The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E61 - Greatness

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Hey, church family, it is Devo time. Again, three days in a row. Back to my favorite team. Let's go football season. All right, Matthew chapter 20 is where we're going to be. We are going to talk about greatness. Who wants to be great? I don't know anybody that doesn't want to be great.

What's going to happen here is this mom is going to come up to Jesus on behalf of her two sons and make a power play in what she thinks is great. And so in our world, we think great is the top, the best, number one. And Jesus is going to turn this thing completely upside down. And so Matthew chapter 20 verse 20. And I think in Jesus's conversation with this mom and the disciples, he's going to show us four ways to be great in his kingdom. the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to Jesus with her sons

and kneeling before him she asked him for something and he said to her what do you want and she said to him say that these two sons of mine are to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom and Jesus answered you do not know what you are asking are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink and they said to him we are able and he said to them, You will drink my cup,

but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant. But it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father. And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers, but Jesus called them to him and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,

and their great ones exercise authority over them. 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 your slave. Doulos is the Greek word. Even as the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

All right, so we've got a little misguided greatness here. What does it mean to be great? Henry, who's doing the videos today where he was talking about the last dance about this series about Michael Jordan, right? The greatest player ever in basketball. I don't care if you think it's LeBron, you're wrong, all right? And if you think it was Kobe, you're just sentimental.

It was, it's Jordan. There's no doubt about it. And so greatness in sports means who was the best, but he also made everybody else the best. And if you want to be the greatest in your business, I guess that means you're the CEO. If you want to be, you know, greatest in politics, that means you're the president, whatever.

and the mother of the sons of Zebedee is coming with that kind of mentality and she wants something great for her kids and Jesus is going to turn this, take this request and flip it upside down. And at the end he says, if you want to be great, then you got to serve. I think there are four things that he teaches us about what it means to be great in the kingdom of God. First, I think we see this from the mom, even though, even though her priorities are off, her posture is right. That's how I'll say it.

Here's what she understands. It is not her son's platform that matters, but their proximity to Jesus that matters. You see, the mom comes up and kneels before the Lord, and she says, can my boys be close to you? A great leader, a great disciple, first and foremost, knows how to rest in Jesus, knows how to find their identity, not in their performance, not in their job, not in their title, not in their marital situation.

A great leader knows how to find their identity, first and foremost, in Jesus. That she came up and kneeled before him. And again, even though her priorities were a little out of whack, her perspective was right, and her posture towards Christ was right. Here's what I mean. You need to continuously kneel before Jesus.

You need a time every single day. The best time to do it is right when you wake up, that you kneel before the Lord. You need a time every week, like a Sabbath, where you spend your time at the feet of Jesus. And then we need some times throughout the year where we take extended times, like we do, it's saturated, you know,

those kind of things, where we are posturing ourselves at the feet of Jesus, understanding that it is not our performance and it is not our platform that matters most, that it is our proximity to Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, abide in me and I will abide in you. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So listen, CEO and president and big boss and homemaker. I know you have a lot to to do today. And the fact that you're watching the divo right now, praise God. That is an act of leaning into Jesus, that kneeling at his feet, understanding that it's not your platform and performance that first and foremost matter, that it is your proximity to him. And another thing that you have to understand, it is Jesus and Jesus alone that elevates and promotes you. I mean, sure,

you can fight and call your way to the top of the ladder. But what's even better is when the King of the universe promotes you because of your character and integrity because you've been leaning into him. You want to be great? First and foremost, you kneel at the feet of Jesus. Now, while there again, he says, what do you want? And she says, can you promote my boys to, like, senior VP of Jesus Incorporated? And his answer in verse 22 is this, you don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? And they said, we're able. if you want to be great, you have to be able to endure suffering. The cup he is talking about is in just a few chapters.

He is going to go to the Garden of Githemone, and he is going to sweat drops of blood. He is going to feel the weight of the sinfulness of man on his shoulders, and he is going to feel the blow of the righteous judgment of his father against him, because God is going to make him who is without sin to be sin. and in the Garden of Gassimony, feeling that weight, feeling like he wanted to die, sweating drops of blood, he is going to say to his father, father, if there be any other way, let this cup pass from me. The cup that he's talking about is the cup of the wrath of God.

So he says, you want to be great? Can you drink up the cup that I'm going to drink of? Can you endure the pain that I'm going to endure? Can you, can you be steadfast in? suffering. Listen, if you are a Jesus follower and you want to be great, you will suffer. People will say all kind of things about you because you live with a different ethic than they live. Then you are going to have to forgive people that hate you, that you are going to have to pray for people that vow to overthrow you. Do you understand this? If you want a simple and easy life, if you want a carefree life of just nothing but happy days and rainbows, do not be a Christian. But if you want to be great, then your greatness in the kingdom of God will be directly

related to the amount of pain and suffering that you can handle. Don't believe me, look at the cross of Jesus Christ. And they say to him, yeah, we can handle it. We can drink the cup. And he says, you will drink the cup. And what he's saying here is, you don't know it yet, but you are actually going to be martyred for your faith. And then he says this, you will drink my cup, verse 23.

But to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant. If you want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, then you have to know how to submit to authority. That's right. Think about this. Jesus says, when this mom makes this,

request, that is above my pay grade. That is not for me to grant. That is only for my father to grant. Now, think about this. Jesus is before all things. Jesus is the Word who was God and was with God. All things that have been made have been made for him, by him, through him, and to him. It is by his very power and presence that all of the universe is held into existence, that Jesus is the creator of all things. Again, the fullness of God dwells in. in him and that he spoke this all into existence. He is the final judge and arbiter of all that will happen in all of eternity. He's kind of a big deal.

And yet he knows what it's like to submit to the authority of his Heavenly Father. You see, the reality is that every single one of us have authority to submit to. If you're a boss, you submit to some board. If you're a manager, you probably have some boss. If you're in a family, there's a whole bunch of submission that has to go on there. Every single one of us, God has placed authority in our life. And I would challenge you. Don't ever expect God to give you any authority until you learn to live under the authority that he is placed over you.

This is what Jesus is saying. There are so many people that want to fight their way to the top. and in doing so at work sometimes you are trying to usurp the very authority that God placed in your life to teach you the things that you need to learn so that you could be the boss one day that God would have you to be. And you cannot run an end around by the means and think you can make it to the end of what God has for you. To be great in the kingdom of heaven means that you learn to submit to authority. Here at this church, I have authority over me. I have a board of elders that I willingly and willfully submit to.

And they are a group of men that God has ordained over me. Together, we are all elders. And though I am the lead pastor, I submit to the collective group. And the reason we do this is because it is a picture of the Godhead. That even in the Godhead, God himself, one God in three persons, is a picture of perfect, submissive love to one another. You want to be great? Learn to submit.

So he's having this conversation, and then the other 10 disciples here, they're like, hey, wait a minute. These boys' moms are trying to get them a promotion. And Jesus called him, and here's what he says. He says, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles, and he doesn't just mean non-Jewish people. Here's what he means. He's like, people that are bosses that don't even know

the Lord. They lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. In other words, people that don't know God, people that are not Christians, they exercise authority in a top-down, dogmatic, what's in it for me, you better listen to me because I am the boss kind of way. And then he looks at his followers and says, it shall not be so among us. you. Hey dads, you want to be the leader in your home? Let me tell you what that means. It doesn't mean that you make all the decisions and everybody does what you say. It means you ought to be the lead apologizer in your home. You ought to be the lead repenter in your home. You ought to be the lead servant in your home. You ought to be the lead prayer in your home. Because when we were not, then we're like pagan dads. You want to be the boss at work? Then you should be a different kind of boss.

you want to be the one in charge, then you should leverage your authority, not for your name, but he says this. He says, it shall not be so among you, whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

And whoever would be first among you must be your due loss or bond servant. Even as the son of man came, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. do you consider yourself a leader who serves or a servant that sometimes gets to lead? You see, Jesus says when he came to this earth, he did not come to leave, but he came to serve. And everybody's cool being a servant until you get treated like one.

And see, what's crazy in our culture now is we use the word servant as a modifier to the kind of leader we are. We want to be a servant leader. Are you a servant? No, no, no, no, no. I'm a leader, but this is the kind I am. This is not what Jesus is talking about. That's wordplay. He is saying, if you want to be great, be the last, be the least.

Be the first one that steps up and raises their hands and says, I will do whatever it takes to lift others up, to make much of them. I'll take the worst job. I'll do the hardest things in my family, in my house, in my neighborhood, in my school, in my work. and you do these four things, you kneel before Jesus daily, weekly, you endure trials and sufferings that come your way

for the sake of the gospel. You learn how to submit to authority and you serve first and in the kingdom of heaven, you'll be great. Let's pray. My Father in heaven, Lord, I know that we have men and women all over this city and country and even world now. And Lord, I know that you have placed us in all kind of different

positions of leadership and authority, whether it's leading a home or a class or a business or whatever it is, Lord. And I pray that we would be the kind of leaders that Jesus was. Lord, I pray that we would not try to make much of ourselves, Lord, but we would humble ourselves and lean into Jesus, knowing that he has called us to be a different kind of leader. He has called us to a different type of greatness. And God, may the men and women, the students of 1122, may we be marked as servants, servants of this community, servants of our family and schools,

this country, around the world. So that people would not make much of us, but make much of you. We pray this in Jesus' name.