Welcome to the Food for Your Soul podcast, where we apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women to stoke the fires of your delight in Christ. It seems like the world is on fire, doesn't it? We're not even halfway through 2020. Our president has been impeached. Our economy, do you remember that? That was this year. Economy shut down, 40 million plus people lost their jobs. Massive widespread corruption at the highest levels of governments being exposed. And most of all that's already forgotten because now we have the current crisis with the riots and the beatings and murders all across the country. Normally six months out from a presidential election, that would be the only thing you hear on the news. I mean every single thing, every ad on the radio would be constant. You barely even can tell it's an election year. You have to dig pretty deep to find anything about the election. So what's going on? Do all these crazy events have something in common? And I'd say, yeah, they do. They're all springing from the same root problem. It's all coming from a God-given desire that has become twisted by evil because of our sin. And what Jesus is going to do in today's passage is address both the good desire that he gave us and the twisted version that is causing all the problems in today's passage. So in Mark 10.43, Jesus holds out a carrot that He expects us to get really excited about. It's a prize that we should be willing to just pay any price to get, and Jesus expects us to desire this prize so much that we would just happily pay a high price for it. Here's what Jesus says. This is the carrot. Whoever among you wants to become great, Now, as soon as Jesus says that, we should all, our reaction should be, oh, me, me, me, me, me. Me, I want that. That's the carrot. God designed us with a desire for that, with a desire for greatness, but not the lame, cheesy, earthly greatness in the eyes of men, not that kind of greatness, but true greatness where God himself lays his hand on you and says, well done. Well done. That's what we should crave. That's what greatness is. James and John wanted greatness, but they weren't looking for the right kind. They weren't looking for the divine well done. They just wanted to beat out the rest of the twelve for the top two spots. We covered that last time. They wanted to drag the earthly concept of greatness into heaven, into the kingdom of God, and try to mix the two. And so in verse 37, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory, they said to Jesus. And he says, you don't know what you're asking. Can you drink the cup I drink? I mean, you guys don't realize, you just asked for a big, fat, healthy serving of suffering, a cup of suffering. And your wish is going to be granted. You're going to drink my cup and go through the baptism. But to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared. And I don't know about you, I would have loved to have heard more about that, about the preparing for the top two spots and all that. I would like for him to have expounded more on that. Maybe he did. Given how often the apostles mentioned God preparing a place, maybe he did say more about that. But Mark doesn't say anything more about it, because that's not his point he's making here. The point Jesus wants the disciples to get, and that Mark wants us to get here, is the relationship between three things. Now, when I study a passage that I'm going to teach, I'm always looking for the main point of that section. What is that passage? What's the main point? So when I preach it, all my sub-points keep supporting that main point, everything goes around that main point. And so as I was studying this passage, I was trying to figure out, what is the main point of this section? Is it mainly about Jesus' death as a ransom? That's what he talks about in verse 45. That seems pretty big. It begins and ends with that. So I thought that was it at first, and I was kind of formulating things, but then I studied a little more, and I thought, no, no, it's mainly about humility and servanthood. But then I got a little further in my study, and I was like, no, this passage isn't mainly about humility, it's mainly about suffering with Christ. And then finally I realized, no, the main point of this passage is not about suffering with Christ, or humility and servanthood, or Christ dying as a sinner. It's about the relationship between those three things. The relationship between true greatness, suffering, and servanthood. And to teach us that, what Mark does is he goes from the last event, he skips ahead to the moment when the other ten disciples get wind of what James and John tried to pull last time. So James and John, they corner Jesus, just the three of them, they say, we want number one and number two, and then somehow, all of a sudden, the rest of them get wind of it. They hear about it, and they are not amused. In fact, they're downright angry. Verse 41, when the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Now, why are they mad at James and John? What are they mad at? I mean, do they just stick it up for Jesus? You Zebedees are so insensitive. He just got done talking about he's gonna die, suffer and die, then you're talking about, you know, your positions of greatness and everything. You're way out of line. Could that have been it? No. I don't think that was it, because when Jesus addresses the whole group, he gives the same rebuke to all 12. All 12 of these guys were making the same mistake. The 2 and the 10, all 12 of them needed the same lesson from Jesus. They needed to learn the same lesson about humility, servanthood, and suffering. So no, it's not that they thought James and John were out of line. It's that they thought James and John were cutting in line. They all wanted this. It could be that each one of them were planning on making some kind of a play for those top spots at the right time, but they're probably thinking, well, not right now, not right after he just got done talking about suffering and dying and all that. I'll let that settle for a little bit, then I'll talk to him. Maybe that's what they were thinking. Or... Or maybe they... Maybe it never even occurred to those other ten guys to shoot for the top two spots. Until... The Sons of Thunder made their move, and all those other guys were like, wait a minute. And then suddenly they noticed two of them trying to pass them up, and then they said, we've got to get in this race. And so here's the principle to remember about this. Nothing will bring out the worst in your heart more than someone trying to step on you to get to the rung and the ladder above you. When we sin, it tends to stimulate sin in the people around us, especially when it's the sin of selfishness or elevating ourselves up in human greatness. As soon as you do that, the other guy can be doing just fine, until the moment he senses me trying to lift myself above him, suddenly he's committing the same sin I'm committing. His urge for human greatness will flare up. And that's just obvious in any context, anywhere in life, you can just see it, even on the highway. You do something on the highway to establish your dominance and supremacy, and what effect does that have on the drivers around you? Does it move them to be gracious and accommodating and humble? No, no. Makes them downright deadly, even though a moment earlier they were just fine. It happens at work, it happens online, it happens in debates, it happens everywhere. It happens in the church. In the church, we have to be a lot more subtle about it, but it still happens. Everything from trying to outshine everyone else in how insightful your comments are, maybe in a Bible study, to jockeying for position in a worship team, or an elder board, or staff position, or trying to be that parent that just does a better job than all the other parents in raising your kids. Every time we do that, only God knows how much sin we're provoking in the hearts of the people around us. And that seems to be what's happening in this instance here. James and John's effort to grab greatness revived this argument that the apostles already had about who is the greatest, and Jesus had put that to bed all the way back in chapter 8. Now James and John reawaken it. Looking at it from the outside, it almost seems like a comical scene. How are the 10 mad at James and John for doing something that they themselves wanted to do? If they wanted to be on top, how could they be mad at James and John? Well, really, there's nothing unusual about that. We all do that, too, right? I mean, we're all quick to condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves. And it takes a Nathan to come along and point that out to us sometimes, right? Remember Nathan? He comes to David and tells him about this story about this guy who stole this poor man's only little lamb, even though he had a bunch of his own. And David flies off the handle and says, that man deserves to die. And Nathan says, David, you're the man. That man is you. Our sins are so easy to spot in others, and they make us mad when we see them in others, but then we rationalize them when they're in ourselves until Nathan comes and shows us. All right, so Jesus is gonna play the role of Nathan here for the 12. Jesus calls them together in verse 42, and that's really a beautiful phrase right there, just that little phrase, isn't it? Jesus, I mean, they're fighting, they're angry, Jesus calls them together, which he always has to do. Every time you see disunity in the church, and you're shocked, how can there be this much disunity? Don't be too shocked. It's been that way from the beginning, from the very start. Jesus hasn't even died yet, and it's already the first church split. It says in verse 41, they were indignant. It's a very strong word. They were really mad. The ten were very angry at James and John. It's an ugly situation, isn't it? It's a serious one. These are the men that need to turn the world upside down, these twelve men. How are they going to turn the world upside down if they're fighting with each other? And it's not like Jesus has a couple years to work on these guys. We're days before the crucifixion already. They've already had their whole training. So when Jesus called these two factions together and the apostles, it's an important moment because the whole apostolic band could have crumbled here and burned down even before they started if Jesus hadn't taken some decisive action. So he calls them together in verse 42 and said, he's going to talk to them about humility, which by the way, I got to thinking, what would happen when, in a church, if division started, if we just had a tradition of gathering both sides together and reading these words that Jesus speaks to his divided apostles right here on this occasion. Anyway, so what did Jesus tell them? He begins with something that they know, verse 42. Jesus called them together and said, So he's giving an example of the wrong approach to greatness that they can all easily relate to, they've seen it, they've witnessed it, and they know all about it. Verse 42, So authority and power and leadership in the kingdom of God are fundamentally different than in the world. That's the first thing we get from this. the word translated high officials in the NIV, literally it's the great ones. So he's right back to talking about earthly greatness as opposed to true greatness. And what's the standard for earthly greatness? There's only one standard for earthly greatness and that is the opinions of people, nothing else. That's the only standard for human greatness in the world, what people think. If you see someone and it's like, great man, great man, is he as great as Jupiter? The sun. No, the only thing that's great about it is it's great compared to other people, right? That's why in verse 42, instead of referring to the rulers or the Gentiles, Jesus calls them those who are regarded as rulers. He's talking about rulers. People actually are rulers. But he says they're regarded as rulers. Why? Because that's the point he's making, is that's what makes them great in human greatness. He's pointing to the world standard. He's showing us the world standard for greatness. These are the people who are considered great because they're considered great. That's why they're great. It's because they're considered great. The only thing that makes them great is the fact that their greatness is widely accepted. Everyone acknowledges, yep, those are the guys who are in charge, and that's the only thing that makes them in charge. That's what makes them the great ones. And what do they do with all their power and all their authority? Jesus says they lord it over people. It's a phrase that means to exercise control over people. They love having power and control and getting their way, doing things their way, and getting people to do what they want. And when Jesus says, you know this, it's never been, I think we know this too, right? I mean, it's never been more obvious, I think, in our culture than right now. I told you all the chaos that's gone on in 2020 has one thing in common. I think it's a worldly greatness. It's all coming out of worldly greatness. Look at the craziness of the COVID lockdown. You get this two-week lockdown, it gets extended, and then they start talking about mailing money. They're just like, we're going to extend it, people are going to work. And it's like, wait a minute, how are we going to pay our bills? And they said, oh, don't worry, we'll print money, we'll just mail money to everybody. Soon as they said that, I told Tracy, I remember we had a conversation, I said, oh boy, look out. There's no restraints now. There used to be some party restraint on spending. Now there's got to be no restraints now. They're just going to spend, the politicians are going to see dollar signs and it's going to go berserk. Which did happen. But that wasn't even the biggest thing. The biggest thing I didn't see coming. The thing that really made those politicians' eyes bug out, even more than the money, was the power. When the federal government lifted its recommendations, then the state governors took over. And when they lifted, then the local mayors and city councils, and they each had to have their turn to just use power. And you hear all these ridiculous displays of power. You get an elderly couple sitting on a beach in two chairs and then the police come and say, well, you can stay here and you can sit here, but not in chairs. You have to sit on the ground. It's like you can fish from a canoe, but not a motorboat. If you go out on a boat, a family of three, two can go, one has to stay on the shore. You can't mow your lawn. In Texas, two women were arrested. They were accused of engaging in salon activities. They caught the women, you know how they caught them? An undercover sting operation. This is not the Babylon Bee, this is real. Members of the COVID-19 Task Force Enforcement Detail went undercover, these courageous law enforcement people went undercover, and they went in, contacted the women, scheduled an appointment to have their eyebrows done. They went in undercover. When this 20-year-old girl started working on the eyebrows, they arrested her. facing 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. So what is all that? Politicians drunk with power. Drunk with power. I mean, it's all about power. And when people like that get a taste of power, they don't let it go easily, which is seen in stark relief, I think, going back to the impeachment hearings. You go back to that impeachment. You remember those hearings, whatever you think of President Trump, one thing that we can say for sure about his administration is that because of his administration, there's a whole lot of people in the executive branch who used to have lots of power and now don't, because he doesn't listen to them. Democrats and Republicans all responded the same way. People who were supposed to be advisors, but really they had all the power and they were pulling the strings and they called the shots in their area in previous administrations, When President Trump didn't listen to them, he just overruled them, they did everything they could possibly do to regain their power and had no regard whatsoever for the law or the Constitution or anything else. It's all coming out now. And now that corruption that's exposed in the federal government all this corruption that's being exposed, it's all about power. The FBI and the CIA and the FISA courts and congressmen and unelected bureaucrats destroying people's lives, trampling on people's rights, it's all about power. You could just, I don't know if you watched those hearings on the impeachment, but you could just see them, just like, he didn't listen. I laid this out, he didn't listen. It's like, you're an advisor, you know? And it's like, he should be impeached because he didn't do what I said. Yeah, I think you need to look up the word advisor And I can't think of a symbol that sums all that up more than the image of Derek Chauvin crushing the life at a George Floyd Surrounded by people Shouting begging him to let Floyd up knowing he's on camera and just smirking and smiling at all those people it's like You can't make me stop. I have the power to do this and none of you can do a thing about it." And he's just smug. And that snapshot, I think, just perfectly illustrates the attitude of lording it over when you have power and authority. There's not an uglier image in all the world. Except, maybe, the riots. The images of innocent people being beaten to death in front of their shop. Riders lighting a home on fire with a little child in it and then blocking access of the firefighters to save the child. Supposedly, they're protesting Derek Chauvin and lording his power over George Floyd. That's what they're protesting. Misuse of power. What are they doing? They're using their power to lord it over people. It's the only thing they're doing. When you have a huge gang of thugs in the street, Who's got power? The thugs. They got all the power. No police there. They've got the power. And what do they do with that power? Use it for good? Use it to help people? No, they use it to do the very things that they're protesting. Can you imagine if those rioters got political power like they were in charge of the government? You know what country this would be? I mean you could pull over for speeding and they'd like smash your window and beat you with a bat or something. They're not really against the abuse of power, they just want to be the ones abusing it. The Me Too movement revved up when Harvey Weinstein was exposed. And it became evident how rampant the problem was in our culture of powerful, wealthy men using their power to pressure women sexually. And so the Me Too movement got revved up and just started trying to shift power away from people like that in the direction of women. Believe all women. Woman makes an accusation, throw the guy in jail. What was the result? Was the result of that justice? You just hear story after story of all these guys that end up in jail on false accusations. How did that happen? Well, it happened because the female heart is just as fallen as the male heart. And when anyone has power, the natural response of the fallen human heart is to misuse that power and lord it over people. So you shift the power from evil rich men to evil poor women, or from evil cops to evil minorities. However you shuffle the power around, you're gonna end up with the exact same thing every single time. Whoever gets it lords it over whoever's under them. This reality proves true in everywhere, every company, every office, every business, every school, every playground. Wherever you got some people stronger than other people or more powerful, you're going to see this. The world's concept of authority and power and greatness is all about how many people are under you and how many people serve your interests. When you're a big shot, and I think that's a big reason why the When you ask the proletariat, what do you want? Instead of saying, well, change this law, change this law, they say, we want you to get on your knee. And we want you to show symbols of homage or showing respect. When you're a big shot. In the world, people open doors for you, they fetch you coffee, they serve you. And it's a cliche in the movies, right? When a secretary is offended because she gets asked to fetch coffee for somebody. It's so demeaning. Why is it demeaning? It's demeaning because if you're important, people fetch your coffee, you don't fetch their coffee. And if you have to fetch the coffee, then you're not great. So for human beings to behave that way is as natural as the sunrise. You see it at every cultural level, every age group, everywhere. So when people say, you know the Gentiles are like that, it's really true, right? We know this. We've seen it. And it's a temptation even in the church. It's a temptation for pastors. In fact, Peter uses the same term, to lord it over, in his word to pastors in 1 Peter 5. He says, 1 Peter 5 to be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers. Not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be. Not greedy for money, but eager to serve. Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. So even pastors, even in the first century, had to be told, don't lord it over. Because pastors, I mean, this shows us that pastors, contrary to what some people say, must have had a fair amount of authority in that day for Peter to have to tell them, hey, don't use that authority to lord it over people. Evidently it was a temptation. So as soon as you're in a position of power, it's tempting to use that power to get people to serve you, to serve your agenda, rather than using your power to serve them. And it can look very spiritual. because your agenda is spiritual, right? This is something that really struck me when I was pastoring and I had a guy get real upset and he told me that I was guilty of this and I disagreed. I said, well, I don't lord it over people. I don't do this. And he said, Darryl, here's what you do. You get real excited about people rallying around your agenda, but when they have a ministry idea that's not part of your agenda, you're just not enthusiastic about it. You allow it. But you're not like putting your back into it. It's like, yeah, I think that was a valid criticism. I think this attitude can kind of sneak in in very subtle ways. you can find that you use your influence to pressure people to participate in your area without supporting them. Anyway, verse 43, so he just says, not so with you. This should not be with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. Strive to be the one fetching the coffee. And if that statement rubs you wrong, you're in the wrong religion. senior pastor of a huge megachurch or president of a prestigious seminary who thinks he's above fetching coffee for his secretary, he's in the wrong religion. If you think it's your wife's job to serve you instead of your job to serve her, wrong religion. In the kingdom of God, There's still authority and submission. There's still people that are above other people in authority. And we still have people that make decisions in the church, people who call the shots. It's their job to call the shots. God ordained all that, told us to submit to it. But authority in the kingdom is servant leadership. And that's what Jesus is teaching here. It comes right out of this passage. Instead of looking to control people and use your power to get those people to do what you want, you consider yourself their slave." And that's the word he uses here, slave of all. Now in the previous passage, when Jesus is talking about that, he used the word servant. Here he cranks it up a notch and goes to an even more extreme term, a term that would have offended the people then and offends people even today, even to the point where people in the church shy away from this word slave. We hate the concept of slavery, the whole concept of it. If I tell you you need to be a servant, you can handle that. If I tell you you need to go to church and look at everybody as your owner, your master, and you're the slave, probably something grates a little bit on you. You hear that. Even Bible translations take the word slave and very often translate it servant in order to make their translation more marketable. But the word is slave. You look around at everybody and what we're supposed to do is look around and say, I'm here for his benefit. Just like a waiter is here at the table for one reason, to serve me food to eat. In the same way, people who are great in the kingdom see themselves as having the role of serving the interests of the people under them. So while a worldly leader looks down on the masses and sees them as being beneath him in dignity and beneath him in importance and intelligence and do they just sort of exist to be controlled by him, a leader in the kingdom of God stoops down and gets underneath the person and puts his shoulder into it and lifts them up. And he doesn't see that as going above and beyond the call of duty in any way. This is his role. It's every Christian's job, every follower of Christ, but especially people in leadership positions. Remember what infuriated Jesus about the Pharisees in Matthew 23? He says, in Matthew 23, verse 4, he says, they tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, and then get this, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Now, whenever I read that verse, I just always tend to focus on the heavy loads, their legalism, the Pharisees' legalism. They shouldn't be putting those heavy loads on people's backs, those heavy legalistic loads. But what bothered Jesus even more than the legalism in this passage was the fact that they didn't help the people. They didn't lift a finger to help them carry the burden, because part of the burden was legitimate. Part of the burden that the Pharisees heaped on people's backs was not legalistic, it was valid stuff that the Bible says to do, and the Pharisees should have been helping them carry it, and instead they didn't. Matthew Henry says, those that shall be put under your charge must be as sheep under the charge of a shepherd who is to tend and feed them and be a servant to them, not as horses under the command of a driver. And you can see the difference of this in parts of the world that have Christian influence. As bad as I painted the picture of our country at the beginning, there's still some remnant of this because of our Christian beginnings, biblical beginnings. For example, in the Western world, you have this title, Prime Minister. In the ancient world, there was never any title like that for the leader of a country. The word minister means servant. So prime minister is like the number one servant. And that's a remnant of the Christian influence in the West. Like, if you're number one, if you're the leader, you need to be everybody's servant. And it worked its way into our terminology. Even in our country, we don't have prime minister, we have public servants, right? They speak about public servants. None of that is natural to humanity. It all comes out of this verse. And where there's not much Christian influence in a culture, you won't see titles like that for the leaders. And you won't see to protect and serve on the police cars. So this principle, it applies to all of us, even if you're not in an official leadership role. All human beings are naturally in the struggle to gain the upper hand in relationships. We all do it without thinking. It's as natural as breathing. How can I get my spouse to take out the trash? How can I get the spouse to stop doing this thing that bugs me? How can I get my coworkers or my boss to get on board with my agenda? on the highway, the other guy's on the highway, he's clearly anxious to get somewhere. It was my first thought, how can I serve his interests? Just not natural to us, right? How can I be a slave to him right now? Instead of always trying to bend people to align with your interests, asking, how can I bend myself to align with his interests? And as I've been studying this, I've been trying to develop this habit. Every time I encounter another person to ask, what are his interests? What are his interests? And how can I serve them? So I walk into the living room, I see Tracy, and I think, what are her interests right now? And how could I serve those interests? Coworker, someone at the grocery store, someone in the highway. That may sound... super basic, like kindergarten morality, put yourself in his shoes, golden rule, you know, we've just always heard this, we know that, it's almost a cliche. But it's one thing to mouth the words, it's really another thing to actually think this way, and live this way, and I don't know how it is for you, but for me, living this way is revolutionary. It's revolutionary, and it's another revolution every single time I do it. Because five minutes later, I'm right back to the old rut. I instantly drop back into thinking of the perspective of me as the center of my world, because I am the center of my world. I mean, just physically speaking, how else could it be? I'm the center of everything I experience, right? Everything I experience, I experience it from right here. And wherever I go, there I am. I don't know what lunch was like for you today. I know what it was like for me today, because I was there. I'm hardly ever there at your lunches. I know how I slept last night. I know everything I saw today. All the stuff that happened in a certain radius around me, that's my world. That's my world. I experience my world from right here, and no one else's perspective. That's how I experience my life 99% of the time. So when I walk into a room, the most natural thing for me to do is just to think. What does everything in this room mean to me? How do I feel? Am I comfortable? Am I uncomfortable? Good mood? Bad mood? Anxious? Relaxed? Happy? Irritated? I've got my finger on that pulse. And then when I see you, I might think, well, what do you think of me? Which is still mainly about me, right? And even if I think, well, how can I serve you? What can I do for you? It's great to think that, but still, it's still from my point of view, it takes a major shift in my thinking to go into a room and just say, how does she feel right now? What is it like to be her? I'm in a conversation. What is it like for this person to be in this conversation with me right now? How does it feel? What are her interests? What is this person's goal in this conversation? They're in the conversation, they want something to happen. What do they want to happen? Instead of just engaging with their words, what interests could I serve? Now, does that mean their wish is my command? Not quite, not quite. Sometimes people want something from you that it wouldn't be loving to give them. So when we serve people, in what way should we serve them? Well, let's look at Jesus' example, verse 45. He gives the principle, and then he says, verse 45, and now he's going to give an example. That's our example of how to serve other people's interests. Jesus didn't come into this world to be waited on. He didn't come for people to hold doors open for him, to fetch him coffee or bring him food or perform unpleasant tasks so he didn't have to mow his own yard or whatever. He could have come into the world with that posture. like most great kings, but instead he came in to this world and waited on people and washed their feet. Jesus saw a need and he just met it. He just served. He did that. It didn't matter how lowly, how small. He served people's interests around them, met their needs. But that's not where the sentence ends. It doesn't just say the Son of Man didn't come to be served but to serve. There's a lot more to servanthood than that. He says, to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The supreme example of Jesus' servanthood was not his foot washing. It was when he gave them something they didn't even want, but needed desperately. And we, as humanity, didn't know we needed this gift, this service. Most of humanity throughout the ages have utterly despised it and rejected it. And many imminent theologians today still reject it. I'll talk more about that in the podcast after this. I'm going to do a podcast on the rest of this first. But the point now is servanthood isn't mainly about doing whatever people want you to do. Being a servant like Jesus means to go as low as you need to go and pay whatever price you need to pay to serve their interests and to provide what they need the most. And sometimes that means washing feet, getting coffee, cleaning up a mess, cooking a meal, doing a load of laundry, doing an unending stream of loads of laundry, whatever. But much more importantly, it means going as low as you need to go and laying down your life, no matter what the cost, to do what you can do to bring the ransoming work of Jesus to that person's heart through the gospel. We all are doing the same thing Jesus did. We have different roles in doing it. He did the dying, we do the proclaiming. He provided the gift, we deliver the gift. But the greatest servanthood is always getting that gift to the people who need it, which is everybody. Jesus, with this servanthood here, he didn't sit down one day and just say, hmm, how could I serve these people? How could I? What's my niche? You know, what are my gifts? What comes naturally to me? What kinds of ministries tend to energize me the most? Oh, I know. being spit on and beaten to a pulp and murdered. That's my sweet spot. That's what I just really energize. No, no. It's good for us to ask all those questions to discover where we fit in the body of Christ and where we should put most of our energy, but we also need to make sure we don't just stop there and only do that. That's our normal way of serving, but we need to be ready to just meet a need. So why don't we do that more? Why don't we do all this more? Why aren't we better servants? If that's what we're here for, and the Bible's so clear about it, and it's the most important thing in the world, it's what Jesus did, and he gave us the example, he showed us how to do it, why don't we do it more? Why is it a revolution in my mind every single time I do it? We don't do it more because there's a massive obstacle in the way. It's a giant, terrifying, dangerous roadblock that keeps us from following Jesus' example, and we run into it. What is the obstacle? Suffering. Suffering. I don't want to be a servant to my wife right now, because that's going to cut into my comfort. I don't want to be everybody's slave, because it's going to make my life hard. It's going to cost me. It's going to cost me time. It's going to cost me money. It's going to cost me sleep sometimes. It's going to make my life uncomfortable. The biblical term for all of that is suffering, and none of us likes it. I really don't want to take up my cross and lay down my life for people in ways that are going to really cost me. I don't want to be available for a calling that might mean I have to give up my house or my job or career or closeness to my family. Why? Because I'm scared to death of suffering. Fear of suffering and inability to hear God's voice are directly related. The more afraid I am of suffering, the more stopped up my ears get whenever God's going to call me to do some servanthood, some hard service, and the more I'll shuffle my feet when Jesus is charging up towards Jerusalem and I'm behind him, right? like we saw last time. And so in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells us, tells the disciples about his upcoming suffering five times, and he only tells them the reason why he's gonna suffer once. Did you know that? One time. In the whole book of Mark, does he explain why he needed to die? Five times he says, I'm going to have to suffer and die. Why? He only says once. Because in order to, it doesn't really do any good to understand why Jesus died. If you're not willing to follow him, to understand the necessity of suffering, if we're not willing to suffer with Christ, then knowing the significance of it doesn't even do any good. So let me just give you a final thought that ties all this together. in a way that, at least for me, was just mind-blowing. This suffering that I'm talking about, it's not just that we resemble Christ's suffering in our suffering, that our suffering resembles His suffering. It's more than resemblance. You know, here's something amazing. Listen to Colossians 124. It says, Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, which is the church. I'm filling up what was lacking in Christ's suffering. That's what Paul's saying. He's not just saying, I suffer like Jesus suffered. Like, I'm suffering his suffering, the rest of him, the rest of his sufferings. I'm finishing up what was lacking. Well, what was lacking in Jesus' suffering? Did He, like, suffer 90% and then didn't quite suffer enough on the cross, and then we add our little bit? No. No, He said it is finished. He paid it all. His suffering satisfied the wrath of God 100%. No question about that. And then some. So what was lacking? What was lacking was the personal, face-to-face delivery of that gift that he purchased. He paid the full price to purchase it, but he didn't deliver it face-to-face. That's what this phrase, to fill up what is lacking, that's what that phrase means the one other time it's used in the New Testament, Philippians 2.30. Epaphroditus almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to fill up what was lacking in your service to me. So they sent a gift, Epaphroditus delivered the gift, He filled up what was lacking by delivering it. Did he pitch in some, throw some in the bag? It's like, this is a little light, I'm gonna throw it. No, he didn't add anything to it. They gave the full gift. His filling up what was lacking meant delivering it in person. And that's the same thing, I think, that it means here. What was lacking in Christ's sufferings was the personal delivery. Jesus paid the full price to purchase grace for us, but he didn't deliver it face to face. He didn't come to your door. He didn't come to your school. He didn't come to your work. and tell you the gospel. Someone else did that. And that work that someone else did, carrying that grace to you, fills up what was lacking. That's the part that's our part. And it's a very real part of the work of redemption. Christ's work. That's why we can say we are suffering Christ's sufferings. when we suffer whatever we have to suffer to deliver that gift. So when you and I suffer carrying out the work of ministry, serving His people, bringing love to His people, and it causes us inconvenience, it costs us something, hardship, costs money, time, sleep, that's not just suffering like Christ, that is suffering His sufferings. We are participating in the work of redemption for the world. So I told you at the beginning, the main point of this passage is not greatness or suffering or servanthood, it's the relationship between those three things. Do you see the relationship now? Jesus holds out the carrot of greatness, and he says, who wants to be great? In God's eyes, who wants to hear the well-done, good, and faithful servant? The path to that, and that should really get us, if we're not even excited about that, then none of this works, but we should really want that. The path to that greatness is the path of lowliness and humility and servanthood The roadblock that keeps us from taking that path is we're afraid, we're scared to death of suffering. And so Jesus walks out ahead of us on the road to Jerusalem, leads the way, says, follow my example of servanthood and suffering. Stop striving for human greatness. Give the other guy the upper hand. Take the lowly position as his slave. Do whatever it takes. Pay whatever price you have to pay to bring the grace of God to people. Yes, it's going to involve suffering. Just keep your eyes on my example so you can press through the fear of that. And if you do that, you will attain greatness in God's eyes. God the Father will lay his great hand upon your shoulder and say, well done, good and faithful servant. Take the position that I've prepared for you in glory. Let's pray. Father, first, just enable us to be motivated by that carrot that you offer of greatness, of being being seen in your eyes as being what we should be. Let that move us, motivate us, let it be a part of our thinking and what drives us in life. Help us to remember it in those times when we don't want to humble ourselves. And Lord, give us the grace to shift out of our way of looking at the world from our point of view to see other people's interests and serve them. I ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Okay. Any questions? Go ahead. You touched on serving others, and now I want to do a hand up. Can you speak more to that? Yeah, sure. Why do we have this phrase, give a hand up and a hand out? Because that resonates even with secular people, right? Somehow people know hand up is better than hand out. Why do they know that? Well, I think they know that because they can see what happens when you just give a handout. If you just give somebody money, typically it doesn't, I mean, it's very, I don't know about typically, but very often it doesn't help them. And especially if it's somebody that's got, you know, they're addicted to some substance or something, they're not gonna be able to help it. They're gonna spend it on alcohol or drugs or whatever. And you're not doing them any favor when you do that. And yet we don't want to just say, well, you're going to misuse any gift I give you, so I'm not going to give you anything. That doesn't quite feel right, does it? So I think the rule of thumb for me is, how much can I give this person without becoming unloving? What's loving? I don't want to do them harm. If I give them money, I'm probably going to do them harm. And so you see people giving beggars food instead of giving them money, you give them food. Or just for me, even that, I don't really want to support that whole lifestyle because I think they're harming themselves. But I'll talk to them. And I found they really like that, you know. And it's a way I can show love and treat them as human beings, you know, without doing them any harm. It certainly doesn't do them any harm. And so just talk to them and they're almost always eager to talk. And so it gives you a chance to share the gospel. So it's hard to say because it's case by case, but the basic rule of thumb is love. What's loving? What does them the most good? Don't stop at the first half of the sentence. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom. Just like, what's going to help point them in the direction of redemption? That's the greatest gift. Yeah, yeah, so sharing their burden like weeping with those who weep, getting under them and bearing some of the discomfort of what they're dealing with, you know, sometimes just compassion, just listening to them that can take a little bit of a load off of them, things like that, yeah. Okay, so boundaries and watching out for abuse. You know, that's always a concern whenever you talk about this because you talk about being a slave and immediately we think of people that get mistreated, taken advantage of. And so I think the whole concept, I'm really, I really have my guard up whenever I hear the term boundaries. because of the popular, that book Boundaries by Townsend and Cloud is so popular, and when I read it, there was so much of it that I thought contradicted this principle. The attitude that I see in that is, first you establish you're perfectly safe, and from within your total safety, whatever you're gonna do to serve, great. And I don't think that's what Jesus is saying here. I think he's saying, I think if you do what Jesus is saying and we serve like Jesus served, we're going to get stepped on. We're going to get walked on. You're going to be a doormat. That's what foot washing is, right? That's the first century equivalent to a doormat is a foot washer, right? Cleaning off feet. And so, yeah, right. So there's gonna be some people that'll take advantage of you if you're like this, and you're going to suffer injustice and mistreatment if you're like this. There's just no way around that. So I think we need to be careful about setting up too many boundaries. Where I do agree with the boundary idea is set them up when allowing that mistreatment isn't loving to them. It's not loving to them. You're allowing them to just sin, and you're inviting more of it, and you're establishing, you're assisting in it. Once you get to that point, then I think that you need to extricate yourself from that kind of a relationship, move away from that so that you're not involved in assisting them in their sinful lifestyle. Now, I realize there is not a clear line between the two things I just described. If you serve like Jesus served, people will sin against you. You don't want to assist their sinful lifestyle. Man, I think there's overlap between those two things, and it's a wisdom judgment call when you say, this is too much. Yeah, right. So if you put yourself in a position where you stretch yourself so thin, you're serving everybody, everything that they ask for, such that you can't even do a good job at any of it, or you have to neglect something that you know the Lord wants you to do, then that's when you start learning how to say no and all that. If I get to Judgment Day, I'm less concerned about God's sin Darryl, you didn't set up enough boundaries. You weren't careful enough. You kind of wasted some money. You gave one guy money and he squandered it. I'm not too impressed with that. I'm less concerned about that than I am concerned about, I'll get there and say, Darryl, you were just heartless. You weren't humble. You didn't serve like Jesus showed you the pattern to serve. So yeah, I do think there is a place for drawing some lines. But just need to be real, real careful that that's not our priority. We're trying to do it out of love. So the question is, how do you teach your kids? If you see your kids being manipulated by some other kid, and you want to teach them humility and deference, but you also want to teach them just the life skill of spotting a manipulator, how do you do that? Or challenge them to be God-pleasing and not just man-pleasing. Because the manipulation aspect can be motivated by, I want that friendship, or I want that relationship, or I want them to be happy, and so I'll serve in whatever way possible. Yeah, that's good. And I liked that when she was little. And I remember having conversations with her that said, you know, you're just doing that because you want to make them happy, but does it make God happy, you know, when you do that? And, you know, it's kind of, she was at the age where, you know, she was probably third, fourth grade or something like that, but she was old enough to kind of reason that out, you know, and to, you know, but I didn't want her to, you know, still not, like that friend or something like that, you know? Yeah, that's a really good answer, and I think that it might go back to helping with the boundaries thing, even for adults. Adults who find themselves being taken advantage of very often, it's because of not being overzealous in wanting to serve the Lord and please the Lord, but being overzealous in wanting to please this particular person, and not wanting to incur their wrath or lose the relationship or whatever. And so becoming a God pleaser instead of a man pleaser, yeah, that might be the core idea of the solution to that problem. Yeah, and even if it's, even if she recognizes that I'm mistreating her, there's a role for her to say, I want to rescue you from this sin you're committing, you know. And so, so yeah, I mean, that's another thing. You could teach your child to say, you know, this, this behavior is ungodly, and you want to help people be godly. You know, so. And that's, that's where the focus comes to having a heavenly focus instead of Like, okay, how am I protecting myself, but how am I protecting their soul? An example that came to mind that I think is kind of interesting, if you go to Acts chapter 6 and you look at kind of that situation that played out in the early church, it's amazing how closely related it is to this very interaction that Jesus has with his disciples. So he, you know, like you say, he calls them to be slaves. He calls them to be, in verse 43, a servant, which in, I believe, the Greek is diakonos, right? So he calls them to be deacons. He calls them to be slaves. And then it's interesting, in Acts chapter 6, it says, in verse 2, in the twelfth sum of the full number of the disciples, it said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve So, we shouldn't probably put into our minds this paradigm that there's sometimes that I have a characteristic of servanthood and then other times it's not right to have a characteristic. That's a bad breakdown. The right breakdown is I'm always to have an attitude of service. and slavery to all. In this case, I believe we can see that the Twelve saw that giving up preaching of the word in prayer to serve tables would actually be choosing non-servanthood. The greater service would be to keep them in the word and in prayer and let somebody else do this because they needed to be in true servanthood. So we don't want to say, okay, when do I serve, and when don't I serve? No, you always serve. And like what Josiah was even kind of saying is, what's the greatest service? Yeah, that's such a good insight. In verse 45, Mark 10 45, Jesus came for two reasons. He says, I came, I didn't come to be served, but the opposite of that. Well, what is the opposite of being served? Two things. to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. In the message, I said that second part has primacy, right? Delivering people the spiritual needs has primacy over washing their feet. And that primacy is illustrated perfectly in Acts 6, where they said, well, if they're competing, we can either wait tables or we can minister the Word, not both. Then the servant's heart is going to say, I'm going to give her the greater gift, not the lesser gift. Although, they still saw to it that somebody gave them the lesser gift. Right, yeah. I'm being like Jesus, yeah. or servant in the most enslavery that I can be. Yeah. And the privacy of it. And that's going to be this. That's the greatest servant. It's interesting that Jesus, and I was keeping wrestling in my mind, it's like, like you said, the suffering aspect of it gets overwhelming to us. Because it's like, I think about all the times that Danelle serves our family. And she's by far the greater servant of our family than I am, to my shame. I mean, I'm supposed to be the leader, which means by, according to Jesus' words in John 13, you're the greater servant, right? And yet we struggle. I know how much I love being served, and I enjoy that, and it's really great. And so it's like, well, I like that. And yet, Jesus says that if, he says it in John 13, he says, you know, I'm your Lord and teacher, and you're right by calling me that. I am. It's not like Jesus was saying, no, I'm gonna abdicate my teacher, leader, authority in order to serve, he's saying, no, because I'm this, I'm serving. And he goes on to say that if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. And so it's almost as if you know these things, so I have to drill into my mind continually to overcome the suffering aspect that the blessing of the result is greater than the suffering. And to know that Jesus not only has promised, this is the way it is, but to know the blessing is worth it all. Even in this life, and much more in the life to come. And that's one really big thing in the book of 1 Peter, is he puts such an emphasis on this inheritance that is being built up for us in heaven. And that's one of the things, living a life of service and trying to look out for the eternal benefit of people on this earth. And he uses it as a motivation for us to do that. It's like, you're going to be rewarded for this. I mentioned this a few months ago in one of the messages, how for me, it's a world of difference when I say, I'll serve this person because I should. I ought to do this. It's the right thing to do. It's what God wants. It's what God commanded. Usually that's as far as my thinking goes. But if I go a little further and say, if I do the right thing here, Jesus will be happy with me. You know, just like we tell our kids, you're going to make Jesus happy if you say sorry. You know, it's such a basic thing. But to think it, to actually think, I do some little thing that I ought to do. I don't feel like doing it, and I don't want to clean up some mess, but I should. Oh, if I clean it up, Jesus will be happy with me right now. And just to think about that, it turns it into such a relational thing instead of a duty. It really has a major effect. Still, though, I rarely remember to think that. But when I do, it's amazing. Well in maybe in Matthew but in Mark He says those who are regarded his emphasis is the fact that they're regarded You know that they're they're seen by men as authorities and he would be a contrast to that because he had authority but not not in the eyes of men and not certainly not because of No, yeah, it is the exercise authority is another restatement of lording it over I think I don't think it's a they just They have authority. It's the the way that he says that and the other places that that's used that way are just It's just another way of saying exact same thing of lording it over John the Baptist was unjustly murdered You know, he was, they said Jesus wasn't a meek, mild person, but he was a warrior. He was a meek, mild warrior. And that's the way he fought. The temple, he was violent in the temple. One time or two times in two instances, but man the whole record of his life is so much softness and lowliness and You're right about the fact that it was he was upset about God being blasphemed not about when it was against him he didn't have a violent response even on the cross and He's like, Father, forgive them. So if you have a record of anger over people blaspheming God, but never over them hurting you, then you're doing pretty good. Well, he said, my kingdom is not of this world. Yeah. And when they tried to fight with a sword, he said, put that away. That's not the kind of kingdom we're talking about here. So it wasn't through physical violence or physical domination, but it was some major spiritual conflict. It still is. Alrighty, well, I didn't say anything about Jesus as a ransom. I'm gonna do a whole message on that today. I recorded it already. I'm gonna upload it in the next podcast after this one gets uploaded. That'll be the next one. And so a whole message on Jesus as ransom. That's the reason why Jesus came. Really just one word in the whole book of Mark on why he came, why he had to die. Father, we do pray for our country. It really does seem like the world is on fire and these riots, Lord, people suffering and being beaten and killed and losing everything. So much anger. Father, it's amazing. This event happened that every single person in the country agrees on, that it's bad. And it's caused such division. And the response to it is people in like a gardening discussion group online are angry at each other, and it's amazing the bitterness. And even within the church, people arguing about, first about COVID and whether we should get together or not, and then now about racism, and there's these bad responses to racism really having an impact in evangelicalism and scary ways. Lord, there's just a lot that's going on in this world, and we pray for your mercy on this country. And we ask that you would use all this chaos to drive people to your son. And help us to be your instruments in doing that. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for listening! We pray these principles from the Word of God are helping you find the peace of God as you draw near to the God of peace. Please remember to pray for this ministry, and remember that we're a crowdfunded ministry, so every gift helps. Just go to treasuringgod.com. Until next time, rejoice in the Lord always, and set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. you