripture and there's

for us to internalize these rhythms that we observe in the life of Jesus. And one of those things that we observed in the life of Jesus is the fact that Jesus served. Now I know it sounds obvious to you people who are Christ followers, maybe you've never thought of him as a servant before, and he most certainly called himself a servant. We're gonna dig into that here in just a minute. First I wanna talk just a little bit, one, if you don't have the book already, you can get it on Amazon or ChristianBook.com.

And if you feel like you're behind and you, I wouldn't worry about playing catch up, honestly. I would just go ahead and jump in right where we are right now, you can always go back and you can return to it. The only thing I would say is that the introductory chapter of the book is meant to give you a framework for how to think about and approach all the subsequent practices that we will observe in the imitation of Jesus. So, also if you don't know me, my name is Troy. I was a worship pastor for

Troy Kennedy (02:03.176)
32 years and

I worked in a number of different churches in Southern California and in Kansas City. And God has recently called me in the last couple of years to be more in a teaching kind of a role in my local church and began doing some writing and some talking and some different things just based on my experience as a minister for all of these years. And so one of these days I give you a little bit more detail on that story if you're interested. But you can find me at my website TroyMKennedy.com.

or heroworshipbook.com and I've got all the typical, you can find me on Twitter, you can find me on Instagram or Facebook and I would love to get to know you and hear from you. So last week we talked about this rhythm we observe in Jesus' life that Jesus fasted. One of the first things he did when he went into his public ministry was he spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting in preparation really for what God was going to do

Troy Kennedy (03:05.484)
with him as Jesus says, I don't do anything. I don't see my father doing, I don't say anything. I don't hear my father saying I and the father are one. And by the way, it's better for me or better for you that I go away so that the advocate, the Holy Spirit, the comforter will come and he will be with you and he will be in you. This mystery that you and I are invited to the Trinitarian table of fellowship in this great eternal dance of the triune.

God and he invites us to come.

and to fellowship and to be in relationship with him. God made you so he could love you. And by his spirit, you are someone in whom he dwells and in whom he delights, as my friend James Bryan Smith would say. So we understand that there's something special, miraculous, and transcendent about our relationship with God because he sent his spirit to indwell us as Christ followers. You are never alone, and you don't have to do this life alone.

And as we walk in the imitation of Jesus, we are catalyzed and energized and equipped by His Spirit that is within us. So, Jesus served. This is what we're observing here this week.

As you walk through this practice, we start to think of Jesus framing himself as a servant. So in Matthew chapter 20, one of the last things Jesus does with his disciples, they meet in an upper room, and you're familiar with this story after this upper room experience where Jesus gives them a new context for the observation of Passover for all time. And before he goes to the garden to get 70, before he is arrested and he's taken into custody and he is ultimately

Troy Kennedy (04:53.356)
crucified and risen again. He practices something with his disciples and I'm going to read this to you from Matthew chapter 20. It says this, when Jesus had finished washing their feet, He put on His clothes and returned to His place. Let's just stop there for a second.

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as they had entered into this place. Apparently there wasn't someone who is there who is given that responsibility to wash the feet of the guests who would come in. So Jesus does what would be considered something that would be humiliating. It would be the most menial task just about that you could do in that context. And Jesus takes on the role of a servant.

to humble himself to wash the dirty, kind of nasty feet of his disciples. So when he finished this he says, Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example so that you should do as I have done for you.

each other's feet? Probably, but more than that. There's something bigger here at the Zestek. Very truly, I tell you this from verse 16, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. That was in John chapter 13. And in Matthew 20 he says this,

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you.

Troy Kennedy (06:44.126)
Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus frames his own ministry as one of a servant. We talk about Isaiah 53, this picture of Jesus as, or the Messiah as the suffering servant. And he says, now, now that you know these things, you'll be blessed if you do them. If you follow my example.

has the heart to serve people, not out of a place of scarcity, but at a place of gratitude and abundance. Jesus serves us out of the abundance of the love relationship He has with the Father.

It doesn't take anything away from him. We might, some people on the outside might view that as something that's humiliating, but it's not humiliating for Jesus. Jesus isn't humiliated in this. He takes joy in it. And he says, you go and do likewise. So in this, this situation, we, we find ourselves going, how do we follow Jesus as our example of servanthood? And for some people that's really easy. They're kind of, maybe they have a gift of helps. You know, the Holy Spirit has given.

them this heart and impulse to help wherever they see a need but not everybody has that gifting and we have to be careful too that as we exercise this that it's done with the right hard attitude even somebody who has the gifting to help one another to help other people in their time of need the caution is that one people who have that gifting can resent people who don't have the gifting in other words they

They expect everyone to see situations the way they do. And they can, it can easily kind of slip into resentment if they're not, um, if it's not reciprocated or understood or appreciated for what it is. And secondly, um, sometimes the way when we serve, it can be self-regarding.

Troy Kennedy (08:48.266)
In other words, we're serving with an agenda. We're serving because there's something we wanna get from the situation. It's a quid pro quo sort of internal motive for us. But Jesus gives, Jesus serves without expectation.

And I think that's his model for us that we learn to serve as he served us. We love as he has loved us. We love without expectation. We serve without expecting a repayment or some sort of, um, quid pro quo. We're saying I'm doing this because it's a good thing to do. I'm serving you because I'm walking in an imitation of the master.

And in some places you can equate service of others with worship. So what is worship? Worship is this thing that we do that is a scribe's worth to someone. So can serving someone, can mowing the lady's lawn across the street from your home be an act of worship? Can helping someone out, you know, who drops their, their stuff at the grocery store, can that be an act of worship?

Can you do your job? Can you serve your neighbor? Can you serve your husband, your wife, your children? Can these things be acts of worship? And I would say yes, they can if we intend them to. They can be acts of worship, this act of service, because we're doing it to serve Jesus himself. Jesus gives us this parable of the sheep and the goats. And he says this, to paraphrase it and kind of tighten it up a little bit, just to say, look,

Troy Kennedy (10:28.202)
Jesus says that when we serve those who are in need.

when we serve those who are suffering, when we serve those who are alone. He says, I was in prison and you visited me. I was hungry and you fed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a stranger and you invited me in. And the people in the parable, they say, well, when did we do these things? He said, when you did these for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it also for me. That when we serve other people, the way he has served us, indeed we are serving him. I think of it like this.

I got two boys and they're both

They're adults now. They're actually 18 and 20 years old. And it's very odd to think of them as adults. But it's true. You know, it was a lot easier to be a parent when they were little tiny guys. Now that they're all grown up, it's actually, believe it or not, it's harder to be a parent for them. Um, but the, but the thing that is really interesting about that relationship as a dad, I feel like I finally started understanding the love of God, that the lights were turning on for me because the way I love those guys,

as spectacular as they are, as wonderful as they are, as challenging as they are, how much more does that good Heavenly Father know and love me?

Troy Kennedy (11:47.266)
more perfectly and more completely and more wholly and less selfishly than I do even with my own kids. So for example, if you are nice to me, right, if you say, gee Troy, I really appreciate that song that you wrote or I really like your book or I like the way you sing or the way you write, whatever it is, I'm going to say thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you for you. You blessed me in that. But I tell you what, you really want to bless me?

Troy Kennedy (12:17.78)
Be a blessing to one of my sons if you put some wind in the sail of my kid and He is encouraged and he is energized by that and he is somehow Equipped better for life because of his interaction with you. I tell you what now you have my attention You've got my I'm a you got a fan for life in me if you bless my kids and encourage them I am gonna be all the way in

beautiful about those kids being blessed by you. And so think about this, your Heavenly Father has got to celebrate.

His heart has got to be so blessed. He's got to take such joy when you and I are kind to one another, when you and I serve one another. And Jesus says in this parable then that when you serve one another, when you serve people who actually have need, these are my kids, when you bless them, you are blessing me. It's unavoidable. The great commandment is this to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus.

makes these two things inextricable. You can't say that you love God and hate your neighbor whom you see. God who you can't see and your neighbor who you can't see, it's a non sequitur. You can't say hate other people or be selfish with other people and say that you love God. Jesus says that these things are connected. Love for God in the abstract is lived out and love for others in the concrete.

Whatever you've done for these brothers and sisters of mine, you've also done for me. It is an act of worship. It is an act of service is an act in the adoration and imitation of the God man Jesus who says he came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So this week, as you practice this.

Troy Kennedy (14:22.11)
imitating Jesus as he served other people and we're gonna do it imperfectly and we're gonna do it with convoluted motives None of us ever really does anything for one reason right? We have a dozen different reasons and I just pray that the weight of our motive is more noble than selfish, right? But we're gonna do these things and you do them and you do them again and you do them again That is the road to the kind of humility That Jesus exemplifies for us all

So.

Go and follow your saver in service this week. And I would love to hear from you if you have any questions or thoughts or comments. You can find me at Troy at TroyMKennedy.com. You can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. And if this journey has been a blessing for you, would you please consider leaving a review up on Amazon for other people? Apparently it matters that people get positive reviews on Amazon, and if you think this is the kind of thing that's going to help and equip someone,

their spiritual journey to learn to love Jesus, to become like Jesus, and ultimately to share Jesus with the world. Well then...

pass it on to somebody else and they can go on the same journey as you are. So next week we're going to be talking about this rhythm we see, this practice we see in the life of Jesus, the Jesus asked questions. There was probably no better question asker than the Savior. It was poignant, it was meaningful, it was incisive, and it was revelatory. So we're going to get back next week. I hope you have a wonderful week as you follow our hero, Jesus. God bless you.