Servant Leadership: Jesus' Blueprint for Leading Others

So I had my pirate wig over there and I knew that it was over there and I hadn't even thought about it . I was like how much he's wondering , you know , walking in and seeing what this , that big dog looking thing stuck on a microphone , is over there . So I put on my pirate wig to come , come in the studio today . So did you once have hair that long ?

I you know , actually I mine wasn't that long it wasn't quite that long , but it if I washed it it would go down that long . I had curly hair . It would curl up . Curl up about . You know , past my collar , about yeah , I've been back and everything .

But when I washed it it went a little bit longer , but you had long hair too uh , when I had hair yeah , I understand well I .

Now I've been like , oh yeah , let's go shave it , let's do it , not a problem . So everybody got mohawks and I wish I would have got the mohawk back then . But back then I was just a little bit more quiet , a little bit more freshman-ish , you know . So , uh , so yeah , so there it is , hey , right .

We might talk about that walking on water thing that we really didn't get to last time , but you know , and then we'll see where it takes . You know , see where we can get through , but we are in Matthew today and sort of give us a recap of the earlier Matthews that we've talked about through 1 through 14 .

Just give us a brief overview in case people are kidding us in between shows or something .

I tried to answer that question because I didn't want it just to be a history lesson , I didn't want it just to be a theological discourse or something for a religious magazine or something for a religious magazine . I wanted to know how does this book of incredible history apply

to my life today ? Well , it depends on the filter that we look at it through . And so , right now , in our show and for the last year and a half we've been doing this we look at through the filter of leadership . What can this book teach us about leadership ?

Whether we are leading a softball team , a scout troop , whether we're leading the bakery down the street and we're the owner , maybe we have a hardware store , maybe we have a multimillion-dollar corporation with hundreds of employees , there are some biblical leadership principles . That applies to all of us .

And so here in the book of Matthew , as we transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament , we see the focus now is on Jesus and servant leadership , humility . In the first chapter of Matthew we talked about the genealogy and how every person is important . And in your organization is every person important , or do some people just you know ?

Do you treat them the same ? And then we go to chapter two with the wise men and taking a risk of stepping out and doing something they really believed in . And then we go to chapter three with John the Baptist and his boldness .

Then we go to chapter 4 with Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and you know , preparing himself for his ministry and then him calling the disciples after that . And he's setting up , from the very beginning of his ministry , this session plan and training his leaders , training his people . How much time do we put in training our people ?

Then we get to the Sermon on the Mount , chapter 5 , 6 , and 7 , really talking about how much is God a priority in our life ? What are our priorities ? You know , I worked for a boss one time that his priority before 30 , he wanted to be a millionaire . Well , unfortunately he ripped his employees off to do that and I quit .

Sure yeah , and we might fool some people for a while , but eventually they're going to see what's really inside of us . And so , jesus , talking about that , that our character , his desire for our character , is to be godly . How do we do that ? And there are certain steps , there are certain practices , certain things that , over time , have been proven .

For if you want to go down that road which we encourage everybody to do then these are the steps that can get you into that thing . And so then we get out of the Sermon on the Mount and we get to some . Jesus starts to , he calls his disciples before and he starts to train them .

He starts to send them out , he's starting to trust them , he's given them authority , he's given them responsibility , he's teaching them , he's training them . And responsibility , he's teaching them , he's training them . And then we get to chapter 13 , and he gets to that's a lot of parables . So he's teaching people , but then he explains them when he's in private .

So the leadership principle was how much are you teaching and training your people and do they really understand what you're trying to say ?

Are you communicating clearly and not just to your people on your social media , your advertising what you're trying to say , are you communicating clearly and not just to your people on your social media , your , you know , your advertising or everything else ? Is it very clear as to what you're ? Um , um , here , here's the thing .

I was in Waco , obviously here a couple months ago .

There's a couple of restaurants in there , so I'd drive through there , you know going to restaurants , and there were several businesses that had the name of it . It even had a sign out front but I could not tell from the name of the company what in the world their product was .

I saw people in the building but it's like is that a restaurant , is that a clothing store ? Because I couldn't tell and there was nothing on their building , there was nothing about their name that gave me any indication of what they were about .

And it's like okay , well , somebody knows what they're about because somebody's in there , but I can't tell what they're about . So the question is are you communicating what you're about by your whatever it is , your tagline , your name , your social media presence , or is it confusing to people ?

We were driving down the road and literally two blocks away we look over no name on the company name on the building . It just said Mexican restaurant . So I pulled in . I'm like will this work ? He's like Mexican restaurant . He goes . But what is this place ? I'm like it's a Mexican restaurant . Still had no name of the building or anything , what it was .

It just said Mexican restaurant . So it made us laugh . I'm like it's a Mexican restaurant . Still had no name of the building or anything , what it was . It just said Mexican restaurant . So it made us laugh . I'm like , well , we're not eating here .

times people ask you know , ask me , why does Jesus walk on water ? What's the purpose of that ? And I think you were just getting into it .

Jesus reached down and pulled him up . Now , what a great leadership principle . How much do we know our people to know that when they're in trouble okay , whatever trouble that might be they might be dealing with a moral issue , they might be dealing with a relationship issue , they might be dealing with a relationship issue ?

Do we know our people well enough that when they're in trouble , we know and we can reach out to them ? And so that's you know . You can't . If you have a big company , you can't know everybody . But the question is do you know your small group ? Do ? you know your five or six main leaders , or your three or four main leaders ?

Do you know them well enough and you're transparent with them to know , hey , this person is going through a difficult time or hey , their child just graduated from high school or college ?

I know I need to give them maybe some time off , because that's one of those times in life that only comes once and I want to give them some time off so they can be with their family . And knowing that about your people just develops loyalty and trust .

And you give somebody hey , I know your son is graduating from , or your daughter's graduating from , high school , you know , next week . Why don't you take the Thursday and Friday off and just be with your family ?

you know , Wow , if you initiate that instead of the person asking you know how much you're going to increase in their mind of like , this person really does care about me , and so that , to me , is what a great leadership principle is getting to know your people and being proactive in taking care of their needs . And we see that with Jesus all the time .

Okay , and sometimes people would come to Jesus for healing . He never turned anybody away . He would listen to them , he would meet their needs . He had met them right where they were , just the way they were . But he encouraged them hey , don't go back and go do that sin again . I've changed you so you would lead a different kind of life .

And so we see that over and over again . And when we come to chapter 15 , we see an incredible story about a Canaanite woman and she had a daughter who was severely sick and Jesus was there and she asked Him to heal and he said I've only been sent to the house of Israel . And she said well , even the dogs eat the scraps from under the table .

And Jesus said hey , your faith is great . And so he recognized something in the people great . And so he recognized something in the people and that Jesus was a master at recognizing those small seeds of faith in people and then took them and just made that just bigger . And so the question is do you recognize that in your people ?

Do you recognize those small , let's just say , glimpses of talent or inspiration or whatever ? And you take advantage of that and just make it bigger and give them maybe some extra special assignment to see if you can draw out that talent .

So let's maybe sort of explain that . You know what the mentality was back then a little bit .

Some of his most loyal followers were women and some of his big supporters financially were women . We see that in the Scripture and we see that the first witness to the resurrection was a woman . So Jesus had a high value of not just women but every person .

He saw the best in people , people and that particular time , just like today , because of different cultures , different religions , different languages , different faiths , whatever there was a lot

of prejudice , there was a lot of bias towards different races or different people . And Jesus was trying to unify people by love , not by dividing people because of skin color or their faith , tradition or their language or whatever . And Jesus was a master at that .

Not everybody accepted that , but anyway he was a master of that , but anyway he was a master of that . And so we see , just about everywhere he went , he dealt with people with kindness , compassion and mercy .

And so , whether it was this woman who was a Canaanite who wasn't Jewish , or it was a Jewish person , whether it was a person whose daughter was sick , whose son was sick , or a person who was blind or mute or whatever blind , he treated them all the same . And so what a great principle for us if we wanted to . How do we treat our people ?

And we talked about this before . Jesus was a master of treating everybody the same . Not everybody respected him . We had the religious leaders you know want to get rid of him because he was kind of creating a new paradigm of how to view God , and they didn't like that at all . And he was upset in the apple cart and so they eventually killed him .

But the question was , he did it because he was living out the love that God has for us , that God loves everybody the same . There's not one person that he loves more than he loves another person . And we see that Sometimes we think , well , I've done all this bad stuff , god can't love me . No , anything we do does not decrease God's love for us .

It's still abundant , it's still incredible , and nothing we can do will ever decrease God's love for us , and that's what I think the message . We start beginning to see that here a lot in chapter 15 of Matthew , as he heals different people , he talks to different people , he's traveling around the country and training His disciples to feel the exact same way .

It took a while for that to happen in His disciples because they were arguing , they were trying to be who's the best , who's first ? That's just human nature . And then we see , you know , Jesus fed 4,000

people . He fed 5,000 people . What a great lesson here . Let's just take that for a minute . Let's talk about the feeding of the 5,000 , feeding of the 4,000 . So you had a little boy with five loaves and two fish . He comes and some people say the miracle was that everybody shared their lunch . I don't believe that .

I believe that Jesus actually multiplied the resources . So the question is what resources do we have and do we see unlimited possibilities in the limited resources ? Sometimes we think what we need are more resources . Maybe what we need is more creativity , so we can get more out of less .

Okay , I would rather have an employee with very little resources but a lot of creativity and energy than a person who is , let's just say , not creative . I don't give them unlimited budget , but a lot of budget , and they don't have to be creative , they don't have to be resourceful .

I'd rather have someone who's resourceful and creative with a limited budget , and with churches a lot of times that's what we had was limited budget , and so let them be creative , let them do something . That's just amazing , because they had to be creative and you want those people that can be very creative .

They can look at something and see something that you don't see , you just need to give them permission to do it , and so that , to me , is good leadership .

And so I think that's where leadership starts is self-leadership precedes team leadership and public leadership . So are we taking care of ourself physically ? Are we taking care of ourselves spiritually , emotionally ? Are we taking care of ourselves financially ?

And not to exclude that , we have to be so focused on our ourselves that we can't focus on others , but we need to think how am I taking care of myself ? Am I being a good example for my people ? Am I doing that ? Well ? And Jesus was just a master at that .

And then we talked about , you know , he had his 12 , he had his three , he sent out the 70 , he taught the multitudes . He had a private ministry with a few and he had a public ministry with many , but over all of that , his whole thing was a leader , is a servant .

So he wanted his 12 to be the best followers he could be , whatever it took , you know whatever sacrifice I have to make to make my followers the best they can be . And so the question is how much are we pouring into our people ?

Do we want you know , our people , our sales rep , to be the best sales rep the company has ever had , and what are we doing to help them become that ? Are we wanting our finance person to be the best finance person they can be ,

or do we have the right equipment ? Do we have the right computer ? Do we have software ? Do they need some training ? What can we do as the leader to help them become the best they can be ? And that , to me , is servant leadership .

I'm not going to abandon you . They had no idea what that meant yet . They found out on the day of Pentecost but I want to make sure that you all get it . You know that you're going to be the one you know . Just think about this .

The god of all creation came down as a human okay , fully god , fully human and he trusted 12 guys to carry on his work right okay , 12 sinful men to carry on his work , but he had done everything he felt he needed to do in those three years to train them for the task .

Now , after he died , they were scared because they felt that their lives were next , but he empowered them to do the work and we'll get to that maybe next week , about his death and resurrection , but the whole thing up until we see that Jesus talking about and even talks about . You know , those who want to be first need to be last .

You need to be a servant , and so I did some research . I read an article from the Wycliffe Bible Translators at Aaron South Dallas . They do incredible work and have done for decades , but they had an article back in September on their website about the qualities of a servant leader , and so I just want to repeat this as we close out today .

I just want to repeat what they said from the Wycliffe Bible translators , because they deal with this all the time in their translations . But there were six qualities of a servant leader , and we've talked about these before , but maybe not in this order .

One was integrity , one was humility , one was flexibility , one was resilience , one was being a steward of resources and one was empathy . And so if we look at all of those as we are as leaders , it's a whole different paradigm of how we lead people . Integrity was their number one thing .

And I'm thinking , yeah , you know , we walk our talk , we're a person of our word . We treat people with respect , but we're humble about it and we don't like feel that we're God's gift to the world . We admit when we're wrong . We seek advice if we need advice , and then flexibility .

You know we might be going down a path and we realize , you know what , that might not be the right way . We might need to listen to the people and do this , and so it was a great list .

But that's what Jesus was all about , was you know , having being a servant leader , serving your people and then pouring your life into them so they can be the best they can be .

I want to empower everybody else to be the smartest person in the room yeah , and that to me that's a good leader is they're not threatened . Um , I , you know , and the people that you work with , uh , everybody so many people get threatened , right , you know , they don't want to tell them , they don't want to delegate .

They don't want to tell them , they don't want to delegate . They don't want to keep all these cards to themselves . Right , I'm going to keep the cards to myself . That way , nobody has all the information to do what I do , because they'll replace me . Yeah . It doesn't work that way .

The more you empower your people , the more you raise them to the next level . It takes you up to a higher level , because they're even at a higher level , so anyway my soapbox .

All right , so I think it's important for us to , if you haven't heard the story , or maybe you haven't heard it in a long time , to just re-familiarize ourselves with that . And then the question is

what are the leadership principles that we can learn from that ? And there's obviously a bunch , and we'll get to those , see if we time this .

I've been , I'm enjoying this , you know , and and I think there's just so much to unpack through all these chapters it's it's sort of amazing , you know , how much you can get out of this and and I'm I'm just curious , because a lot of these things , you know , they start to overlap . I think we're going to be able to pull different ideas out of this .

I think this taking the time in Matthew is very important , because then when we're unwrapping them in Mark and some of these other chapters , then we've already sort of unwrapped it . We start unwrapping and then we can go even a little bit deeper , dive on some of these that we're talking about .