10/25/2015 It Shall Not Be So With You Pastor Henry Wiley

I'm here with one of the pastors from the Greece Catholic Church in Fremont, a dear brother from a dear sister church. We'll join, we'll all combine here on the 8th of next month and I'm joined with him again as he comes to fellowship.

He's coming out to preach the word. I want to say that when Pastor Henry of Greece is coming to preach, I never ask him what he's going to say. Because I know from experience, he will say one thing. He will say, Jesus Christ is Lord.

And so I'm anxious to hear what our brother has to say to us this morning.

The Third Prediction of Jesus’ Death and the Shape of Discipleship

In this section of scripture, Jesus tells his disciples that he's going to die. And as he moves towards Jerusalem to his crucifixion, he takes the opportunity to give them a lesson in discipleship. And he's teaching two things in this passage that belong together.

And that's what he's doing here. He not only speaks about his death on the cross, which he does three different times, this is the third time. But he tells them what's going to happen and how it's going to happen.

That the Son of Man will suffer many things and be rejected by the chief priests and killed. And at the same time, he speaks to them about what the life of a disciple means. What it means to follow him.

What it looks like to follow him. And the two of them can never be separate. In fact, they're combined together. His death and discipleship. And this morning in our passage, we have the third and most detailed prediction of his death combined with the establishing of what it means to be a disciple.

Let me just read 42 to 45 again so that we can be on the same page. In verse 42, Jesus called them to him and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.

But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would 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 a ransom for many. And this is the new life in Jesus. And he gives us two completely incompatible value systems. Two world views. Two ways of life. And Jesus holds up the way of the Gentiles or the way of the world.

And it's the way of power as our brother Ken mentioned earlier. It's getting ahead. It's to get on top. To be above others. It's to raise yourself in the world. It's a very self-centered approach at life.

But the other group is different. It has a different world view. Instead of trying to get up and be served by others, this group serves. Instead of being on top, they make themselves slaves of all. And the dividing line between the two groups is in verse 43.

Where Jesus is talking about the way of the Gentiles or the way of the world. And he says to his disciples, it shall not be so among you. And Jesus says there's a different way for disciples. A different way among you.

And that is the mark of the disciple. It's the life of serving. It's the life of downward movement. If I could put it that way. The way of the cross. And so what we have in this little section, chapters 8 to 10, is really great.

It's wonderful. Because what the disciples do is the disciples, they say what we think. And that's not very attractive. Because they were numbskulls half the time. They're a good example of how conflicted we are when we hear about this newness of life in Jesus.

Yet we're living in the world. And the disciples really give us a picture of what it means to be committed to the old man. The old way of working. And you can see this every time Jesus predicts his death.

Because after each time the disciples say something that show that they have not understood. So back in chapter 8, the first time Jesus announced that he was going to die. Or he was going to go to Jerusalem to be killed.

What does Peter do? Peter says, knock it off. Stop it. What are you doing? He takes him aside and he rebukes him. He says, this is madness. And Jesus turns to Peter and he says, Peter, you don't have your mind on the things of God.

But on the things of man. On human ways of thinking. And the human way of thinking is not God's way of thinking. God has a very, he has a way of thinking and acting that violates the common sense human way.

Glory, the Fall, and the Glory Deficit

So, let me back up a little bit. You know, in the beginning God created us to live and walk in his presence with Adam and Eve. To enjoy his companionship. To have communion with him. But Adam and Eve walked away from God.

They walked out of the garden. And man has continued to walk away ever since. And what happens is that man developed an alternative value system apart from God. An alternative way of seeing things. And that's what we have around us today.

That people, it's a very self-centered way of looking at life. Where self is at the very center. It's a way of getting on top or getting ahead without God. Or living life without him. So the whole way we think about our lives.

Our own desires. Our own honor. Our own glory. It's now all upside down. Because of the curse of sin. You see, God created us for his glory. To share his glory with us. And part of what it means to be human is to desire glory.

That's never going to go away from us. But when we walked away from God, we have what you call a glory deficit now. And so we have to replace the glory of God with a different glory. Our own glory. Of our own making.

Our own greatness. Our own sovereignty. Our own power. And that's what it means to walk according to the course of this world. It's about achieving my own glory. Getting what I want. Getting ahead. Getting on top.

Being over others. Getting my desires met my way. The problem is the more you seek for yourself, it just doesn't satisfy, does it? Our own glory doesn't do the job because we were made for more. And how timely that Ken gave his testimony.

Because he's a picture of someone in the world. God's grace delivered him from that. And we're all infected with that. We all want to get ahead. We all want to be ambitious. But it's the wrong way. Because God is the only source of true glory.

It's his to give. And the way he gives us, he gives us his glory through the humility and serving of his son, Jesus Christ. Do you know who he gives it to? He doesn't give it to those who are in positions of prominence and power.

Not normally. But he gives it to those who receive it as little children. And so back in chapter 9, right after the second death prediction, the 12 disciples have a big argument. He just spoke about his death a second time.

And they're arguing about who's going to be the greatest in heaven. Let me go to chapter 9 real quick. And read verses 33. It says,. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house, he asked them, What were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent. For on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. So they didn't say a word. I mean, he just spoke about his death a second time. But why did they keep silent?

You know, we, of course, don't want to do that. We have the same mindset as they do. We wouldn't want to be caught dead doing that. Even though we do it all the time in our hearts. And Jesus sets them down in verse 35.

They're talking about greatness. But Jesus wants them to see that the way of following him is the complete opposite. And so we come to today's passage, which begins in verse 32. And it tells us that Jesus, in that verse, he's out in front of the group.

He's leading the way. He's moving quickly. The group's behind him. And he has his face directed towards Jerusalem, or he's going to die. But he's not walking like a man who's going to his execution. He's not dragging his feet or going reluctantly.

He's out in front. He's walking with authority and purpose. And the disciples are amazed, but they're also afraid. In verse 33, Jesus tells them, he says, We're going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over the chief priests and the scribes.

And they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise. And almost immediately, right after Jesus says this, in verse 35, we get another picture from the disciples once again.

In verse 35, James and John see that this is their chance to get the choice spots in Jesus' kingdom. And it's kind of interesting that Jesus refers to James and John as the sons of thunder. Oftentimes, you know, I've always thought of John as kind of a passive, gentle apostle.

He always said he was the one whom Jesus loved. I mean, he wrote the epistles of 1 John on loving one another, and he encourages believers to love one another, basically. But here the Lord refers to him as one of the sons of thunder, which means that he and James had short fuses.

I mean, they're the ones who asked Jesus to call down thunder from heaven or lightning and destroy the people in that town. Now, we don't know much about James, but there's a hint about him in the book of Acts where Herod has Peter put in prison, but he has James put to death immediately.

Perhaps he was more trouble than Peter. I don't know if he was a son of thunder. And if James died according to Roman custom, three soldiers would come to him. Two would hold up his hands, and the third would thrust the sword in his abdomen until he died.

And that's probably how James met his end. Well, here's the picture in our text. Jesus is marching ahead. James and John leave the other ten behind them, and they sneak up to Jesus. And they've been thinking about this and planning this for a long time, because there's a lot of time to think when you're walking from town to town, right?

Maybe James perhaps turns to John, and he says, You know, John, I've really been brainstorming here. There's going to be 12 seats in heaven for the 12 of us. Let's go ask for the best seats in the house.

And John agrees, thinking, You're right. If we don't do it, that Peter's going to do it. So they come upside to Jesus, behind the others' backs, and they say, Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.

Do you think that's a great prayer? Do you think that's how we should approach the Lord Jesus? We want you to do whatever we ask of you. It's a very self-serving request. The kind of thing you would say to a genie in a bottle.

And I really want you to think about this, how selfish this really is. Jesus has just told him, I'm going to die. I'm going to be killed. If you could picture yourself, if you had terminal cancer, and you decide, I'm going to move to Phoenix.

Probably the weather's better for my health. I don't know how Phoenix would be, but let's just, for argument's sake. And I tell my kids, you know, kids, I don't have long, so I'm going to move to Phoenix, so I can probably not suffer as much.

And the kids turn around and say, well, that means we still get the house, right? That's exactly what James and John did to the Lord Jesus. But notice how Jesus responds to them. He says, what do you want me to do for you?

It's actually a very good question. What do you want the Lord to do for you? Your answer will betray your heart, just like James and John, if it's a self-centered question. Give us the key seats of highest status and position, one on the left and one on the right.

You see, they want greatness. They want honor. They want prestige. And it does show they've been listening to what Jesus has been saying, but they've been listening selectively. They heard what he said about glory, but so deeply ingrained is the old man that they've filtered out all this stuff about the cross and serving others.

They were willing to follow Jesus, but they wanted it to be connected to serving their own goals and what Jesus is calling us to do is very radical. It's to be nothing, to be willing to be nobody. The Beatles had a song to be a nowhere man, right?

And maybe the best way to avoid the radicalness of what Jesus is saying is to be selective in our obedience. The disciples have forgotten that they're citizens of a new kingdom now, a kingdom where things are done differently.

They're not of the world anymore, yet they're still acting as if they are. And how do people rule in the world? The world has its CEOs, its bosses, its politicians, its supervisors. Leadership is from the top down.

People with power rule over those who are lower on the ladder. And there's a pecking order that's followed in the world. And the disciples kind of like that model. They're in love with the idea of recognition, self-promotion, with a sense of importance and their own greatness.

And it's all worldly thinking. And the other ten disciples have the same thinking, and they're angry and outraged, not because of what they said to Jesus. It's mainly because they didn't get to Jesus first.

They didn't call shotgun first. Remember that when you were in high school and a bunch of you guys would be getting in the car and you'd call shotgun? Well, this is just an old ancient version of shotgun.

True Greatness Is Servanthood in the Community of the Cross

And so Jesus, sometimes I wonder if he rolled his eyes. He takes the time to explain and he summons them, and he unveils what it means to be a disciple, what it means to follow him. And so the first thing he does is he outlines the value system of the world.

In verse 42 it says,. And Jesus called them to him and said to them,. You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.

But it shall not be so among you. And with that one phrase, Jesus sweeps away our whole value system, the whole way we put the world together, our view on possessions, our view on money, on relationships, the scale of importance, all the natural assumptions we have on these things, the valuations we put on one another.

He says they no longer apply. They no longer apply to those who follow me. Now that is radical. And that is not the human way of thinking. And notice that this is a shared, mutual, communal reality. It's not just for super-Christians or selective few.

It's for us as a Christian community. He says in verse 43,. It shall not be so among you. Whoever will be great among you, whoever will be first among you. You see, it's a community of the cross. That's what we are.

But we always seem to gravitate to wanting greatness, wanting recognition, wanting to be independent or autonomous, do my own thing. In Jesus' mind, if we are a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, we're meant to be a community of contrast with values and thinking that's just the opposite of what's obvious in the world.

Whoever would be great among us must be our servant. Whoever would be first among us must be slave of all. It's completely upside down. Yet Jesus says, this is the Christian life, choosing to be restricted, not just in isolated actions, here and there, but in terms of the use of your life.

You cannot be selective in this. I'll give you my time, but my money's off limits. But that runs against our nature, doesn't it? To renounce your rights and to give yourself an act of service. And Jesus has nothing against ambition.

It just has to be attached to the glory of God, not to the glory of man. And the way it shows is by actively serving others. It means taking action in love for the good of others. And it involves a personal choice and a personal commitment to act.

It means an ongoing giving up of my selfish ambitions for those around you. To use my power and to use my resources and my gifts God has given me for others. So for those of you who are married, husbands, don't wait for your wives to serve you.

You serve them. Wives, serve your husbands. Don't wait for them to serve you. If you're single and you have roommates, serve your roommates. If you're an employer, you serve your employees. If you work for someone, you serve those around you and you serve your boss, not just your boss.

But within the Christian community, Jesus expects us, or he's called us, to be actively serving. Because if we are a Christian community and if Jesus is at the center, we ought to be marked by all kinds of sacrificial serving on behalf of others.

Every one of you here following Jesus ought to have that sense because of the Holy Spirit. And you ought to say, I'm committed to the spiritual and physical well-being of those around me. And this is what Jesus has called you to.

From serving yourself to serving others. So I want to ask you a question. Are you serving? Are you doing that? If Jesus were to visit us this morning, would he find you serving in the community of the cross?

Because it's when you give yourself to serving and following Jesus, that's what it means to be a disciple. And you can't call yourself a disciple if you're not serving. Because that's how the gospel is seen in our lives.

It says, you shall know them by the love they have one for another. It's tangible. It's visible. It's not intellectual or what you say or believing the right things. And I'm not talking about doing really big things.

Although I can include that. But more often it's the little things. You know, the little ways. And it can't happen apart from a heart attitude. It doesn't come from guilt. It can't be forced from the outside.

It comes from a changed heart. And that's why all the church programs in the world make no difference if our hearts are not engaged to serve each other. The community of true self-giving love can only be created by Christ Jesus.

Christ’s Servant-Song, the Ransom, and the New Life

And I just want to finish and say that this is not just difficult, but humanly impossible. And like the disciples, we just don't have the resources in ourselves to climb out of our natural state. You know, I can grind away and look like I'm serving and I can try and muster up this love for you or whatever.

This complete reversal, it doesn't come natural to us. It's the grace of God. So I want to point to a couple quick things before I finish. And the first and most obvious thing to point to is Jesus because our passages finish with him in verse 45.

It says,. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. So Jesus came to serve. And how did he do that? By giving his life. Jesus' life and death is not just a model for us to follow, but it's the power which he gives us.

He gives us the power with the ability to do what he's doing. He took on the form of a slave and he deliberately and lovingly gave his life away to death for you. And in his death, he ransomed us from the power of death and from all those things that keep us enslaved.

And these words of Jesus tell us something about the inmost character of God himself. Here's the Son of God speaking and he says to us that God is a serving God. God finds the center of his interest outside of himself in us.

God cares about you and he serves you. And you look at God's life in the Trinity. It's one of sacrificial love. It's the Father gives to the Son. The Son gives to the Father. And that's why Jesus can say the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and give his life a ransom for many.

The Lord Jesus was not in it for himself. He came to ransom us, to give us eternal life, and to create a new people for himself with very different values, if I can use that word, from the world. He breaks us free from the grip of the old nature, even though we struggle with it until we die.

And he gives us a new life. And that's why I think he calls us to pick up our cross, to take up our cross and follow him to deny ourselves. True discipleship is always cross-shaped. And the only way out from the old life into newness of life is not a moral correction or adding new activities.

It's life from the dead. And Jesus is the one who does this. His act of service was not just a one-time deal. That same Savior who served us on the cross will serve us in the resurrection. He's going to serve us in the kingdom forever.

If you want to turn to Luke 12, verse 35, I'll tell you what I mean by this. Here the Lord is talking about a parable. Luke 12, verse 35, and the Lord Jesus says this, Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks.

Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table and he will come and serve them. It's a very fascinating verse, the Lord Jesus serving us.

That's what the Lord tells us. He will dress himself for service and have them recline at table and he will come and serve them. So if you're in a tough place, finding it hard to or difficult to serve others around you and you need encouragement to continue, this is the assurance in Christ Jesus when he comes again and he brings us into that great feast and he sets us down with his people to eat and drink with him in his kingdom.

So that is wonderful news. Alright, let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you are a gracious savior to us. That Lord, that you are mindful of us all the time. And Lord, we confess that we are not always mindful of you.

That we're selfish by nature. That we want what we want when we want it. And Lord, we pray that we would have the mind of Christ in dealing with one another, that you were our example. We thank you for saving us and giving us this new life in Jesus Christ.

We ask that you be with us as we go to our homes this day. In Jesus' name, amen.