heritage = inheritance which is "something received because of who you are."

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There is a desire in every human being's life to be somebody important -- to rule over something. When God made man, the scriptures say that He made us in "His image." I want you to realize that you are made in the image of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords! You were created to be the friend and companion of the God of the Universe and so when God created man for fellowship, the earth was created as man's kingdom and God allowed the man -- who was in the image of God -- to rule and reign over the earth.

When Satan tricked Adam and Eve it was by saying "if you eat the fruit you will not die, but become as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil." That false promise that Satan made was what caused Eve and Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit and sin against God! Of course, when Adam ate the fruit, the reverse effect of what Adam desired happened and he was removed from his position of authority as ruler of the garden of Eden and forced into becoming the servant of sin. He thought by going against God's Word that sin would make him more powerful, but instead it cost him everything that he had and made him and his offspring slaves to the powers of sin!

And now thousands of years later, there is still this desire, this need, to be ruler and to be a king over something that is within each of us, and this hunger for power, the need to feel as if we are our own person with our own mind and will still drives people to the fruit of sin! Satan is still trying to make people think that by sinning and doing whatever feels good regardless of what God's word says or who it hurts "makes you your own man!" It is the same lie that started in a garden a long, long time ago. And I see people refuse to live for God and refuse to conquer their fleshly desires and give in to what feels right at the moment, and yet rather than ending up powerful and with the control that they desire, they end up enslaved to the effects of sin and powerless to stop the decline of morality in their lives and those of their family! Satan is a liar and being willing to sin at will and do "whatever you want to as your own man" doesn't make you a king, but makes you a servant to sin and it's effects. That's why Jesus said:

You are trying to prove that you don't listen to anybody and yet you end up being a servant to your sin! A lifestyle of sin doesn't prove that you are bad and tough, but proves that you are a servant to a hard taskmaster and that you do not have the ability on your own to break free! If alcohol proves that you are your own ruler, then why does it cause you to do things that you regret later? If doing drugs prove that you are in control, then why do they cause you to lose control!? If immorality is proving that you are king, then why do you have to return to the slimy pit over and over again, and why can't you quit on your own?! Because you really have become enslaved to the sin! You have become it's servant! You can't help yourself and your attitude that -- I don't need the Bible to tell me what to do -- is really just trying to hide from yourself the reality that you have become a servant to sin and have fallen for it's lies! Sin is a hard taskmaster: it will take you a lot farther than you want to go and keep you there a lot longer than you intended to stay and you will owe more than you ever wanted to pay! People's lives day in and day out prove the words of Jesus to be true: whoever commits sin is the servant of sin! Your efforts at freedom have ended up as slavery!

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The bad thing about the lie of Satan is that many people try to live for God and yet still believe in what he is telling them! They want to live for the Lord but yet they are still convinced that they must have the liberty to sin in order to be their own person! And so they live in a state of limbo: from extreme highs to lows until they finally reach a decision where they must choose one lifestyle! It's hard to serve God easy and it's easy to serve God hard! Jesus said it like this in Matthew 6:24:

No man can serve two masters! You just can't do it! Eventually you will hate one and love the other! You will eventually begin to hold on to one and despise the other! You can tell Christians who are trying to serve the master of sin as well as God because they do not enjoy coming to church! They begin to despise coming to a Bible Study. They really are not into praise and worship and really resent that they have to get up on their off day to come to the house of God! If God's Spirit moves and wants us to linger a little longer in His presence, it exasperates them. Can I diagnose your problem?! If church is a drudgery, and you are beginning to despise the things of God, can I tell you what is wrong!? You are trying to serve two masters! You are trying to serve God and at the same time commit sin and by doing so you are becoming the servant of sin as well as God -- and Jesus said "no man can do that!" You were not created with the ability to serve more than one master! If you are beginning to despise the things of God and His house, then that is a sure sign that you are trying to serve another master at the same time!

God will not put more upon us than we can bear, but we can place responsibility upon ourselves that is impossible for us to carry! Jesus said "no man can serve two masters!" You do not have the ability to serve two masters at once! It is not within your power to do so! When frustration comes and confusion comes and doubt and fear and uncertainty comes in my walk with God, I can ALWAYS trace it back to the fact that I'm trying to serve something else besides God! If you feel overwhelmed then you are listening too hard to something else! You are trying to please somebody else besides God! It doesn't have to be sin that your other master! It could be work, your family, a boss, a motive that is not in line with God's will or anything else that would cause us to serve! A servant is someone who attends to the details and takes care of their master! When you are tending to the details of your relationship with God and taking time out to pray and fast and study God's Word and have good Christian fellowship and trying to reach somebody else, then you are being a servant of God! But when the work, or a dream, or somebody becomes the focal point of your time and you spend all of your spare time trying to take care of the details of something else, then that has become your master! And it will cause you to become frustrated with the things of God: not because you don't love God, but because you are trying to serve two masters and you are clinging the one and despising the other! Frustration is a sure sign that you are trying to serve two masters! But you are not physically able to do so! And so your frustration builds and builds until you have an explosion of frustration and then the spirit of quitting grabs a hold of you! No man can serve two masters, so if you try to do it, then eventually something has to give!

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You've probably heard of the story of Moses how that the ruler of Egypt, Pharaoh, got scared because of the tremendous birth rate of the Jewish babies and ordered all of the male babies slaughtered. Moses' mother hid him as long as she could and then decided to place him in God's hands. The scriptures say that she made a little basket and lined it with pitch and with the help of Moses' sister, Miriam, set the basket afloat on the Nile river. God led that little basket down stream to where the daughter of Pharaoh was bathing and when she realized that a little baby boy was in it, she adopted it as her own son! God even worked it out where she hired Moses' real mother to babysit Moses for the first few years and the mother got to train up Moses to understand "that there is only one God and you are not Egyptian, you are a Hebrew and God has a special plan for your life!" As he got older, Moses was educated as one of Pharaoh's grandsons and as a possible heir to the throne of Egypt! He learned about the many gods of the Egyptians and how the Egyptian law system worked and yet still inside, he knew that God had called him to help the Jewish people! Moses was trying to serve two masters: the gods of Egypt and the God of glory! But his frustration grew and grew and trying to serve both masters caused him to reach the point of decision one day when he saw an Egyptian taskmaster beat a Jewish man. In anger, this grandson of Pharaoh and possible heir to the throne suddenly chose which master was more important to him and he slew the Egyptian and saved the life of the Jewish man and fled the palace for the wilderness! Moses had reached a place where he had to choose one or the other! And if you are trying to serve two masters, whether it be God and sin or God and whatever, you will eventually soon come to a point of decision where you must choose! Moses chose right! The scriptures say:

That is, Moses decided that the end result of being the servant of Christ would be far greater than being the servant of sin! He also decided that even if he had to live as a poor shepherd in the wilderness alone and yet be right with God that he would be much happier than being the king of all of Egypt! Can I tell you that being a servant in God's house will bring you more fulfillment and more satisfaction than reaching the top of what this world has to offer!? Sin has a pleasure for a season, but the joy that God gives cannot be replaced or even substituted! You cannot buy the joy of the Holy Ghost! I agree with whoever wrote the 84th Psalm when they wrote:

One day in the house of God is better than a thousand any where else! And even being a "doorkeeper" or, as it is in the original Hebrew, "just sit at the doorstop" rather than to have "tents" of pleasure in the world! In modern terminology, the writer was saying: even if I wasn't allowed into God's presence I would rather stand at the door and look in rather than live in the finest mansion that the world has to offer! That is the voice of someone like Moses! That is the voice of someone who has probably learned the hard way that there is no substitute for the blessings and presence of God in our life! Take the finest of everything in this world and all the things money can buy, and yet you still will not have true happiness or forgiveness for your sins! The best things in life really are free: and it's called being a servant of Jesus Christ! When I think back to what God has done in my life, I can stand with Moses and the writer of the 84th Psalm and truly say: "if God's will for me is the backside of a desert somewhere, then I would rather be in the desert than in the palace of sin happy only for a season and a servant to that cruel taskmaster!" I want to be like the servant in Exodus 21 that chooses to stay a servant forever because he loves his master! I'm a love slave to Jesus Christ! I'll do His wishes whatever it may cost me because I love Him so much!

That's what Moses did! He threw fame, fortune, palaces, and a shot to be the most powerful man in the world to obey God and serve only HIM and His people! That's why that over 19 times in scripture after his death, Moses is called the "servant of the LORD" because he chose to serve God in the wilderness, even when he did not understand, rather than to live in sin in Egypt! And it was someone like that, a "servant of the LORD," that saw the miraculous hand of God like no one had ever seen! It was someone who was willing to forsake all to be "a servant of the Lord" that saw his family freed from sin's clutches and talked with God face to face upon the mountain top! It was a "servant of the Lord" who was able to lead millions of people to the promised land despite a barren desert! The scriptures say:

That is Moses was a servant of the Lord so that his testimony would be preached today! Can I tell you that God is calling us to forget about our kingdoms and our dreams and our own plans for our life and put serving Him and His kingdom at the number 1 spot?! The Spirit is calling a group of people today to get beyond living for yourself and become a "servant of the Lord!" Whatever the Lord wants you to do, then do it! Don't worry about what it might cost you! Who cares? If it means living alone in the wilderness, obey God! Allow the testimony of Moses to become your life story because it is someone who a "servant of the Lord" that will see their family and friends saved out of sin! It will be a "servant of the Lord" who will lead others to a promised place in God's blessings and who will see the miraculous hand of God in their life! Become concerned about pleasing God in the little everyday things! Become a servant of the Lord and see if God doesn't bless you!

It was said of Apostle Paul that he was a "servant of Christ!" It was said of Epaphras that he was a "servant of Christ!" It was said of Peter, James, Jude, and John that they were "servants of Christ!" And yet, how would you like to have the power that they had? How would you like to see the miracles that they saw? How would you like to have the walk with God that they walked? How would you like to have their anointing or their wisdom or stand in their shoes at judgment day? But Paul did not get his blessings and power from being the "chiefest of sinners" but by becoming a "servant of Jesus Christ!" And that is why that Jesus Christ said in our text, "whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all!" God exalts those who will humble themselves and become a servant to Him! He said that the "last shall be first and the first last!" If you want the greatest things of God's kingdom, then you must become a servant! That's why the Psalmist said that he would rather be the doorkeeper in the house of God, because he had learned that God blesses the most those with the heart of a servant! A person like Moses who will push away convenience and other motives and obey the will and the Word of God!

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This principle in God's kingdom is why Jesus Christ refused to put on a crown and be the political king of the Jews during His ministry. He was God in flesh and He certainly is King of Kings and Lord of Lords but yet He had come in flesh to show us how to live in the flesh and so He became a servant! Remember what He said in our text:

The God of Glory became a servant to His creation! Think about that! Think about who Jesus Christ really was when He got up from supper the night before His death and like a common servant took a towel and began to wash the feet of His disciples and even the one who had already betrayed Him! He was the ruler of the universe and yet He became a servant! And yet, we think that it is beneath us to love one another and forgive one another and to serve one another and God? Are we better than Jesus Christ!?

But the lesson that He was trying to teach us that night was a powerful one: those who are going to be blessed in this spiritual kingdom will be those who learn what it is like to be a servant of God and each other! The key is having a servant's heart and when man tried to become king by exalting himself and using his own free will, God got off of the throne and came to earth as one of His creation and showed us the proper way to get power by becoming a servant to God and to each other! Becoming a servant of sin will not give you what you truly want! But serving God will! It is dying out to our fleshly desires that allows Jesus Christ to reign in us and allows us to truly become "kings and priests unto God!" Jesus Christ was showing them that night, the real power comes to the servants!

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Our reward for becoming a servant of the Lord is more than just seeing signs and wonders and feeling good. Our text in Isaiah foretells what the heritage or inheritance of those who are servants of the Lord will be in their everyday life:

This verse was talking about the city of Jerusalem which had been destroyed and was lying in waste because of the people's sin of trying to serve two masters, idols and the true God, at the same time. And as the people looked out over their destroyed homes and realized that it was a judgment that they had brought onto themselves because of their actions, God began to describe how beautiful He would make it if they would simply become "servants of the Lord" again! God was saying to them "what has been torn down and destroyed because of sin, I will make beautiful!" "I allowed the judgment to come because of your actions, but if you will turn to me and become my servant, I will not only reverse the curse, but rebuild what it has destroyed!" And this time it would be far beyond what you even dreamed that it could have been!

Every one of us have reaped the wages of sin and suffered judgment and destruction and pain because of our sinful actions! But even though you may have reaped the wages of past sin in your life, God is willing and able to turn it into something beautiful! The areas of your life that are the most painful and the most broken are the areas that God said that He would rebuild and restore, if you will become a "servant of the Lord!" And not only will God rebuild those areas, but they will be far mightier and much more beautiful than you ever dreamed that they could be!

We've all made mistakes and we have all experienced the scars and effects of sin, but when you become a servant of the Lord, God will set about using the judgment in your life as the foundation for the greatest blessings that you have ever had!

Your children will be taught of the Lord. That is, God Himself will instruct them and talk to them. This is a promise that God's Spirit will move upon your children and that He will talk to your families' hearts from a young age on if you will become a "servant of the Lord!" What better promise can a parent have to know that being a "servant of the Lord" gets God involved in your children's lives? They can choose for themselves whether or not they will serve Him, but if they choose to walk away they will do so knowing that they are rejecting a loving and merciful God who is real and desires to have a relationship with them! They WILL feel the hand of God reaching out to them and drawing them close! And GOD will begin to teach them of the right way to live!

You will no longer have to live in fear or terror of what might happen to you. You can face the future with faith that God is in control of the future and will not put more upon you than you can bear. God is going to establish and order the steps of those who are His servants! What a promise! When fear tries to grip your life, or the future seems uncertain, you can smile and praise God because you are His servant and it is His duty to take care of your needs! A servant in God's house does not want for anything!

God will not attack you nor cause you to stumble. God will be on your side through every battle and situation! He will not let anything happen to you that is not in His perfect will! The heathen and the servant of sin does not have that promise! They live in danger of the unexpected of the storms of life sweeping them away, but the "servant of the Lord" will not have any enemy or storm gather against them that is not allowed by God! If you are facing some great foe or a terrible test and you are obeying the Word of the Lord and seeking to be a servant of the Lord, then know that God has allowed it to come in your life for a reason, and He will not put more upon you than you can bear! If you are living for God and you are facing a situation, then you can overcome it through God's help, because if you couldn't, God would not allowed it near you!

And here is the best promise! No weapon formed against you will prosper! That doesn't mean that people and Satan are not going to try to form a weapon for your demise of that you are not going to face a Goliath, but you have a promise that it will not prosper! It will not work! And when they talk bad about you or try to run your reputation down, it will not work either! Why? Because these things are "the heritage of the servants of the Lord!" When you become His servant, God begins to intervene on your behalf!

When you weigh the facts, there should be no contest between whether or not you choose to be a servant of sin or to God, but let me point out that the opposite of these scriptures are what you get for serving the master of sin!

When you serve God, He rebuilds what sin destroyed, but if you serve sin more destruction will come.

When you serve God, He begins to deal with and teach your children, but if you serve sin, it begins to control them!

When you serve God, you can find healing and freedom from fear and terror, but when you serve sin, get used to fear and terror of the unknown because it will be a daily part of your life!

When you serve God, God will not attack you nor allow anyone out of His will to attack you, but when you serve sin, God will trip you up to prove that His Word is true and also remove any protection so that you are easy target for anything the devil wants to bring against you!

And finally, when you serve God, He will not allow any weapon formed against you to prosper, but when you serve sin, almost all of them will work! I'll take the attitude of Joshua and say "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!"

This sermon would not be complete unless I also mentioned the eternal inheritance of your choice of master. Jesus used a parable to illustrate this point much better than I could:

In other words, if you are a faithful servant, you will inherit everything that is His! But if you are a servant of sin, then you will inherit everything that sin has to offer in the end which is only destruction and eternal damnation! Hopefully I've changed your mind and attitude to yielding to God and becoming a "servant of the Lord" today! It is not something horrible to yield to God at all, but something that brings power, blessings, and eventually everything that God has! No man can serve two masters and eventually you will have to choose one over the other! But choose wisely, because the servant will inherit all the master has to offer! I'll choose to be the servant of the Lord because I want the "heritage of the servants of the Lord!"