Gospel Greatness

What He's done is help us understand what greatness truly is according to the Gospel. It's okay to want to be great. It's not okay to confess Christ and ignore everything He says about greatness. If you want to be great, you will be last and serve all. Now, let's just be clear. This is a pretty ambitious teaching of Jesus. He just flipped the idea of greatness on its head. He just taught something that's counter-cultural and counter-intuitive in all ways. He's telling us that to be a servant, the lowliest people in culture, if you're a servant of all, that makes you greater. That doesn't make sense. Think about it. My greatness is usually about Capital M, capital E, me. Right? When I'm thinking about my greatness, it's usually me. And he's teaching us it's about others. It's not about everyone serving you. It's about you serving everyone else. This is just a straight shot across how selfish and prideful I am. You know what's interesting in the Bible? There's a command lacking. The Bible never commands us to love ourselves. The Bible never says, love yourself. Every help book in the world says that. The Bible never says that. The Bible assumes you already love yourself. Love the Lord your God with all your strength, all your heart, all your might. Love your neighbor as yourself. We don't have to be taught self-love. We need to be taught how to do it properly, because usually when we're loving ourself, we're doing it in a destructive way. But there's no reason to teach people to be selfish. We have to teach kids to share, right? We have to be reminded to share. Let's look at this in a different way. If we go back to Mark 6, I think we're going to see a picture of what most people would think of when they hear about greatness. King Herod was the epitome, historically, of greatness. He had wealth, he had power, he had influence. He was the kind of guy who at a birthday party gets whatever he wants. All his friends come, they're there to be with him, to be closer to him. And he's the kind of guy who says whenever his daughter does something pleasing, he can say, ask me for whatever you want and I'll give it to you. That's great in the way we normally think of it. He's the kind of person that has the power that whenever somebody asks for something like a man's head on a platter, he provides it. If you think about King Herod, he is the typical idea of what we think of with great. Whatever he wants, he gets. He has all these people. All he says is, go do that. And somebody has to go and cut a man's head off and bring it to a party on a platter. Now that's gross. But that kind of power is normally what we think is great. But here we see Jesus, he's flipped that upside down. Jesus comes. And he comes to serve everyone. Jesus comes to seek and save and help people. Jesus comes and lays down his authority and remains silent in accusation. Jesus comes to get beaten, mocked, put to death. He has the power to make everybody there at the cross bow down with just one declaration. He has the authority to have everyone do whatever he wants. But if he commands everyone to bow down there while he's on the cross, everyone is going to bow down and suffer the wrath of God. Because he has not yet provided forgiveness. Instead of using his authority to have everyone bow down and suffer the wrath of God, he uses authority to die for them all. So that by faith they would be able to bow down being forgiven. That's what gospel greatness does. It uses power, authority, and influence for the well-being of others. Now there's some concerns and questions we should have about gospel greatness. If I'm gonna be last and serve all, well, if I'm seeking everybody else's good, who's seeking mine? Right, that is a kind of self-protection idea. If I'm not trying to at least serve me in some ways, who will? Brothers and sisters, this is where we believe God is the perfect giver of every good and perfect gift, or he's not. We're willing to serve others as fully as we truly believe God has come to give us anything and all things we need. We either trust He is who He says He is, the good and perfect giver of every good and perfect gift, and we serve others, trusting He fills us up when we need it, or we doubt that and we cling to our own. Are we willing to be poured out because God has filled up our cup? I want to be very clear. If you want to be first, you must be last. It doesn't mean you're a doormat. It doesn't mean you never win an argument. It doesn't mean you're always getting beat up. It doesn't mean you're always losing it. It simply means what your goal is, is to walk alongside of others and instead of trying to figure out how they can best serve you, you're trying to serve them. You're facilitating and helping them grow. I want to just mention practically here, It's pretty amazing. Whenever we try to get satisfaction out of others serving us, the typical fruit of that is just frustration. Right? No one really ever lives up to our expectations. But whenever we're postured in a way that we're trying to say, how can we serve others? How can I have a higher expectation of myself than I have for others? It's usually satisfaction. We see how other people grow and it's encouraging. So Jesus teaches essential truth. It's a very simple line, easy to remember. If anyone will be first, must be last of all and serve all. And then he continues his teaching. Look at verse 36. He took a child. He put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me." Okay, he takes a child, and I do believe that in Aramaic, the language Jesus would have been speaking, there's a bit of a play on words here. The word first is italia. The word child is talia. I believe he's bringing this child in, not because it's just this tender picture of Jesus with a child, Because the child is an object. Let's know what this means. We oftentimes think of this passage, and a lot of others, where Jesus is trying to be a tender, loving adult towards children, the God who loves children, and that is a true picture. That's actually not what's going on here. He's being very provocative. Again, we're in either Andrew or Peter's home, probably. Most likely, one of their relatives, and a young child is brought by Jesus, put there in the middle of the disciples, and simply says, whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me, he receives me, and he receives him as sent to me. Children in this culture weren't revered. They were actually seen as not helpful contributors to society. You had to grow up and start working to be valued. This isn't, I think, a tender picture of Jesus. I think it's him showing that those who are least in society are the ones that you should be serving. If you're to go and help and serve those who are like these children, then you're fulfilling the kingdom. And let me just get a picture of what a child does. When you're serving a child, like he's teaching here, Your goal is just to see that child grow up, right? Children rarely say thank you unless they're instructed to do so. The idea here is you're serving, you're spending your time and effort on those who aren't necessarily going to give you something in return. They don't have a value. They don't have something valuable they can give you back. They don't have money to pay you for your work. They don't have some kind of thing to repay. It's just someone to invest in, to watch them grow. Parenting is difficult. It's day-to-day, draining. and you're changing diapers, you're solving disputes over who gets that balloon, you're trying to help them understand this is what you wear, not this, you're feeding them, you're cleaning, you're doing all this labor, and you're doing it because you love the child and want to see them grow up into maturity. I believe that picture is what Jesus is saying here about how we treat everyone. Not just our own children. To invest in people in a way that we see them grow up and be dependable. You know, when you grow up, the whole idea is that you're not growing up to be independent. When you grow up, you're supposed to be more dependable. That's what it means to be grown up. Here. gospel greatness, the gospel servanthood is someone who invests in others. And notice he says, when you receive me and you receive this child in my name, you're really receiving the Father. This is the exact opposite thinking of the old, let's look out for old, number one. This is looking to care for the lovely, the unlovely. One of the more we've looked at this passage and this teaching, I think it corresponds with the teaching of Jesus that is unique and that something unique about Christians that we're supposed to love our enemies. Everyone understands and appreciates how to love the lovely, how to love those who will love us back. It's Christians who are called to do the more radical obedience. That is to love our enemies. Love the unlovely. Comfort the prickly. Seek those who are difficult. That is very much, I think, aligned with what Jesus is saying here, in that you don't just go about loving and walking with somebody and serving somebody for what you get out of it. You do it for the well-being of that person. Before we get into application, I want to finish the last section here, Gospel Welcome. John said to him, now this is odd because this is the only time we have John saying anything in the Gospel of Mark, and that we think throughout the Gospels. John speaks up. John is the brother of James. He has just given them a clear, direct answer about greatness. We already know that John, who is speaking, was not listening well and did not get what he was saying, because if we turn over in just one chapter, we're gonna see John and James arguing who gets to sit at the powerful, privileged positions next to Jesus. All right, so we already know the person who's engaging Jesus where he's at doesn't get what he's saying, John introduces something teacher We saw someone casting out demons in your name We tried to stop him because he was not following us Okay, there's three parts to this statement John says what happened there was a man casting out demons in your name and Okay, what our response was, we tried to stop him, and then third, why did they try to stop him? They were not following us. Now, notice Jesus rebukes him. Do not stop him. He's correcting John in what he's affirmed, and as I look at the passage, what seems to stand out is the reasoning behind wanting to stop him. because he was not following us. There seems to be some kind of a clique mentality among the disciples. Let's just go back to the most basic three teachings of discipleship. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me, referring to Jesus. Look at their reasoning. He was not following us. They're looking at these other men, this other band, who is casting out demons in Jesus' name, and their problem with him is that he's not part of them. I wonder if what's going on here is that they're establishing their own standard against this man, and therefore judging him wrong because he's not with them, when Jesus clearly is saying, no, my kingdom's bigger than what we're doing right now. If he's with us, don't be against him. There's a unity in Christ alone that he's proposing, and I believe it really just shoots across another way. Our pride oftentimes is revealed. We want people to live up to our standards. They need to be with us in every way according to our opinions. I believe that's what's wrong with the passage, or what's wrong with the disciples here. He's not following us. Well, no, Jesus wants to make it clear. If he's following me, Then he's with us, and we're not gonna stand against him. He continues, for one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives a cup of water to drink because he belonged to Christ will by no means lose his reward. A cup of water seems like a small thing, but this is essential of life. And water is oftentimes scarce in this world that Jesus is speaking into, so this is a great gift to give someone a cup of water. It is giving them life. So this is no small deed he's speaking of, but if you do it in his name, there's a reward. I wanna make sure we understand two things. We are saved by grace alone, apart from works. We are saved by grace alone apart from works. We're saved through faith. That's the first thing. The second thing is your works matter. There will be giving and account before God for what we do and do not do in this life that Christ has purchased. There's a reward. For what we do in the name of Christ, there is a, there's going to be a correction for what we did not do. We should be living for that reward. I want to close with a few reflections as we think about the teaching. If anyone will be first, he must be last of all, and servant of all. The key point here is we must realize, first of all, that Christ has come. to serve and be servant of all. He is the model of his own teaching here. He is the standard. It really challenges us as we think about life in our church. We first must see that he is the standard. He is the high bar. He came to pour out all that he has using all of his authority, all of his power for us. Therefore we now live differently. Because really there's two ways to live. We either live to be served or to serve. There's kind of two postures we can take. To serve or to be served. We either come and we think we're a consumer, which is, we're natural born consumers. We are trained to be consumers in our culture. It's something we have to repent of. We either come to church thinking we're gonna be a consumer, or this is what's good for me, or we come and say, how can I participate? If we follow our Master, if we follow our Lord Jesus Christ, we're gonna consider others more important than ourselves. We're gonna consider others' interests more important than our own. That's just Paul applying what Jesus is saying here, I think, in Philippians 2. Or we can be like every other sinner and just say, I want everyone to serve me. You know, it's incredible, the typical rule in church is that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. I don't think that's true here, but it really bothers me that too many people get burned out in church service, either because they're doing it alone, without gratitude, or just not the right support. Church, I want to be a body that that fulfills Ephesians 4 16. Paul says it this way, when each part that is member of the body is working properly, notice the word work, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. That is a beautiful picture of application of what Jesus is teaching here. If we're all committed to serving one Christ all together, doing our part properly, The body grows, building itself up in love. The most important service we can have is pointing each other at Jesus. So I ask a reflective question for you to think about. Who is growing closer in their walk with Christ because of your contribution? Who is growing in an awareness of sin, of themselves, of the love of God, of the grace of God, because of your contribution. Who are you opening up the word of God with and praying with and praying for? And again, this isn't to say, you know, how dare you? You're not doing it for everybody. But I kind of think, all right, who should I be focused on? Who can I start directing more attention toward in a way that I would see somebody else growing up into Christ because of my contribution? Let's think outside of the church in a little more broad sense. If anyone would be first, it must be last of all, and servant of all. I really appreciated Will's sermon last week on wisdom from Proverbs. And as I kept thinking about this passage, James 3, wisdom from below or above, just kept coming back as true to this passage as well. Here's what James says in chapter 3, beginning at verse 13. Do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not wisdom that comes from above. is earthly and spiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. When we deny ourselves, carry a cross, and follow Christ, we're gonna live according to his wisdom, And living in a way that that seeks to be last and servant of all, there is no room for the jealousy and selfish ambition that brings the kind of disorder he's warning us of here. When we stop asking ourselves, you know, God, what have you done for me lately? Or asking of others, what have they done for me lately? We get rid of this wisdom from below that is dangerous and deadly that stirs up bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. So a reflective question here. Do you praise God when others are blessed in ways you're not? This is a part of seeing God as the good and perfect giver of every good and perfect gift. Are we able to rejoice in other people's blessings? Is there jealousy or rejoicing when we see other people's blessings? And the reason that's important is it's a posture. I want to see that other person progressing. I want to see other people joyful. I want to see God blessing them. It's not a me-centered world. It's a Christ-centered world that considers others. Finally, if anyone will be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. What are your ambitions? What are you trying to achieve and what will it cost you? Have your ambitions been encouraged or rebuked by Christ's teaching? Let me ask that another way. If you get what you're really longing for and working for, is it gonna satisfy you? is what you're striving for, really going to satisfy you. Because what Christ says is great. What Christ says is a life that's full of joy, is a life where you're last of all, and servant of all. To put this very briefly or simply, are we living just to be Christ to others? Whoever's in front of your face, are you striving to be Christ to that person? Whoever is right there, are you praying for that opportunity? God, just give me somebody to invest in because it's about people. Think about this more specifically. If you're a child at home, what are you dreaming about and practicing? What do you want to do when you leave home, and how is that going to fulfill what Christ has commanded here to be last of all and servant of all? If you're a child with siblings, are you being last of all and third of all by promoting peace with your siblings? Are you asking yourself, how can I be a blessing to my sibling? And I say that because I know that's the hardest relationship sometimes. Those we're closest to. Do you honor your parents? That's how you are last of all and servant of all. Those are the clear practical ways Christ would give you an opportunity to fulfill this commandment and enjoy his blessing. Peace with your siblings, honor your parents. Young adults, students, are you seeking to serve others with whatever degree you have? I praise God, I look around and I see a lot of people pursuing degrees to be teachers, lawyers, doctors, engineers. These are great places of influence, and they're also great positions of influence. Are you pursuing this with the idea, how will Christ use this advanced degree, which really just means you have an advanced responsibility? The more you're learning, the more you're responsible, the more you're being invested in, the more you're going to be poured out. I praise God, I see many of our young adults wanting to get these different degrees so that they can serve others. But the challenge as you're studying, as you're preparing, as you're even entering the workforce right now, are you working towards thinking of how I'll be last of all, servant of all? parents, with children. Are we helping our children see this by the way we live? What do our kids see us prioritizing and what's first and most important? Do they see a life poured out for others being last of all and servant of all? Or do they hear us too often complaining about others? Do they see us prioritizing things that are not the things that Christ would have us prioritize. Midlife crisis candidates. I am one now, so I thought I'd throw this in. Keyword candidate. As I wrestle with this, evaluating life based upon who's been blessed rather than the goals you thought you'd achieve, that's how we approach life. God's in control of where we go. It's, it's really asking, who have I invested in and how do we see fruit from that? Have I poured out my life enough? Not, have I gotten every position that I wanted? And how can I now change my life course so that I am poured out more effectively, rather than thinking, have I fulfilled all the rules that Vanguard gives me so that I might retire well? The older generation, I plead with you, model. Be present with us, model for us what it looks like to have the right priorities, to serve all, to be last of all. I praise God there's many of you who are just fantastic models of this. We simply need more, more time with you. As we conclude, I want us to end with a reflection in Romans 12. First, Paul gives this great excerpt, you know, from Romans 1 to 11, it's this thick theology of how sinful we are, and how great the grace of God is, and how glorious He is. And then it just comes down to, now be transformed in your mind. The application after 12 is just so simple. God does all this work, and the application is just very simple. He makes two points that I think help align with what Jesus is saying here. The first is from Romans 12, three, do not think more of yourself. To live the life Jesus is saying here, it requires humility, and humility is not thinking less of ourselves. Humility is recognizing who we are properly in Christ and seeking to serve others and make sure they're better off than ourselves. But the passage that actually stands out the most in Romans 12, is 1210. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Anybody who really wants to achieve greatness has to have a little bit of competition. That's why I love that declaration. Outdo one another in honoring each other. Outdoing one another in showing honor. Any striving towards greatness requires some competition. What if that's how we were competing with each other? Seeking to outdo and showing honor. That's the exact opposite of what these disciples were doing, aren't they? They were arguing over who's the greatest. Whereas Christ is saying, outdo one another and showing honor. I want to point out this is an amazing way to live according to Christ. It's a dangerous way to live. It's risky. You're not looking out for number one. You're trusting God to do so. You have to ask yourself, is He truly trustworthy? Is He everyone, is He everything He's ever said to be? And if so, it's also amazingly dangerous in that it's going to change everything about your life. your home, your church, your world. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, for your kindness. We thank you that you are the God who has come to serve us, to save us. We thank you, Lord, that you did not cling to your glory, but you came and took upon our nature. You came and were hung on a tree to die for us so that we might live. Help us, Lord, to know, by putting into practice this teaching, that we might consider others more important than ourselves for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.