Who Is the Greatest?

The disciples are engaged in an argument, and Jesus wants to know what it's about. They were overcome with shame as well they should have been. Our Lord had just told them that He is on His way to Jerusalem to suffer and die, and their having a debate that we find out now was what. Who will be the greatest among them in the coming kingdom? If we're honest, we can probably relate to the disciples and their shame.

So often we get distracted by petty squabbles about who's better or who should be in charge. But as we listen to Dr. R.C. Sproul's sermon today, we'll be reminded of our role as servants. We welcome you to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

R.C. 's message today is from Mark chapter 9. Now on several occasions, Jesus has warned His disciples about what awaits Him in the Holy City, and Mark begins this section by telling us that they departed from where they were and passed through Galilee. Remember at the Mount of Transfiguration, they were above Galilee.

Now they have to come back through Galilee and make their way further south to Jerusalem. This is the last time that Mark tells us of Jesus spending any time in Galilee where most of His ministry up to this point had been located until after the resurrection. And then we are told that He did not want anyone to know where He was, and He taught His disciples again, saying to them, The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.

But they didn't understand this saying, and they were afraid to ask Him about it. Now in the passage that I read to you, there are three things that I want us to note as we examine this incident in the life of Jesus and His disciples. The first is when He announces again that He will be delivered into the hands of men for the end that He will be killed. When He makes this statement, the translation that I just read to you, I believe it's a little bit faulty, where it reads as follows, He said to them, The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men. Notice it's in the present tense, and they say that that action of being betrayed into the hands of men has already started. Jesus is not making a future prediction of what will happen when He gets to Jerusalem but is talking about something that is already in operation.

I don't like the use of the term betrayed here. It has some sense to it because obviously what will happen to Jesus when He arrives in Jerusalem is that one from his own group will betray Him to the authorities that want to put Him to death. But what is in view in this teaching of Jesus in the first instance is not the action of Judas or of the disciples or of any other people in this world. The primary point that Jesus is making is that He at this very moment is now being handed over or delivered.

That's why the translators use the term betrayed. But what I object to it is that the person or the one who is handing over Jesus to men is the Father. And when the Father delivers the Son into the hands of men, it is not an act of divine betrayal. Of course, on the cross the Father forsakes the Son, but from all eternity it was the agreement among the members of the Trinity that the Father would send the Son into the world to bring about His plan of salvation for His people, and the Son and the Spirit agreed to that mission from eternity. But now the point in the mission is taking place where for Jesus to fulfill His office as Messiah, He has to be delivered into the hands of evil men. And Jesus acquiesces to that deliverance, and it is the Father who gives Him over to sinful flesh, because Jesus comes to do the will of the Father, and for Jesus to do the will of the Father, Jesus must suffer at the hands of sinful people.

So the point comes where the Father hands Him over to fulfill His destiny. Well, the disciples don't understand these things. And then we read that He came to Capernaum, and this is the last reference to Jesus visiting Capernaum in the gospel of Mark. When He was in the house, He said to them, What was it that you disputed among yourselves on the road? Jesus noticed as they were traveling to Capernaum that the disciples were bickering, one with another. And it was obvious to our Lord that they were unhappy with each other. They were in a heated argument. They were debating with each other, and Jesus now says to them, Tell Me, what were you arguing about? What were you fighting about? And what's their answer?

There's no answer. There's absolute silence among the disciples, because when Jesus asked them what they were arguing about, they were overcome with shame and embarrassment, as well they should have been. Our Lord had just told them that He is on His way to Jerusalem to suffer and die, and their having a debate that we find out now was what? Who will be the greatest among them in the coming kingdom?

That's what they're arguing about. Who will be number one? Who will be at His right hand?

Who will be at His left hand? Who will be in this position of the greatest? Notice the question concerns the superlative.

This is an issue that we deal with in our discussions all the time. We argue about who the greatest singer was of all time. We argue about who the greatest baseball player was of all time. It's not good enough that people are great, that they distinguish themselves in a superlative way, but we want to know among those who are great, who's really the greatest? Of course, Muhammad Ali settled that question for us once and for all when he announced to the world that he was the greatest.

Well, the people who were asking about who would be the greatest should have asked that question to the one who was and is the greatest, to the only one who deserves that superlative degree of greatness, even Jesus Himself. But notice how he responds to them. He sat down and summoned His disciples.

After the inquiry, what were you arguing about? He finds out what they were arguing about. He goes over and He sits down and calls them over.

What does that indicate? He's now assuming the position and the posture of formal teaching. Remember in those days the rabbis didn't stand to teach. They sat down, and then the pupils would gather and sit at His feet. So when Jesus sits down and calls His disciples to Himself, it is the signal that He's about to teach them something and to teach them something and to teach them something important. And so after He sits down and they assemble, He said to them, if anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all. In this statement, Jesus turns the values and the aspirations of all human beings upside down. Every person among us is born with an aspiration for significance. We want our lives to count. We do not want to fail in whatever goals we pursue in our lives. The last thing we want to do is to come in last.

And we're not satisfied with mediocrity. We dream of glory, of winning, of reaching the pinnacle of success, of getting to the top, of reaching and attaining greatness, and beyond greatness, the glory of being the greatest. That's what Friedrich Nietzsche called the will to power that beats in the heart of every human being.

We want to scale the corporate ladder and reach the top to be king of the hill. And Jesus said, do you want that? Okay, if you want to be great, let me give you the recipe for greatness. If you have this aspiration for significance, if you want your life to count, if you really want to be first in the kingdom, you must choose to be last. This is the paradox of Jesus' teaching. He uses this method of paradox again and again. If you want to live, you have to die.

If you want to save your life, you have to lose your life. If you want to be great, you have to suffer, because He who is first shall be last, and he who is last shall be first. And He said, the way to greatness is the way of service. If you want to be great, then be the greatest servant you could possibly be.

But you see, we don't associate greatness with servants. Remember the time where Winston Churchill had a verbal tiff with one of his servants, and Churchill had been abusive with his language as he chastised his servant. And the servant had all of it that he could handle, and so finally the servant talked back to Sir Winston Churchill in the same tone of voice that Churchill had spoke to him. And Churchill said to his servant, who do you think you are talking to me like that? And the servant cowered back, but he said, but Sir Winston, that's the way you talk to me. And Churchill looked at the servant and said, ah, but I am a great man. It's probably the lowest point of Churchill's life that he appealed to his own greatness to excuse demeaning one of his servants.

What Churchill didn't understand at that moment was that greatness is found in service. There's a distinction that we make in theology between a Theologia Gloria and a Theologia Crucis. It's the difference between what we call the theology of glory as distinguished from the theology of the cross. We want glory without the cross. We want greatness without humiliation. But Jesus said, you can't get it that way.

You can't get it that way. And what Jesus taught here was not an abstract principle of life. It was the principle that He was living out in front of His disciples every single day. Now finally, to punctuate His point here, He uses an old prophetic method of an object lesson where He summons a little boy, and He takes this child and set him in the midst of them. And then He picked him up in His arms, and He said to His disciples, whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me.

And whoever receives Me receives not Me, but the One who sent Me. Now in our culture, little babies are considered adorable, aren't they? Somebody just asked me this week, if I want to tell somebody who's not a Christian about God, give me a word that I can use to express the nature of God. One word. And I said, well here's one. I said, why don't you speak of God's being adorable?

She kind of looked at me funny, like, well I don't think I can use that one. But here's why I suggested it. I said, when we use the word adorable, we're talking about some cute young lady, or we're talking about little children, but that which is eminently adorable is God. But we have this view of little babies, and when we see the little baby we say, oh, isn't He adorable? But in the ancient world where the mortality rate was so high that the vast majority of babies who were born perished before they were five years old, a little child was not considered very significant until that child reached an age where it was assumed that he would be able or she would be able to survive to maturity. And so Jesus takes a little child who is not considered of great dignity like they are in our culture and picks up the child.

So do you want to be great? Whoever receives this child in my name receives me. He appoints not the twelve to the position of greatness, not one of the twelve to be His ambassador, to be His emissary, to be His spokesman to the world.

He picks up this baby, this little boy. So here's my emissary. Here's the one who will go out in my name. Here is the one who will represent me. And whoever receives this child receives me.

And whoever receives me receives the Father who sent me. That principle Jesus uses again and again and again that explodes the critics of our day who say, Jesus we love. It's the apostles we don't like. I can't stand Paul. I can't stand Peter.

I can't stand James. Oh, but I like Jesus. Jesus would have none of that. If you don't receive those whom I send in my name, you don't receive me. And if you don't receive me, you don't receive the Father. So Jesus would have none of this business about people who say, we believe in the Father, but we don't believe in Jesus. If you don't believe in Jesus, you don't believe in God. That's what He's saying.

It's radical stuff. But he who receives this child receives me. And he who receives me receives the One who sent me. Now the third aspect where while this discussion of who receives whom, who's following whom, John interrupts and he says, Lord, we saw one of these exorcists out there casting out demons in Your name, but they were not part of us.

You hear that? They weren't part of us. So we stopped them. We forbade them from continuing their ministry in Your name because they didn't belong to our group.

Does that sound familiar? Notice that whoever was doing this exorcism, though was not a member of the Twelve and was not a follower of the disciples, was a follower of Jesus. He followed Jesus, but he didn't follow Jesus' disciples, wasn't part of their group. And so Jesus said, Don't forbid Him. No one works a miracle in My name and then afterwards speaks evil of me.

For He who's not against us is on our side. For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. I remember when I was in graduate school, and the more I studied theology, the more I was exposed to the great thinkers of traditions different from my own, great Lutheran theologians, great Anglican theologians, and so on. And reading their works, I began to see where they concentrated on certain things that in my own tradition were basically ignored. And I discovered that there was much to learn from the Lutherans.

There were things that I could learn from the Episcopalians. Not that I would go to the place and say there's no difference among us. There are differences.

Nor was I going to say that the differences are unimportant. But there's a difference that we have to make between matters that are different and important and issues that are of the essence that are of the essence of the Christian faith. Now there are people that I know who will not tolerate any difference from their theology from other groups. If a person differs at any point, whether it's over baptism, whether it's over art, whether it's over justification, whether it's over predestination, if somebody differs from us, they're not saved.

They're not in the kingdom. That's not just foolishness. That's sinfulness. To assume that all differences divide us ultimately is nonsense. And so you have those people who are so narrow, who have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, that they assume that anybody that differs with them has to be on their way to hell.

You have that group, and there are plenty in that group. Then you have the group over here that says no difference is essential. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere. And we have to say a pox on both your houses because what the New Testament calls us to do is to discern the difference between essential issues and non-essential issues. And here Jesus had to teach these disciples that the only real sin this exorcist had committed was that he wasn't following the disciples. There are lots of people out there, folks, who don't do worship the way we do, who don't share the same confession of faith that we have, who are ministering in the name of Jesus. And we have to appreciate and embrace authentic ministry wherever we find it. We also have to distance ourselves from heresy whenever we find that. So what is required is discernment, the discernment that the disciples lacked at that point.

And if they lacked, and after three years in the seminary of Jesus, how likely is it for us to gain such discernment quickly? But we have to appreciate everything that is done in the name of Jesus. Even those who give a cup of cold water to somebody who's thirsty, when they give it in the name of Jesus, that person is recognized by Christ. That doesn't mean that you get into the kingdom by giving a glass of water to somebody. But the point is that Christ knows and appreciates any time He is honored by anyone who honors His own people. It was imperative for Jesus to get these points across if they were ever going to understand what was waiting for them in Jerusalem.

That's a great distinction between essentials and non-essentials, isn't it? I don't know about you, but recognizing that the disciples struggled in this area gives me hope that I can grow there as well. Thanks for listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Sunday. I'm Lee Webb, and we have just heard another message from Dr. R.C. Sproul's sermon series from the Gospel of Mark. Today, when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we'd like to send you Dr. Sproul's commentary on this gospel. It's a hardbound volume with more than 400 pages, all with R.C. 's signature easy-to-read explanation. I hope you'll join us next week for another edition of R.C. 's signature easy-to-read explanation of each verse.

You can go online to request it at renewingyourmind.org. Among the many things that we gain by studying God's Word is discernment. With that in mind, let me recommend RefNet to you. Twenty-four hours a day, you have access to biblical teaching and preaching from many of today's most trusted teachers, all from a foreign perspective.

You can download the free RefNet app to listen on the go, or you can listen at any time at RefNet.fm. Well, as we look ahead to next week's message, here are a couple of questions to ponder. Is hell a real place, and will God send people there? It's a controversial topic, and next week R.C. will address it as we continue his verse-by-verse series from the Gospel of Mark. Hope you'll join us for Renewing Your Mind. .