I would very much appreciate your prayers for me over the next week. Tomorrow afternoon, I get on a plane at Philadelphia Airport and fly to Dubai. On Thursday, I will spend an evening with about one hundred leaders, talking about the Gospel in everyday life; and then Friday morning will preach at the worship services there. Friday is the Sunday services in Dubai and then a weekend conference on Friday and Saturday. \ The United Christian Church of Dubai is a wonderful church; some of you remember I have talked about it before; it's a church of sixty nations, and you have a chance, really, to preach to the world.
A Congregation of Nations
People are there for three or four years, and they go back to nations all over the world. The last time I was there, the pastor asked if, as people left and I shook their hands, if they would tell me what nation they were from, and about ten minutes in, I was in tears; it was just nation after nation after nation after nation. So, it's a wonderful opportunity; please be praying with us. Well, you live in a culture and are surely, some way, influenced by that culture, that just gets greatness all wrong.
You're not great because you can hit a ball that's hurled at you at ninetyfive miles an hour; you're not great because you've had a number one hit; you're not great because you've acquired wealth and possessions; you're not great because you're in a position of power. Sorry, you're not great because you're beautiful or handsome; things you had nothing to do with--well, maybe if you have enough money to reform your body as some would do. Those things just don't define greatness; and if you look at the lives of the people that we call great, you will realize quickly that they are not so great after all.
And so this passage is really very important for us; it's very timely for us; because in a culture that is obsessed with celebrity, and in that way obsessed with this twisted definition of what greatness is about, we really need to understand greatness from a Biblical perspective. Turn there, if you would, to page 845 in your church Bibles. Now, let me set up where we are in Mark; this passage we're going to look at follows, first of all, the amazing glory of the Transfiguration where Christ's humanity is peeled back and His divinity is revealed and His place in the plan of redemption.
That is followed by the debacle of the disciples being asked to deliver a little boy from the evil that he was under control of. And the disciples prayerlessly attempted to do that, and it was just a mess. And Christ delivers the boy, and then He tells His disciples the reason they had no power is because they tried to do this thing in their own power. Now remember, I have said this to you, that Jesus had chosen these men, not just to be witnesses to the work of the Kingdom, but to be tools, participants, instruments of the work of that Kingdom.
And so these disciples were in His 24/7 school of discipleship; and His goal was not just that they would be informed so they would have a proper theology of the incarnation, but His goal was that they would be transformed by means of the person and work of the Messiah that they were following, that their hearts would become hearts of faith and that they would live in a radically different way. That was Christ's goal. So after the debacle of their inability to deliver this little boy, Christ wants to get the disciples apart again and to teach them and so He's, as you will look there in verse 30, He's sort of sneaking through Galilee.
He's gained a lot of notoriety; whenever it would be known that He was someplace, immediately a crowd would gather of the broken of humanity and beseech Him for healing. And Jesus wants to focus on His preparation of, and transformation of, these ones whom He's chosen to represent Him. Verse 31 gives us the epicenter of His teaching: "...for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, 'The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.'"
(ESV) Jesus again wants the disciples to understand the epicenter of His reason for coming. His reason for coming was not just to be a great miracle worker, and by being a great miracle worker, relieve suffering of the fall. His purpose was not just to be a great teacher and unfold the truths of the Kingdom. The epicenter of His mission was the cross and the tomb. You could argue that a great title for this little section of teaching could be "This is how bad sin is, and this is how great grace is."
Guilty Before God
Sin is just this horrific, that it leaves every human being broken, unable to live the way they were meant to live. But even more importantly, it leaves every human being guilty before God. We have to believe, we have to preach, God's anger is real and justified; because in some way, all of us are rebels against His authority, rebels against His law, rebels against His glory. His anger is real; and without the righteousness of His anger, there would be no need for the cross. And all of us have been infected by sin; it is the ultimate human disease, and all of us are without ability to deliver ourselves.
Here's why: sin is not just a matter of your behavior. If it was a matter of behavior, perhaps you could step out of that behavior and learn to behave more appropriately. No! Sin is a matter of the heart; it's a matter of the nature; it's in every fiber of your thoughts and desires and motivations, and you cannot defeat sin because you are unable to escape you! And so because this holy God is also a God of glorious grace, He made a way in the coming of His Son, not to compromise His righteousness, but to provide justification and forgiveness and the imputation of righteousness and deliverance and new life.
Jesus had to come. He had to live that perfect life. He had to be the Sacrificial Lamb. He had to conquer death by the empty tomb. There was no other way, and so God controlled the march of history so, at a certain point, His son would come. You could argue that the cross and the empty tomb define who you are and define who God is. You are guilty and unable. God is holy and graciously willing. There's hope! And you see, it's very important for you to realize the problem with the disciples was not just that they didn't understand Christ's mission; it's very clear that they were still confused about the mission of Christ.
That confusion is a deeper confusion; they didn't know who they were; they didn't know the gravity of their own need; they didn't know their powerlessness to defeat sin or they wouldn't have tried, in the previous vignette, to try to defeat it on their own. And there is in all of us a tendency to minimize the gravity of our condition. We're good at explaining away our sin. We say, "It's a busy day," or we say, "We weren't feeling well." Or, we say, "Look who I am living near," or "Look at the pressure of the situation."
All of those things minimize sin; and when you minimize sin, then you minimize the grace of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. You only esteem the cross; you only celebrate the cross when you're ready to admit how desperate your state is. The disciples didn't know who they were. And they have an interesting response to this moment of teaching. Look what it says in 32, "But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him." The Gospel is bad news before it becomes good news, because it forces you to face the reality of sin in order to understand the glory of grace.
These men didn't want to think about the reality that Christ was marching toward His death. When Christ says that He's going to be delivered into the hands of men, He's not saying somehow at that moment, life will be out of His control. Remember Jesus said, "No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord." He's announcing what is the plan of God. And for these men, it was unthinkable that this One that they had given their lives to follow would die, and even more unthinkable was this inconceivable thing of the resurrection.
Afraid to Ask More
And they just didn't want to think about it; they were afraid to ask more and so they didn't. Now immediately after this discussion, Christ leads His disciples to Capernaum; and on the way, He observes that they are in quite an aggressive discussion--an argument. It is a bit of a shocking argument. Well, it's not a bit of; it's a real shocking argument. And when Jesus asked the disciples, because He has observed as they're walking that they're arguing, what they were arguing about, they don't want to tell Him.
Well, He knew. They were arguing, on the heels of what He's just talked about, about who was the greatest. Now, I want to put this in context for you. This is the second time in Mark where Jesus has directly predicted, with some detail, His coming death. The last time Jesus talked about the death that He was marching toward, that was His purpose for coming, (follow me...) His discussion was followed immediately by Him calling the disciples to also take up a cross and to deny themselves and to follow Him.
That discussion was, "Not only do I carry a cross; but if you want to follow me, you must carry a cross; you must die to your centrality in your universe; you must die to the glory of you; you must die to your little kingdom, and you must live for Mine." It is shocking then that immediately after Christ talking about His death this time, the discussion is, "Who is the greatest?" And I would say to you: the fact that that conversation follows this moment of teaching is empirical evidence of why the cross is necessary - this is what sin does to us.
Sin fills us with a desire for own greatness; sin presses us into the center of our universe; sin does make it all about us. You could argue that the most seductive idol of idols is the idol of self. That's why it feels so good to win an argument; that's why it feels so good to tell the best story; that's why it feels good to drive a better car than your neighbor; that's why it feels good to step over somebody as you walk up the ladder of success. Because somehow, sin causes you to forget God, to forget the reason that you were given breath, and to put yourself in the one place that you and I must never be - the center of our world.
Somehow, someway, all of us do it! Perhaps there's a way that all of us have done it even this week: a moment of selfrighteousness, a moment of arrogance, a flash of a put-down, yelling at your child and walking away, spending money that you don't have on something that would make you happy. Somehow, we press ourselves to the center. And you don't want to be in a situation where you look at the disciples and say, "I can't relate to that." I wish I could say, "I can't relate to that." I would've probably been in on this argument, and I probably would've given empirical evidence of why I was greater than the next guy.
And you probably would've too. That's what sin does to us; that's why Paul in Second Corinthians 5:15 says that, "Jesus came so that those who live would no longer (Do you know what comes next?) live for themselves." Well, Jesus sits these great ones down, and He says this to them: "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and a servant of all." You see, Jesus immediately is saying this: greatness is not about power; it's not about position; it's not about possessions; it's not about your performance; greatness is not about those things.
It's not about who you are and what you've accomplished; that's not greatness. Greatness - you've got to get this - is an attitude of the heart; that's what greatness is. Greatness begins in the heart; greatness lives in the heart; that's where it's resident. And He says, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and a servant of all." These words shouldn't surprise us. Doesn't Scripture teach that, "God resists the proud, (What does it say next?) but he gives grace to the humble"? That's the heart of God.
Greatness Is Servanthood
It shouldn't surprise us that Jesus says greatness is actually attached to servanthood. Think with me of the two great commands; you could say that this passage is just a restatement of the two great commands. When Jesus was asked to summarize the law, in other words to say, "What does a successful human life look like--a life lived the way God designed for life to be lived?" He said, here it is: "First of all, this person must love Me with all their heart." That means in my heart is a joy in being a worshipful service of the plan and the purpose of God; that I live not for my greatness; I live for the greatness of God, and that's what moves and motivates me.
I want God front and center; I want His Kingdom to prosper; I want His will to be done; I want His glory to be seen. What motivates me is not me; it's Him; it's loving, constant servanthood of God. Do you live that way? Do you relate to your husband or wife in a way that pushes the glory of God forward? Or, is it your glory? Do you relate to your children in a way that elevates in them the glory of God? Do you want your neighbor somehow to begin to see God for who He is, and you live before them that way?
Do you use your possessions and your money and your time and your energies for His glory? Are you living as a servant, or are you living as a king? And then, what is the second great command? "Love your neighbor as yourself." That, because God is in His rightful place, then I am now freed to be part of what He would do in your life; I'm no longer living this inward life where it is all about me, but I'm motivated by the needs of others. I don't just live for what interests me, what would be comfortable for me, what would be nice for me, what's timely for me; I'm engaged at the level of my heart in the lives of the people that God, in His sovereignty, has placed in my path.
There's a great example of this in Ephesians 4 when Paul talks about communication. You don't have turn there. Listen to what he says about our talk: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear." Paul's definition of unwholesome talk is not vocabulary. We have reduced unwholesome talk to vocabulary; we've missed the whole point of this passage. Unwholesome talk is talk that's done with selfish intention.
Wholesome and unwholesome, according to Paul in your talk, starts with the intention of your heart. Paul is saying, "If you want to speak in a way that's wholesome, you speak this way - only such is good for building others up." Wow! Is that the intention of our talk? How often is your talk consciously motivated by a desire that others would be edified by it? How much unedifying talk goes on as fits the occasion; talk that's timely and appropriate because we want it to be wholesome because we're serving God, yes, even with our communication!
And if that's not enough, he says, "That it may give grace to the ones who hear." That, "Oh, that my words would actually be a tool of His transforming grace that is the gift of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is the hope of the universe." You see, that is being a servant, that even with my communication, I am living out the two great commands; I am a willing, worshipful servant of God; and I am, because of that, a willing, loving servant of the people in my life. Well, what is the ultimate example of that?
Have This Mind Among Yourselves
Well, hear these words from Philippians 2: Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross The life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate model, the ultimate example of the spirit that Christ is calling His disciples to.
And then Jesus moves to give a physical illustration of what He has just talked about. He calls a child out of the group, takes the child into the crook of His arm, and He says, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me." Now, there has been a lot of teaching about this passage; I want to say this first to you: the main point of Christ in this moment was not to bless this child; surely that's there. He was not first teaching the value of this child; surely that's there; He's giving a demonstration of the servant-humility that He has just talked about.
In this moment where the spotlight is now on Christ and this child by the very means of this act, these disciples, who have quested to be great, are in the background. And Jesus says, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me." What is He saying? What does that child represent? This child has no power; this child has no position; he has no station; he has nothing that he can offer you. In receiving that child, in loving that child, in serving that child, you have to forsake all of those things.
This child has nothing to give you. There's nothing in it for you - that's what's being taught here. And when you do that, you get what the Kingdom is about; you get why Christ came; you get why the Father sent Him; that's the humility that God is talking about when He says, "I resist the proud, but give grace to the humble." I move toward that child in joyful, loving, humble service; I minister to him with joy, with knowledge that there is no return for me because all of the things that I would wrongly be attracted to, that would motivate service because, somehow, I want to be in the center, are not offered in this moment.
When you're there, your heart has been changed by God's grace. Listen, you have to come to this at the end if this passage. For sinners, servanthood is not one's first choice. For us, servanthood is counterintuitive. I went into Wawa the other night; I was angry because they are supposed to have two cashiers, and they only had one; that meant there were five people in line instead of two. That shouldn't happen to me. And as I patted my foot, I'm thinking, "You know people are waiting." I was buying a soda and two oranges for Luella; I didn't want to wait.
And so we have to look at this passage and say, "I am unable." This call is an argument for the necessity of the grace of the cross. It's only by grace that I will find joy in being last. It's only by grace that I will find joy in serving. It's only by grace that I will love the greatness of Another more than I love my own. It's only by grace! It's only by grace! It's only by grace! But God is able and God is willing. That grace is ours as we run to that cross, seek its forgiveness, seek its deliverance, and seek its power.
Let's pray: Lord, not only does this passage remind us of the epicenter of Your mission, but it reminds us of the epicenter of our need. Thank you for the rescuing grace of the cross. Thank you that You take, by Your grace, people who live for themselves, and You transform them into people who live in willing worshipful service of You and willing sacrificial love of neighbor. Anyone who lives that way is surely a trophy of Your grace. Bestow upon us that grace we would pray. In Jesus's name, Amen.
