He sat down and called the twelve, and he said to them, ‘If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and a servant of all. ‘ And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and take him in the arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me. ‘ ‘Whoever receives me, receives not me, but him who sent me. Mark 10. And Jesus called them to him and he said to them, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever be great among you must be your servant. Whoever be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life for an easy virtue to master. First, you have to consider it a virtue which the ancient world did not. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans thought humility was a good thing. Rather, it was a sign of failure. They were all about honor, but humility was bad.
And for us today, we’ve slid back into the ancient view of humility, at least functionally. Our world has brought us such things as selfies and well-curated social media pages that are far from humble. But every once in a while, someone seems to go a bit too and they have to pay a price for it. Because non-humility comes better packaged if it has a little faux humble trappings associated with it. Many of you probably don’t keep up with the latest in sports, but in the recent NFL draft, something rather remarkable happened. That college quarterback who was a star, he tumbled down from what everyone thought would be a first-round pick all the way down to the fifth. He was selected 144. Earth. He had already had his own personal brand, which he’s marketing and selling and making a fortune at. On that day, he even held his own media day, personal to him. Is waiting for the results. What makes this partly remarkable, too, is there’s a lot of rare things combined together here. Besides the skill sets, which everyone acknowledged, there were no sex scandals, no drugs, no criminal behavior. He and his father, who is an NFL Hall of Famer, both are outspoken Christians.
So what was the problem? Over-the-top presumption of refusal to meet with some teams and ruling out certain cities they said he would never go to play for at the beginning. It killed potential interest. For an incoming rookie, it’s not about being a brand, but being a teammate. And this seeming lack of humility cost him, at least initially, somewhere around $40 million. That’s a pretty hefty price to pay for a lesson learned. Now, he He’s not the first nor is he the last to learn such a hard lesson. Certainly, lack of humility has caused some people not only their fortunes, but their lives. You see, it’s hard to point up to Jesus when you’re standing on a platform of selfish ambition and self-promotion. It’s difficult in those places. This is exactly the struggles that we have. We get in the way of following Jesus when we want to share the lead and the glory with him. Because Jesus has called us to love and to serve others, we are to do so bringing glory and honor to him and not to ourselves. In 1871, Scottish pastor and theologian Alexander Bruce, he wrote a seminal work called The Training of the Twelve.
It just goes into detail about how Jesus trained the disciples. It’s a great book. He wrote of the formidable task that Jesus had in training the hearts of his disciples in the area of humility. He wrote this, How difficult it is to expel pride, ambition, vain, glory, and jealousy, and envy from the hearts of even good men. Men may have made great progress in the art of prayer and religious liberty, in Christian activity, may have shown themselves faithful in times of temptation, apt scholars of Christian doctrine, and yet proved strikingly defective in their temper, self-willed, self-seeking, having an eye to their own glory, even when seeking the glory of God. That’s a stinging indictment. You heard it said many times, being gifted is not the same as being godly. That’s exactly what A. B. Bruce is talking about. You can be gifted, but not Godly. That the disciples were so slow to get this. It shows the enormity of the problem, how easy it is to fall in to putting not others first, but yourself. A failure to put other people before yourself, even while we see Jesus, the greatest servant of all, doing the very thing he’s asking the disciples to do.
Well, how do we fail at putting others first? Well, we start again in Mark 9: 33. The disciples and Jesus are on the way to Capernaum, and he knew they were talking about something. When he got in the house, he asked them, What were you discussing? He says, They kept silent. For on the way they’d argued with one another about who was the greatest. Now, Mark uses this same language you recall earlier in Mark 3, there he was in the synagogue, and a man was present who had a withered hand. Jesus asked this question to the pharisees and religious leaders, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? And Mark writes, But they were silent. Here the disciples are mirroring the pharisees as they talk about who should be the greatest, no doubt filled with guilt and shame and having hard hearts that fail to see what Jesus was all about. Jesus then sat down and he called the twelve to him and he said to them, If anyone would be first, he must be last of all, a servant of all. Then he called a child in his midst and he brings a child in his arms and said, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and ultimately receives the Father who sent me.
Here Jesus is telling them to be like him. Other places, he says to be like the child, but here he’s making a reference to himself. He is the one who’s freely receiving these children. As we know, children are weak and helpless. They’re insignificant. They are unable to repay anyone. Receiving them will gain you nothing in the eyes of the world. They will take time, they will take energy away from you, and they will not reward your efforts. They will not help build your platform. If you are about building your own platform, you have limited time and resources, and you go towards the people who can help make your brand grow. And you go to the people then who can get something from them. Not the insignificant, not the ones who can do nothing for you. Jesus is saying, No, this is the absolute opposite of my kingdom. And this valuable lesson is hard one by the disciples. Because even after a significant time with Jesus, they are once more caught up in their own ambition. In chapter 10, we see a very different mood of minds taking place here. Earlier here, Jesus is contemplating the coming of the cross as he’s heading towards Jerusalem.
He’s talking about what is yet to be, and the disciples are dreaming of their upcoming glory. Jesus had just said, I’m going to Jerusalem. I’m going to be handed over and put to death. And then in verse 35, James and John said to him, Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you, which immediately should set up all kinds of alarms. If you’re a parent and a child comes up, I have a favor They want permission before they actually tell you what it is. And you’re already the little warning light’s going off. And he says, What do you want? Grant us to sit one at your right-hand and one at your left hand in your glory. Now, they are thinking that in Jerusalem, Jesus is going to finally be recognized for who he is and that they also are going to share that Fame and that glory because there’s chief disciples. They have finally understood the who question, who is Jesus? He’s the Messiah. But they have failed at the what question. What did Jesus come to do? Now, along the way with this, we read in verse 41, when the other 10 heard this, they became indignant with James and John.
Why? Because James and John got the drop on them. They’re jealous. They’re not upset like, Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe you’re saying such unwholesome, terrible thoughts. Don’t you know the kingdom is far different than this selfishness? No, they’re like, Oh, they got in there first. Why didn’t I think of that? I appreciate how One contrary, he puts it, The disciples would rather bear a grudge than to bear a cross. It was nothing that they should think of themselves together as great. Rather What they were focused in on was who would be the greatest. As Amy Bruce said, it’s a question hard to settle when vanity and presumption contend on one side with jealousy and envy on the other. How can you know who’s great when these types of terrible things and thoughts are warring at one another? Vanity, presumption, jealousy, and envy. Jesus now spels it out very clearly. He says, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. He’s talking about the Gentiles who all the Jews despise. His disciples would not have been thinking that they were in the same heart as these terrible Gentiles.
They’re sinners, after all. We’re good and godly and righteous people. And Jesus is saying, you’re imitating them. You’re doing the very things that they do, the very things that you despise in them. So are you doing? No one said they’re maneuvering for places of honor that has no place in the kingdom. This is just the opposite of what we all desire and want. The Greek and Roman world’s service was the opposite of happiness. The great Greek philosopher, Plato, he said, How could one be happy when he asked to serve someone? It’s a rhetorical question, meaning you can’t be happy. He went on to say that a happy man should follow his desires, satisfy his longings. Plato was a long time ago, but that reads like anything out of something on TikTok or Facebook. You just got to get it while you can. You got to put yourself first and you got to be happy. You got to just find the things that make you flourish and grow. It’s all about you. You only live life once. Doesn’t that sum up human nature, following human nature? The other way of putting that is happiness is having other people serve me.
Happiness is when I get a call to shots. When we do this, we absolutely fail to put others first. Now, maybe we got small ambitions. We’re satisfied not with trying to take over the world, but Well, maybe I can be the Lord or the lady of my little manor. But it’s still selfish at its core. We want our own way. We want other people to serve us. Now, think about it. How many arguments have you ever had where you were arguing with someone else about them not letting you serve them the way that you want to? Ever had that argument? I want to serve you more than you’re letting me. Stop it. I’ve never heard that. I’ve had nobody come in for counseling. The problem, my wife, is she just won’t let me serve her enough. Problem, my husband, is I’m trying so hard to serve him, but he just won’t let me. If one of you want to try it, that’d be great. But that’s not what people come in for. People don’t complain about others getting in the way of their service to them. Rather, it’s not recognizing their needs. You see it all the time with children playing in a room full of toys.
What happens? I want the one you have. I saw it first. I want to take that toy. I want to have it. It’s mine. Give it to me. It’s so sad when you see many adults who grow up and they’ve never actually grown past this. That same toddler attitude is so prevalent in our own hearts and lives as adults. Anyone who’s ever tried to push against his or her own heart, he knows the struggle. We see it so well in other people. We are really good about picking this up. Oh, yeah. Look at them. But we dilute ourselves in thinking that somehow our motives are pure and upright. We can miss seeing how Jesus is the greatest servant who came to give himself for us and that we are to follow him. What does Jesus say? Whoever be great among you must be your servant. Whoever would be first among you must be a slave of all. He’s saying the great serve. They do not oppressed, they do not coerce. They serve. That’s absolute opposite of the worldly way of doing business. I appreciate, Testament scholar James Edward. I put this in your boat and he said, To fail in being a servant is not simply to fall short of an ideal condition, but to stand outside of an existing condition that corresponds to the Kingdom of God.
It’s not simply about behavior or fail behavior. He’s saying it’s the very heart of the Kingdom itself. It’s what God’s Kingdom is supposed to be. If you fail at that, you are actually outside of what the kingdom is supposed to be about. It’s not simply behavior. It goes to the very crux of the matter. Immediately, we see that this then is a part of this alien righteousness that must be imputed to us. James and John, you and I, we do not have this in ourselves. It must come from the Lord who’s doing a New Covenant heart transplant for us. We need a new heart given to us by the Lord. You see, humble, unrewarded service is what Jesus calls great. Greatness in his kingdom is defined differently than ours. It’s not about having Having your own brand, it’s about carrying the brand of Jesus, which is the cross. There is a part of this that does resonate with us, though. It’s a part of being an image bearer. Even though fallen. There’s something about this that does resonate with us because what we like to watch in a movies or read in our books, we love it when the underdog triumphs.
We like seeing the arrogant jerk getting what’s coming to him. Like, Yeah, it’s about time. We like it when somebody else gets theirs. Why? Because the truth resonates in our hearts, even in the shadows and the echoes in the stories of our culture. When we live for ourselves, we are fundamentally not being human because we were made to mirror our creator. Love at its core is self-giving. We see that in the very essence of who God is, Father, Son, and spirit, giving of themselves to the other, a love reciprocated, allowing room for others to be in. That’s what it means for us to be fully human, is that you give yourself to another in the fullness of that, in the expectation and desire for that person. We’ve twisted it all the way around to where it’s all about me. You are the most bestial person and animalistic that you can be when your focus is on you. The most divine, the most human as God intended when your eyes are away and looking towards the good of somebody else. The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is subversive to our fallen human nature. Our pride in our own glory have to be deflated and removed.
The cross of Christ is at the center of being a disciple. You cannot tell the story of Jesus without his cross. You cannot follow him without the cross. We’re going to look at that a little more in a couple of weeks. But Jesus then ends in verse 45, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. A couple of Greek words to notice that word for serve, it’s where we get our word deacon, deaconos. In Greek, it refers to somebody who served, usually at the table, but it generally was anybody who served. The other that we see there is the word slave, doulos. At times, these words are interchangeable because both people are at the very lowest part of the social ladder. Slaves or servants were often just the same thing. Jesus, the Lord of glory, did not come to be waited on. He came to serve to the utmost by giving his life for others. When they heard Jesus speaking of being a ransom, the very first thing they would have thought about was the Christ paid for a slave.
You could ransom someone out of slavery. Ancient slavery was largely economically based and not racially based. Christ, the suffering servant, comes to free others so that they can now serve him in the life that he has put them. They serve in and through Christ Jesus. They have been free to serve. It’s one of those seeming paradoxes of the gospel. The values of the kingdom, it turns the worlds on its head. In Matthew 10, Jesus told them, The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exaltss himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exaltet. God. Jesus serves others to such a degree that he actually grew weary in doing good. I grow weary just trying to be good. He grew weary doing good. In the midst of this, Jesus did not give up on his disciples. Peter, the great denier, is reinstated. To do what? To feed Jesus sheep. He’s reinstated to serve. Thomas is not left alone with his doubts. And James and John, the sons of thunder, are not given up on, but they do become true leaders in the church, paying the ultimate price of their lives. And Paul, who is the least of the Apostles, becomes the great disclaimer to who?
To the despised Gentiles. To lead to serving is costly. The Holy spirit works in us to push against Our fallen nature, that fallen residue. It is a great labor. Our flesh does not like it any more than on a cold winter day, and you’re trying to get your dog to go outside, and they just right at the door. They get their nose out there. No, I’m not going. And we’re the same way. It’s just you get there and you just curl up at the door. And God just got to push us through. We’re so resistant to having our own ego quashed rightly by the spirit of God. There’s something about humility. Talk about how do you get humility? It’s like patience. It’s not a substance. You don’t just go, go, go, go, go and pour in patience. When you pray for patience, you’re praying for an opportunity to exercise self control. When you’re praying for humility, you are praying in those opportunities to war against your own flesh. Humility comes in listening to other people. Over the last several years, I’ve been involved with church conflict outside of Montana. I was asked to come in and help some churches out between the pastors and leaders in the church.
And In both cases that I was there, I gave both pastors this analogy because they weren’t understanding. I said, If someone comes up to you who’s hard of hearing and they tell you that you mumble, you can likely discount it. Turn up the hearing aid. But if seven or eight people come to you and tell you you mumble, you mumble. There’s no real need to go and pray and search your heart. You mumble. Start with believing people who tell you something because they care for you. In this case, both men refuse to listen to the problems that they were inciting through their pride. There were, in each case, 20 or 30 people who tried to tell them about the problem they refused to hear. The sad thing is, is they, in many ways, accomplish great things because of the great gifts that God had given to them. Good things were done in the name of Christ, but they were not willing to hear because of how it poked at their own arrogance and the humility required. One now on his third church, the other one’s on his second. And we see this all the time, how difficult that is to listen to other people, to take that in and to hear what the spirit of God is telling us.
And we have to push against our desire to find our happiness in being served, in being in control, in having our own way. We have to war against this attitude as well. That’s, I paid my dues. I’ve already done that. It’s time for me to get a little reward for what I’ve done. No, you don’t. The Lord of glory himself more than paid his dues. And he wasn’t resting upon the laurels to have people come and serve him, though he had every right to. That wonderful, familiar passage, Lewis of Philippians 2. Paul says, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Jesus. You have this mind in Christ Jesus. It’s a gift to you. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on 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. That’s a beautiful picture of our savior whom we are to follow as his disciples. Paul, reminding us in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, If I can do great and mighty things, if I have prophetic powers to understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and I have faith to move mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing.
Why? Because love at its very heart is the humility, the lowness of receiving from God and giving that to other people. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, is not arrogant, it’s not rude, it does not insist on its own way, it’s not irritable, it’s not resentful, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That section of scripture, 1 Corinthians 13, is not just something you hear at a wedding service. Paul was not speaking at a wedding. He’s saying this is just what it looks like to follow Jesus, the love that you have received. This is what Jesus loves look like in you now. We then are to take this love, this humility, putting other people before ourselves, figuring how to serve them. If you’re a parent, you do this with your kids and how hard that is to work in them this very principle. But if we’re honest, it’s hard as adults. It’s in the workplace, it’s in the schools, it’s in our marriages. It’s in the society around us. It’s in our politics. It’s in our news. It’s in our entertainment. It’s in our sports. We are so inundated with human selfishness and self-promotion that it’s hard when we see something other than that, it looks weird.
This is what the Lord has called us to so that we can be fully what he has created us to be in him. It’s to set us free. This isn’t bondage. This is freedom. When you can free yourself to have eyes away from yourself and in the name of Christ, serve other people, you have been liberated. Jesus came to set the captives free. The selfish of our heart needs to be set free and liberated by the good news of Jesus. And to take this into the world around us. You talk about something that’s attractive an aroma of life to people who are perishing under the weight of their own collapsing image of social media, of self-preservation, self-promotion. This is freedom to get off the hamster wheel. This is freedom to be able to love as we have been loved. And this comes not from ourselves. It is an alien righteousness that comes by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by faith alone, that we exercise this. You can be great at prayer. You can stand up to temptation, you can do all these wonderful things. But the formidable task of having your own pride and arrogance broken to walk in humility is a supernatural work of grace, and we need to be praying for it.
Because in doing so, our savior is glorified. In doing so, our homes, our lives, our community is elevated because of the beautiful service that we have, one, to another without self-will, selfishness. That we would reflect the reality of our Triune God himself and his image we’ve been created. Pray with me. Father of glory, as we come before you, we do confess we indeed are selfish to the core. And Lord, we pray that you would root this out of us, that you would remove it, that you would continue to push us by your spirit into paths of righteous humility. Lord, give us eyes to see those around us. Give us eyes off of ourselves that we can look out, look up. And Lord Jesus, that as your disciples, we would reflect you who are the greatest disciple, the greatest one in how we love and serve one another. May this truly be a reality for your people. We would pray and ask in your mighty name. Amen. Please stand. There’s one gospel.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.