For Who’s Sake Are You Serving?

Numbers 11:29

And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD'S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!

The children of Israel complained about God giving them manna every day, and they murmured that they wanted meat instead. God knew that Moses needed help leading this great nation, so he appointed seventy men to assist him, so that they would stop their murmuring and complaining about God not doing something. The Scripture says that the spirit of God came upon these seventy elders, and they began to prophesy in the tabernacle. However, there were two men who did not prophecy in the tabernacle, but they prophesied in the camp. These men's names were Eldad and Medad. A young man, who was a loyalist to Moses, ran to him and said that these two men were prophesying in the camp, thinking that Moses would rebuke them. Instead, Moses taught this young man a lesson: he was not to envy these men prophesying in the camp for his sake, but to wish that all people had the same spirit upon them and would prophesy in the camp.

One of the great needs in the ministry is for everyone to be involved in the ministry. What I find is that in every church, there are many different groups in the ministry for several reasons.

First, there is the leader. Of course, the leader is the one who leads the whole church in which direction they are to go for God. The leader is to be the pastor of the church. One mistake many pastors make is that they fail to delegate their duties to others, and in doing so, they hurt the growth both of the church and of the people that they lead.

Second, there are those who do nothing. These people are not bad people; they are just not doing anything for God other than filling a seat in the church.

Third, there are those serving the leader. This crowd does right, but only because of their love for the leader. As soon as that leader dies or leaves, they will stop standing for right or serving in the capacity they serve in.

Fourth, there are those who are busy serving for serving’s sake. This group of people is really a great group of people, but they are doing right so that they can show themselves busy. They are not serving because of the leader or because of God, but they are serving because they want to be seen as spiritual. Their service is appearance-based rather than love and obedience’s sake for God.

Fifth, there are those serving the LORD, and they will serve Him even if the leader leaves or dies. This group is the strongest of all the groups. If every church had this group, every church would be doing something great for God.

Now, all of these groups are critical to the growth of a church. What we must be careful about is that we don't become critical of another group or jealous of another being closer to the leader. We also must be careful that we don't become jealous of someone passing us up. At the end of the day, we are serving the Lord, and if one gets closer to the leader because of God's power on their life, we ought to rejoice because we are not doing this so that we can be closest to the leader; we are doing this so that we can serve God and further His cause in this world.