The Son of Man Did Not Come to Be served but to Serve
(Mark 10:45)
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
Introduction: Christmas Is About. . .
Today and next Sunday I want to meditate
with you on Mark 10:45. It
is a very important Christmas text.
Christmas is about the coming of Christ into
the world.
- It’s about the Son of God, who existed eternally with the Father as "the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature," taking on human nature and becoming a man (Hebrews 1:3).
- It’s about the birth of a man by a virgin conceived miraculously (not sexually) by the Holy Spirit so that he is the Son of God, not the way you and I are sons of God, but in an utterly unique way (Luke 1:35).
- It’s about the coming of a man named Jesus in whom "all the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 2:9).
- It’s about the coming of the "fullness of time" that had been prophesied by the prophets of old that
A Ruler would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2);and a child would be born called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6);and a Messiah, an anointed one, a shoot from the stem of Jesse, a son of David, a King would come (Isaiah 11:1-4; Zechariah 9:9)And, according to our text today, Christmas is about the coming of the Son of Man who "came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).
This brief expression of Christmas in Mark
10:45 is what I hope God
will fix in your mind and heart this year so that your faith in
future grace will be
strengthened and so that you will have a clear, short word of
explanation that you can
refer to when you are talking to others about what Christmas
really means.
So we will take it, one step at a time and make
sure that the words are
clear and that we understand why Jesus said them in this
context.
Whoever Wishes to Become Great. . .Shall Be
Slave of All
Let’s get the story clear: James and
John, two of Jesus
disciples -- the sons of thunder -- came up to him and said (in
verse 35),
"Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."
And Jesus said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?
And they said to Him, "Grant that we may sit in your glory, one on your right, and one on your left."
But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking for. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"
And they said to Him, "We are able."
And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you shall drink; and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. "But to sit on My right or on my left, this is not mine to give; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."
James and John get one thing right here, and
most everything else
wrong. They are right in verse 37 when they say that Jesus is
destined for glory --
"When you sit in your glory." And that is a good thing
to be right about. There
are some people in this room who are not yet right about that.
Here’s how you can
tell. If you know that a company’s stock is going to take off
and go through the roof
you buy that stock and not the competitor’s. If you know this
building is going to
stand after the storm and no others, you get in this building, and
not the others. And if
you know that Jesus is going to reign in glory in the end over
every rival, then you
follow Jesus and not his rivals. And some are not following Jesus
and so don’t have
it right yet about his glory. You’re not yet as far along as
James and John.
They had that right. Jesus would take his
kingly seat in glory someday
and rule the world. Nobody really believes this, who isn’t
following Jesus.
But they probably didn’t understand the
cup and the baptism that
Jesus was talking about in verse 38, "Are you able to drink
the cup that I drink, or
to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"
They said yes. But did
they know? What was he talking about?
What is this cup? In the garden of Gethsemane,
Jesus pleaded with his
Father, if there was another way besides the horror of crucifixion
and abandonment, would
he please take that way. But these were the words he used,
Abba! Father! All things are possible for you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will." (Mark 14:36)
The cup was the death he was about to endure.
So he was saying to James
and John: if you want to rule with me in my glory the way you are
asking, then you must
die with me -- you must drink the same cup.
And did they understand the baptism? "Are
you able to . . . be
baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" In Luke
12:50 Jesus said,
"I have a baptism to undergo, and how constrained I am until
it is
accomplished!" Jesus saw his death not only as a bitter cup
to drink but an immersion
-- a baptism -- in suffering. He said, in effect, my pathway to
glory and to kingship is
through suffering and death. If you want the kind of honor you are
asking for, you must
follow me in my suffering and death.
But there will be others who will follow like
this, and I have only one
right hand and one left hand. Who shall sit there? Verse 40: The
one for whom it has been
prepared by my Father. God the Father has decided this. It is not
mine to change now.
So what he has done is take their desire for
glory and show them that
the path to glory is a pathway through suffering and death. That
is what Christmas means:
on Jesus pathway from glory to glory he came here to pass through
suffering and death. Now
he says, "Do you want to be great in glory with me? Walk with
me on this path of
suffering.
What happens then is that the other disciples
get bent out of shape
because of James and John’s aggressive claim on the places of
honor in the kingdom.
What will Jesus say to them. He says basically the same thing he
said to James and John,
only with different words. Watch how he does it. Verse 41 says
they are indignant with
James and John. So Jesus calls them all around and says (in verse
42),
You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. 43) But it is not so among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; 44) and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all.
Now that is the same as saying to James and
John: if you want to be
great with me in my glory you must drink the cup of my suffering.
If you disciples want to
get in on the greatness, you must be a servant, and if you want to
be first, the way James
and John asked about the first places, you must be slave of all.
But what does slave of
all mean?
In the next verse, (10:45) he gives an example
of what he means,
namely, himself. "For even the Son of Man did not come to be
served, but to serve,
and to give His life a ransom for many." Notice the point
here is serving that
results in dying -- a giving up of his life. So in verse 38, when
he showed James and John
the way to glory, he said that they would need to drink his cup
and share his baptism,
namely, death. And here in verse 45, when he shows the rest of the
disciples the way to
greatness, he gives his own death as an example: "the Son of
Man came to give his
life as a ransom for many." In both cases he is giving his
death as an example of the
kind of suffering and service that the disciples are called to.
That’s the context of verse 45. It is part
of a very radical call
to discipleship. If you want to follow me and seek the glory of
the kingdom, be prepared
to suffer. That is the way I go and those who follow me go the
same way. I don’t take
the hard road while you take the easy road. The road that leads to
life is hard and few
there be that find it (Matthew 7:14). We take the same road.
"He who would come after
me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"
(Mark 8:34).
The Radical Call to Be Served By Jesus
Now in that context Jesus gives a powerful
Christmas promise of
future grace. As far as I know no other religious leader in the
history of the world has
done what Jesus promised here. He says in effect in verse 45 that
this radical call to
discipleship -- this call to come and drink the cup of suffering
and service -- this is not
a call to serve Jesus, but a call to be served by Jesus as we
serve others and to be
ransomed by him from death. Let me say this again, to be sure you
hear it correctly: the
good news ( the good news of Christmas) is that the radical call
to Christian discipleship
is NOT a call to serve Jesus, but to be served by Jesus as we
serve others, and to be
ransomed by him from death.
You see this in verse 45: "The Son of Man
did not come to be
served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for
many." At first this only
sounds like an example to follow, right? Don’t lord it over
your fellows, serve
them.. Why: because the Son of Man set you an example: he serves.
He gives his life. So at
first the verse sounds like an example to follow.
But then you ponder for a few moments and it
hits you. Wait a minute!
This is not just an example, for me to follow. He is not just
saying, "Serve the way
I serve." This is the Son of Man serving me! Ransoming me
from my sin and my death!
Refusing to be served by me. Insisting on being the Servant and
the Savior in my life.
This is not just another teacher with some
rules about how to live,
gathering some radical disciples to live the way he lives and stir
up a revolution. This
is a man (and more than a man!) telling his disciples that he has
come into the world to
serve them; he does not want them to serve him and he will lay
down his life so that their
lives can be ransomed from sin and death. This is unheard of.. You
need to feel how wild
this is. No man ever spoke this way -- except maybe in a mental
hospital. No respected
religious leader ever spoke this way. Either Jesus is above every
ordinary teacher, with
some supernatural power and dignity, or he is a lunatic.
When he calls for radical, self-sacrificing
discipleship, he gives a
reason in verse 45: "For (note the word!) even the Son of Man
did not come to be
served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom of
many." Yes, this is a call
to act the way he acted. But O so much more! The Son of Man did
not come to be served, but
to serve! Not to be served by whom? Whom does he not want to be
served by? Answer: the
very disciples that he is calling to drink his cup and endure his
baptism and to be the
slave of all.
He is saying: Yes, drink my cup. Yes, share my
baptism. Yes, serve
others. Yes, be the slave of all. This is what it means to be my
disciple. But don’t
serve me! I have not come to be served. I will not be served like
this. I will be the
servant. I have not come to be served, but to serve. In your
relationship with me, I will
be the servant. I will serve you. I will work for you.
Do you think you can drink this cup without my
help and service? Do you
think you can endure the suffering of my baptism without my
serving you and helping you?
Do you think you can become the kind of person that renounces fame
and human status to
serve all other people without my serving you -- day and night all
the days of your life?
No you can’t.
Do you recall what Jesus said in John 15:5?
I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.
Apart from me you can do nothing. You cannot
drink my cup. You cannot
endure my baptism. You cannot serve each other. You cannot become
the slave of all. To do
any of this, you must "abide in me and I in you." You
must trust me to serve
you. Abiding in the vine and being served by Jesus are the same
thing. And both are the
same as living by faith in future grace.
Jesus is saying, "Christmas means that the
Son of Man comes. And
when he comes he demands something and he promises
something. He demands
your life. All of it. He demands that you take on a life-style
that sacrifices everything
for the sake of serving others (Luke 14:33). This is hard. In
fact, it is impossible.
That’s what Jesus said to the disciples in Mark 10:27 when
they said, "Who then
can be saved?" He said, "With men it is impossible, but
not with God; for all
things are possible with God." It is impossible to drink the
cup of suffering. It is
impossible to become everybody’s servant. UNLESS . . .
That is what verse 45 is all about. The great
UNLESS . . .Unless the
Son of Man is serving you day and night.
Mark 10:45 is what turns Christianity into
gospel. If Christianity were
only a great and radical teacher calling for the sacrificial
obedience of radical
disciples, it would not be good news. It would be just another
ideology. Another
philosophy. Another moral improvement program. If Christmas only
meant that a man appeared
on the scene of history to call others to be servants, it would
not be good news.
We know that already. We know intuitively that
we are to love and serve
and sacrifice, rather than boast and seek our own status and lord
it over others. We
don’t need a Messiah to tell us that. What we need is
salvation from guilt and death
and hell. And we need power to drink the cup of suffering in the
path of service. We
don’t need another religious leader to say "Follow
me." We don’t need
another prophet, like Mohammed. We don’t need another
philosophical Buddha or
Confucius, or another political organizer like Karl Marx or Mao
Zedong. We don’t need
any more New Age mysticisms or psychological self-help strategies.
What we need is Someone
who can forgive our sins and ransom us from guilt and death and
the wrath of God, and who
can give us a new life with the power die for each other in the
service of love.
That is what Christmas is all about. That is
what Mark 10:45 is all
about. Jesus does not merely come as another teacher or
philosopher or politician or
mystic. He comes to do two things. One: to give his life as a
ransom for many. (We will
dig into that great work next week.) And he comes, secondly, to
serve his disciples -- to
serve all those who will stop trying to earn his approval by
serving him, and will humble
themselves like little children and let him serve them. This is
the help we need and the
power we need. He is our Redeemer from guilt and death and hell.
He is our helper day in
and day out as he serves us by the power of his Spirit.
I commend him to you for your trust. For your
enjoyment this Christmas.
Our new daughter, Talitha Ruth, arrived in our
home Friday night at 9
1/2 weeks old. She smiled. She cooed. She ate. And she fell asleep
in her crib. And slept
for seven hours. She did not serve us at all. She is totally
dependent our being served by
us. If she insists on serving us rather than our serving her, she
will die. This is why
Jesus said, "Unless you turn and become like children, you
will not enter the kingdom
of heaven." (Matthew 18:3).
It’s almost Christmas. Open your heart to
receive the best
Christmas present imaginable. Jesus giving himself to die for you
and serve you, all the
rest of eternity. Receive this. Turn away from self-help and sin.
Become like little
children. Trust him. Trust him. Trust him with your life.
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