The Servant Savior

I have your Bibles with you today. Turn with me, if you would, to Mark chapter 10, and we're going to be looking at verse 45.

Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we start a study today of Mark's Gospel. In the modern day church, we've been taught that the Gospels are for unbelievers and new Christians. That we find the meat of the Word in Paul's epistles in the book of Revelation.

May we be driven from that lie. We need directions from the Gospels every day. We need Jesus to show us how to live, how to love, how to serve.

Or essentially, how to be like Him. Mark wrote this Gospel. Peter was his apostolic source.

But the Holy Spirit spoke His truth through both of them. As we study Mark, we want to better understand what the Gospel is. We need the Gospel for our salvation, but we need it day by day for life. Lord, today we're going to focus in on the key verse of Mark's Gospel.

Mark 10, 45. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. As we work our way through this Gospel verse by verse, may Mark 10, 45 be our spotlight. And as we think about that verse and meditate on it, may we become more like our servant Savior. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Several years ago, Dr. E.V. Roo, a well-known scholar of the classics and a hardened agnostic, translated Homer into the modern-day English. It was published by the Penguin Classics series, and his translation was so good that they were so excited about it, they asked him if he would consider translating the four Gospels into a modern-day English translation. He was 60 years old at that time, and he decided to take the challenge. When Roo's son found out about this, he got very excited because Roo's son was a strong Christian himself. And he said this, It will be interesting to see what Father will make of the four Gospels, but it will be more interesting to see what the four Gospels will make of my Father. He didn't have to wait for very long, for it wasn't but a few months into the translation that God turned him over with the Gospel.

Turned him upside down. He came to see who Jesus Christ really was. He came to understand that he was a sinner, and he bowed his heart to Christ, repented of his sins, and became a very committed Christian.

Listen. The Gospel changes everything. A few weeks ago, Will Ferris and I had the privilege of doing the interview and the examination for Jeff Little and his wife, Christine. We asked them to share their testimonies with us, and Christine shared with us that she was born and reared in the Philippines, and that she was reared in the Catholic Church. She said that as she grew up that she became more dissatisfied and more distrustful of the Catholic doctrine. So when she came to the United States to start her work and getting a doctorate, she came to the States and she started thinking about where she had been as a Catholic. And she finally just ditched her Catholicism, and she became an agnostic.

She became an agnostic, one that doesn't even know for sure if there is a God, if she believed that or not. While she was here, she met Jeff Little. They began to talk, and Jeff asked her a question that shook her to her very foundation. Jeff said to her, where do you stand with God?

She said, give me about a week and I'll let you know. And Jeff, at that point in time, began to share some things with her that she needed to hear. He first told her about the mercy and the grace of God. Jeff said, mercy is God not giving you what you do deserve, but grace is God giving you what you don't deserve. He said, Christine, you can't work your way into God's favor. He said, you can't do enough or you can't be good enough in order to merit your salvation. He said, you did not do anything for your salvation and you can't do anything for it. Salvation is not what you do for Jesus. Salvation is what Jesus does for you. And she said this as Jeff began to share more and more scripture with her, that Jesus kept getting bigger and bigger and better and better until finally she couldn't stand it anymore. She repented of her sins, fell on her face, trusted Jesus Christ as her Lord and as her Savior.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. I had the privilege of doing the premarital counseling for Jeff and Christine, and when I get to my third session in premarital counseling, I always ask the couple a question. I say, what has your future spouse done to benefit your life?

And she didn't have to wait for a second. She said, this is what my future spouse has done for me. He led me to Jesus. I said, praise God, I think this marriage is going to make it.

The statement that just gripped my heart that Christine made that night was this. As Jeff shared the Word of God with me, Jesus kept getting bigger and bigger and better and better. That's what I want for everybody here at Grace Church.

I want everybody here in this church to experience Jesus getting bigger and bigger and better and better. And I believe that through the study of the Gospels, that's exactly what will happen. So today we start a study, a series from the Gospel of Mark. And today, we're not going to really dig into the text. We'll start with that next week. But I want to share with you an introduction to the Gospel.

I think this is important. Mark is the shortest Gospel that was written, and it was the first Gospel that was written. Now who was Mark? He is often referred to as John Mark in the Scripture. When Jesus was ministering here on earth for those three years that he did his ministering, Mark was a young teenage boy. Mark lived in the center of the city of Jerusalem.

In Acts 2, verses 1-2, we are told that John Mark's mother had a house there right in the middle of the city of Jerusalem. Now in Acts 12, we are told that on this particular night, they're having a prayer meeting. The believers are meeting there at their house, and what are they praying for? They are praying for Peter. Because Peter has been thrown in prison for preaching the Gospel, and he's scheduled to be executed on the next day, and they are praying that God will send an angel or do something to get Peter out of prison.

You remember the story. The angel shows up in Peter's prison cell. God puts a deep sleep on all the guards. The angel says the word, and the chains and the fetters fall off of Peter's hands and feet, and then all of a sudden, the angel says another word. The cell door opens up, and then Peter walks out of the cell door, and then the big iron gate opens up. Peter walks out of the prison. He is absolutely set free, and where does he go? The first place he goes is to the home of John Mark's mother, and he goes there because there is where the people are praying that he might be released from prison.

I always get kind of tickled when I read this story. For Peter goes, and he knocks on the door, and a young lady named Rhoda comes to the door. She opens the door, and there's Peter.

She gets so excited, she slams the door in his face, and she runs back, leaving him on the porch. She goes in where the believers are praying. She says, guys, Peter's here. And they said, be quiet, Rhoda. We're praying for Peter's release.

She said, you don't have to pray anymore. Peter's here. And then they being great people of faith, they said, oh no, Peter must have died.

He must have been executed, and now his death angel has come to take him back to glory. And she said, no, it's not Peter's angel. It's Peter. And she goes, opens the door, lets Peter in.

Peter walks into the house, and they rejoice together. Now many scholars believe that John Mark's mother's house was the house where the upper room was, where Jesus met together with the disciples on the night before the crucifixion. And he met together with them in order that he might eat the Passover with them, and that he might institute the Lord's Supper.

If that's so, then there's a good chance that Mark, probably a 13 or 14 year old boy at that time, was down on the bottom floor, and he was in bed. And as he's in bed, he can hear what's going on right above him, as Jesus is eating the Passover with his disciples, as he's instituting the Lord's Supper, and as he's talking with them about what's going to happen in the very near future. Alright, if that's true, then that explains a passage of Scripture in Mark chapter 14, verse 49 through 52.

Jesus and his disciples left that upper room that night, and they went to the Mound of Olives where the Garden of Gethsemane is. Jesus was arrested and taken to trial. Jesus speaks to the authorities who arrested him, and then Mark records the incident that we don't have recorded in any of the other three Gospels.

I want to read this to you. This is in Mark chapter 14, verses 49 through 52. Jesus said to the high priest and to the guards, Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me, but let the Scriptures be fulfilled. And they all left him and fled. And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and he ran away naked. Who was that unnamed young man? I believe that it was a very good possibility that that young man was Mark.

I want you to picture this. Mark's lying there in his bed there. The upper room is above him. He's probably not wearing any clothes at all. That's the way they slept back then.

They didn't have pajamas. And so he's lying there, and he hears what's going on above him. Jesus and the disciples eat the Passover meal together. Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper. Jesus begins to tell them about one who will betray him. Jesus begins to share with them about his crucifixion that's coming on that very next day, and then they get ready to leave. They walk out the door headed to the Mount of Olives going to the Garden of Gethsemane, and he decides, I've got to hear what's going on.

I've got to see this. So he jumps up, doesn't have time to put his clothes on, grabs a sheet and puts it around him, and he takes off out of the door after Jesus and the disciples. They get there to the Mount of Olives.

They're there in the Garden of Gethsemane. They're talking together, and Jesus is praying, and he's watching off from a distance. All of a sudden, the soldiers come in to arrest Jesus.

When that happens, what happens to the disciples? Man, they get scared, and they take off running like a bunch of scared rabbits. And Mark says to himself, I better get out of here too. And so Mark takes off. A soldier sees him, reaches over, grabs the sheet, and rips right off of him, and he takes off.

He runs all the way back to his house naked as a jaybird. Now, no other gospel writer mentions this, but Mark gives us vivid detail about what happened here. So if Mark wrote this piece in this incident, if he wrote this and told us all about it, then why didn't he use his own name? Would you have? I don't think I would have.

I think I'd have been embarrassed to death, and I think probably he was too. So I cannot absolutely prove from Scripture that Mark was the one in that story, but I think it just logically fits. Well, what do we know about Mark? We know that Mark is the cousin of Barnabas, and we know that when Paul and Barnabas took off on their first missionary journey, they took Mark with him. And so Mark was with him. He was a young man.

They thought he could do probably a lot of the physical work, packing and carrying stuff and doing that kind of stuff. And so they're headed around on that first missionary journey. They get halfway around, and Mark decides to bail out. He just jumps ship. He says, I'm going back home.

And he takes off for home. And why did he do that? We don't know. Might have got homesick. Might have had a girlfriend back home.

We're not sure. But he takes off for home, and he leaves them in the lurch. And let me tell you, this was a gut punch for both Barnabas and Paul. He did something that just hurt them deeply later on when Paul and Barnabas are getting ready to go on the second missionary journey. Barnabas, who is kind, compassionate, loving, sweet, wonderful man, says, I think I'm going to give Mark another chance. Mark has apologized for what he has done, and I want him to go with us. He's done a lot of maturing in the faith, and I think he'll really help us out this time, and he'll do well.

And Paul says, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. That's not going to happen. Mark's a man that cannot be trusted. He's a man that is not a man of his word.

You can forget that. He's not going to make a fool out of me again. And Paul and Barnabas get in this huge argument, and neither one of them will back off. Finally they say, well, this is the way we'll work this out. Barnabas, you take Mark, and you go one way, and I'll take Silas, and I'll go another way, and that's what they ended up doing.

Wow. Church fights. A church fight in the early church. I don't know about you, but I'm glad that this was recorded for us, for it's a situation where two strong Christian leaders are in an argument.

Both of these leaders have legitimate concerns, and neither one will budge, and yet the Lord continues the work of God. Barnabas gave Mark a second chance, and Mark did extremely well. He stayed the course with Barnabas. He didn't let Paul's rebuke of him devastate him, and he didn't get mad at Paul. Did God honor that? Did God honor him not getting bitter against Paul? God most certainly did honor it, for later when Paul was in prison, years and years later, he and Paul and Mark reconciled, and they became dear friends. What did Mark do for Paul in prison?

He probably brought him stuff, probably brought him pens and books and paper to write on, maybe a Krispy Kreme donut, just all these things he would just do for him. Mark would not allow himself to get angry and bitter at Paul, but all the way through those years, he treated him with the greatest love and the greatest respect. So Paul is in prison, and his attitude toward Mark really begins to change. He writes a letter to Philemon in verse 24. He calls him his fellow worker. He writes the letter to Colossians, and in chapter 4 verse 10, he says this, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions.

If he comes to you, welcome him. And then in 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 11, the apostle Paul's getting ready to be executed. He knows that they're going to take him out, decapitate him, they're going to cut his head off.

He knows that's coming, and what's he thinking about? One of the things he's thinking about is John Mark. And he says, Timothy, when you see John Mark, bring him back to me.

John Mark was profitable to me in the ministry. As Paul's getting ready for heaven, he thinks back to his harshness toward John Mark. He thinks back to the fact that he would not forgive him, and he would not give him a second chance. He sees that Mark now has matured into a very strong Christian, and I think Paul wants to apologize to him face to face.

So they had a spat, but God healed that spat, and they became genuine, genuine friends. Mark's mentor was not Paul. Mark had another mentor. His name was Peter. He was his discipler, he was his Christian teacher, he was his example.

How close were they? In 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 13, Peter refers to Mark as his own son. While Peter was in prison, Mark would come to him, and they would sit down together, and Peter would teach him about Jesus, about his life, about his ministry, about his teaching, about the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

He would teach him all of these things. So Mark is the one who wrote the gospel that we're getting ready to get into, but Peter was his apostolic source. So Mark's gospel is the oldest gospel we have.

It's also the shortest. Now, most of what you have in the gospel of Mark, you're also going to find in the gospel of Matthew and in the gospel of Luke. What is the date for the writing of the gospel of Mark? Educated guesses go all the way back to 50 AD and go all the way up to 69 AD. I have a personal feeling that he wrote it probably in the mid-60s.

Now, why do I think that? Because that was the time when Peter was in prison in Rome. In 66 AD was the date that Peter was taken out, and he was executed.

They took him to a hill outside of Rome, and they crucified him. Peter said, when you crucify me, crucify me upside down, for I'm not worthy to be crucified like Jesus. I think Mark wrote his gospel before Peter died, and maybe Peter had the privilege and the honor of reading that gospel of which he was the source. Well, do we know that Mark wrote the gospel of Mark? Yes, we do know that. And all the early church fathers are in agreement that it was Mark that wrote it. Papias, who was the bishop of Areopolis, said this, arrangement of the Lord's oracles, so single points as he remembered them.

For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard, and to make no false statements in them. So let me ask you this. Is there a lesson for us today in the life of John Mark? And I believe there absolutely is. And here it is.

Don't let your past failures lead you to quit. John Mark wrote his gospel. Two and a half decades later is when he wrote the gospel. But two and a half decades earlier is when he committed the great sin of quitting and leaving Barnabas and Paul in the lurch. It was a horrible, terrible thing that he did.

It was a heinous and it was a very costly sin. And then here is the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest Christians to ever walk the face of the earth. And what is he doing? He is shunning Mark. He is rebuking him.

He refuses to have anything to do with him. So what should Mark do? Should he have just quit?

Should he have just given up? Have you ever been there? I've been there. I've been in a situation where I felt I'm just too sinful to try to minister to anybody. Have you ever been there where you felt like just quitting because you're too sinful? Maybe it was an outburst of anger. Maybe it was just a feeling of not being what you should be. Maybe you weren't walking with the Lord. Maybe you were getting slothful. Maybe it was lustful thoughts that you kept having. And you thought, well I ought to just give up. I ought to just quit.

Throw up my hands and just give up. When you get to that point, remember Mark. Remember Mark. Paul's indictment of him did not destroy him. It didn't devastate him.

What did it do? It motivated him. And then when Barnabas began to give him encouragement, it lit a fire under Mark. Mark said, I will not let Satan destroy me. I will receive the mercy of God. I will revel in the grace of God.

And the rest of my life is going to count for Christ's sake. And Mark became a missionary. He became an aide to Peter.

He became an aide to Paul. And he was the first human being to write a gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. After he wrote that gospel, he went to Alexandria, Egypt. And when he got there, he planted a church. That church began to grow like wildfire.

But there were some very wicked people in Alexandria. They found out where Mark lived. They went to his house. They grabbed him, jerked him out of his house. They tied him up to a horse where he was back behind the horse tied with a rope. They hit the horse.

The horse began to run down the road, just tossing his body back and forth on the road until he was not completely unconscious. While he was unconscious, they threw him into a fire and he was burned to death. Let me tell you this about Mark. His ministry and his life and his death glorified the Lord Jesus Christ. Use Mark as an example of our need to persevere. Mark refused to quit and God used him and his gospel to bless the children of God for the last 2,000 years. Let me mention a few things that are important for us to know about Mark's gospel. As I said before, Mark's gospel was the first gospel to be written and it's the shortest gospel.

You will find fewer parables in the gospel of Mark than you will in all the other gospels. But you will find more miracles in Mark than you'll find in the other gospels. Mark is an action book. The word that you'll see over and over again in Mark is the word immediately. Immediately, immediately. It's almost like Jesus and the disciples are running through the gospel of Mark.

You can almost just feel them kind of huffing and puffing. It's going that fast. Mark is a man of action. We're like Matthew was a very contemplative man. So when we read the gospel of Matthew, we read about Jesus' teaching.

We read the Sermon on the Mount. We read all these parables one after another after another after another. But when you read the gospel of Mark, you read about what Jesus did. Folks, that's why we have four gospels.

By reading the four gospels, what you'll find is you'll get the whole picture of Jesus. You remember a few couple years ago when we went through a study on the book of Revelation? And I shared with you that in the book of Revelation, there is a tool that is a great tool to use to help you understand what the book of Revelation is all about.

It's called progressive parallelism. And in progressive parallelism, it breaks the book of Revelation down into seven sections. They are broken down by in chapter divisions.

Like chapters 1 through 3, chapters 4 through 7, chapters 8 through 11, then it goes right on. And every one of those sections in the book of Revelation, every one of them is a picture of the church age from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ. And each one of those sections, you'll see the same church age, but you'll see it from a different perspective. You'll see it from a different angle. You'll get a different take on it. It's kind of like watching an NFL football game and there's a play and they're not sure exactly what happened on the play, so they do a replay of it and they'll show you all these different angles.

You'll get an angle from behind the quarterback, an angle from the right side of the line, an angle from the left side of the line, an angle from the back of the defense, and then an aerial shot. And when you take it all together, you get the whole picture of what that play was and you understand it. So it is with the Gospels. We have four Gospels that were written by four different authors. They wrote to four different audiences and they give us four different perspectives and you put it all together and you have exactly what God wants us to know about Jesus and His ministry. Matthew is writing to the Jews. Matthew portrays Jesus Christ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He tells us that Jesus is coming. He is the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of all these Old Testament prophecies.

There are more Old Testament scriptures that are quoted in the Gospel of Matthew than any of the other four Gospels. Luke was a Gentile. He wrote to the Greeks and he portrayed Jesus as the perfect man. He gives a beautiful description of who Jesus is. He tells us He is the Son of Man and just beautifully describes His perfect humanity. John wrote his Gospel 30 years after the others wrote theirs.

And he wrote it not just to one group of people but to everybody in general. John is portraying Jesus Christ as God. He is the Son of God. You'll see all these I AM verses in the Gospel of John. I am the good shepherd. I am the door of the sheep. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. And then in John 20 verse 31, he tells us what his purpose in writing that Gospel was.

And he says, But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that by believing you might have life in His name. But then Mark. Who's Mark writing to? Mark was writing primarily to the Romans. Did you realize that the population in the Roman Empire at that particular time, 66% of those people were slaves.

Two out of every three Romans were slaves. And so when Mark portrays Jesus, he portrays Him as the perfect servant. The servant Savior. And the key verse, the theme verse of the Gospel of Mark is Mark chapter 10 verse 45. I want you to study that verse.

I want you to memorize that verse. In every sermon I preach on the Gospel of Mark, I want you to think about that verse. Because that verse capsules who Jesus Christ is. Mark 10 45 says this, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. So what is the context of Mark chapter 10 verse 45? It's a story of James and John, two of Jesus' disciples, who came to Jesus with a request.

And I want to read you that request, Mark 10 35 through 45. It says, In James and John, the sons of Zebedee came up to Him and said to Him, Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You. And He said to them, What do you want Me to do for you? And they said to Him, Grant us to sit, one at Your right hand, one at Your left, in Your glory. And Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism which I am baptized? And they said to Him, We are able. Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink, you will drink. The baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.

But to sit at My right hand or My left is not Mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. 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 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. Now please don't listen to this and roll your eyes at the blatantly ungodly, materialistic, selfishness of James and John. Folks, what we see in James and John is ungodliness, materialism, and absolute selfishness. That was bad of them.

But you know what? That's just like us. The lesson here is not to get snarky at James and John. The purpose of this passage is to humble us and to show us that we're not like Jesus. We're like James and John.

And the only hope we have of change is that Jesus becomes Lord of our life and does the changing. So what's happening here? James and John come to Jesus with this request. They said, Lord, we want to sit on your right hand and your left hand in your kingdom.

Now what were they asking for? They were saying, we want preeminence. We want to be made much of. We want people looking up to us. We'd like kind of to be worshiped. We like the idea of people admiring us and paying attention to us. That's what we want for ourselves. And the scripture says in verse 41 that the ten other disciples were indignant.

I understand that. The first time I read that passage, I was indignant too. I thought, man, they shouldn't have done that. That's a horrible thing to do.

They should not have done it. Folks, we don't like to see pride in others, do we? C.S. Lewis said this, pride is a sin that we very seldom see in our own selves, but when we see it in others, we hate it. We do, don't we? Somebody's hungering after attention. Somebody's thirsting after admiration.

Kind of makes us sick. So when Jesus saw the other ten disciples getting huffy, and he saw them getting indignant over James and John asking for such a thing, he uses it for a glorious teaching moment. First to the disciples, and then second to us here at Grace Church.

Every single one of us. And what is he saying to us? Let's go back and read a couple verses.

Jesus called them to him and said to them, you know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you that 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. What's Jesus saying? He's preaching the gospel. He's explaining what the gospel will do to the human heart. What is the gospel?

The gospel's this. Jesus Christ left his throne in glory. He came down to this wicked earth. He lived a totally selfless existence. He spent his life serving others, and then he went to the cross. He went to the cross in order that he might shed his precious blood, in order that he might die as our substitute, in order that he might purchase our salvation, in order that he might be a substitutionary atonement for us, that he would take our sin and give us his righteousness, that he would take our hell and give us his heaven. So what did we do to deserve that? What did we do to deserve us sitting at the right hand of Jesus on his throne? What did we deserve to enjoy the benefits of Christ? What did we do for Jesus? Let me tell you what we did for Jesus. We gave him our sin, and we gave him our hell.

We did nothing for him. Brothers and sisters, Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin has left a crimson stain.

He, he, washed it white as snow. If you've truly been saved, what has happened to you? Verse 43 and 44. That it shall not be so among you, that whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.

As we study through the Gospel of Mark, keep your mind on Mark's theme verse, Mark 10, 45. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Why did Jesus die? Did Jesus die just to get you into heaven? Jesus did die to get you into heaven. But Jesus also died that you might be his servant. His servant.

That's what it's all about. That's what the Gospel of Mark is calling us to do. He was a servant savior to us, and we have the responsibility before God to be a servant to others, and glorify him through that service.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we confess to you today that we are much more like the arrogant disciples, James and John, than we are like you. It's our nature. It's our bent to be prideful and desire to be served rather than serve.

So our only hope of change is you. You come to serve and give your life a ransom for many. It was your will to die for undeserving sinners. It was your will to suffer our hell on a cruel cross. It was your will to stand at our place as our substitutionary atonement to help us to so love you that we would despise our sin of self-righteousness and our spiritual pride and that we would get dead serious about loving you and serving others. Lord, break us with your Gospel, because in Jesus' name we pray, amen.