Servant | Mark 10:35-45 | Conor Osepchuk

Well, good afternoon. That bumper video gets more and more groovy every time I watch it. So for those of you who don't know me, my name's Connor. I'm one of the pastors here. And we are so thankful you've joined us for worship.

Okay, What I'm about to say, I don't even think that this is controversial anymore. I feel like we're kind of all pretty much on the same page about this at this point. But here's something that I think is just a fact, okay? Chick Fil a is probably one of the greatest fast food establishments of all time. Okay?

Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Especially in the church, the Christian chicken, we just love it. Like, I think about Chick Fil A and I'm like, man, I love the chicken.

I love the waffle fries, the seasonal milkshakes, peppermint, like the lemonade, everything about Chick Fil A. But here is the reason I think that most people really love Chick Fil A. It's because of their service, okay? It's like if you pull in at lunchtime and the drive thru is wrapped around the building, you're not even worried about it because there's a well trained militia of teenagers that will blitz your car with iPads to take your order, okay? And then it's like you're ordering even at the cash register and you're just like, hey, thank you.

And they're like, my pleasure. You know, every time it's my pleasure. One time my friend told me he would cover my meal if I got the cashier to say my pleasure 10 times. And guys, easiest free meal of my life because that is how consistent their service is. And then if you're eating in the restaurant, someone will come around and offer to take your trash and refresh your beverage.

I don't even really know what that means. All I know is it sounds delightful. I'm like, yes. Every single time. Refresh it.

Refresh my Coke, you know? And so, guys, we all know Chick Fil a is great because of their service, okay? And today we are gonna talk about being a servant. Okay? It's our fourth calling in our disciple series.

Here's our definition for today. A servant gladly gives of themselves for the good of others. A servant gladly gives of themselves for the good of others. So in this series, we were looking at the five core callings for every follower of Jesus. They're on your card.

But the first week, we looked at worshiper that seeks to know, love and obey God above all else. And the second week, we looked at what it looks like to be a family member, which means to belong to and invest in God's family. And then last week, Pastor Justin talked about what it means to be a steward, which means that we leverage God's stuff for God's purposes. And now we are talking about what it means to be a servant. And so here's just like the main idea of today, out the gate, just like Chick Fil A, to be great in the kingdom of God is to be a servant.

That's the main idea. That's what Jesus is going to teach us today. That's what this passage is all about. To be great in the kingdom of God is to be a servant. And guys, to be honest, this may be one of the hardest teachings of Jesus for us to actually believe.

Like, the teaching sounds good. And I think we have in our culture a generally positive view towards serving. So I don't mean serving is bad, but generally that we do not connect serving with greatness. And so for us, it kind of looks like, hey, we'll serve a little bit like some with our lives to kind of check the box. And then meanwhile, at the same time, we'll kind of go out in the world and pursue greatness, just like everyone else in the world is pursuing greatness.

And the problem with the world's message on greatness is that it's actually the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches us about greatness, right? To be great in the world, it's not about how many people you serve, it's about how many people serve, right? It's not about giving of yourself, but it's about taking for yourself. It's not about elevating others, but it's all about elevating me, right? But the claim of Jesus in our passage today is that if you really want to become great, then you must become a servant.

I really believe this. I really believe if we worked this claim into our everyday lives, it would change every everything. And so we're gonna be in Mark, chapter 10. I'm starting in verse 35. And here's what we're gonna.

Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna walk through the entire passage together, and then we will look at two realizations that we need to have if we are gonna become servants. And so let's pick up in verse 35, here's what it says. It says in James and John, the sons of Zebedee came up to Jesus and said to him, 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?

Okay, first of all, I just think the question of this passage is awesome. You know, it's like, hey, what an intro to today. It's like, if you're a high school student, this is the question that you ask your parents right before you ask them for something that costs a lot of money. It's like, hey, mom, dad, I'm gonna ask you for something. I need you to go ahead and pre agree that no matter what it is, you're going to say yes.

And then it's like, I need a new car is pretty much how. What always comes after that. And so parents like, you know, the right answer to this question is either a non answer or an immediate no. Okay? And especially that was especially true with James and John.

What we're told about James and John, just a little bit of context, is that Jesus, earlier in the book of Mark, had given them the nickname Sons of Thunder. Okay? And scholars will tell you the reason they were given that nickname was because of their temperament. Meaning, hey, you're loud, you're passionate, you say whatever it is that comes to your mind. You're impulsive, right?

That was basically what Sons of Thunder meant. As an example, in Luke chapter nine, Jesus and his disciples, they go to this village and it says the village did not receive them. That's what we're told in the text. And so what James and John do is they go up to Jesus and they ask him this question. They say, lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?

That's in the Bible, okay? And it's just as he rebukes them, but I imagine he's like, what are you talking about? Like with fire, you know? And so the sons of. When the sons of Thunder ask you to do whatever they are about to ask you to do, you are careful with your answer to that.

And so Jesus, he gives them a non answer. He just kind of ignores it and says, hey, what do you want me to do for you? Okay? And then here's the request. Verse 37, it says, and they said to Jesus, grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory.

Okay? So the language here that they're using comes from. It's like the language of a throne room. And so here was kind of the assumption that James and John are working from that the Messiah came and it's Jesus. And they know from the Old Testament that the Messiah is going to establish a kingdom.

And then he is going to sit on his throne and rule and reign over his kingdom, right? And they're right about all of that. But it's not the way that they think it's going to happen, because they're thinking that Jesus is about to overthrow Rome and literally have a physical kingdom where he's ruling, when we know from the scripture, is that it is actually a spiritual, heavenly kingdom that he is establishing, at least right now. But here's their ask. In that kingdom, let us sit at your right hand, in your left hand.

So here's what you need to know. Proximity to the throne in this time period was the chief political currency, right? If you sat close to the one on the throne, it meant that you had power. It meant that you were great. It meant that you were better than everyone else who was farther from the throne.

And so here is their request. Their request is, Jesus, will you make us the greatest? Like, Jesus, will you make us these other 10 guys who are following you, will you make us better than those guys? Like, we want power, Jesus, like, we want to be awesome. Can you do that for us?

That is the ask. And one thing I love about just the way the disciples come across in the Gospels, it's just like, it's like, you know, they didn't make this story up, all right? If they made the story up, they would have made themselves seem way better than they come across in the Gospels. Like, this is a selfish, self promoting ask of Jesus. And this question, it's showing us pretty much the exact opposite ethos of a servant, right?

Servants give of themselves for the good of others, but James and John are seeking the good of right? And it's so easy. I was like, I was like really processing through this verse earlier this week and I'm like, it's so easy to look at this verse and think, man, the disciples are so immature. Like, they're so shameless. Like, who would go up to Jesus and ask for something like that?

And then I started thinking about my own prayer life. All right, Mistake, okay? And there are definitely times where I asked Jesus for the same thing in a slightly more sophisticated way. And even this one, to be honest, this is transparency. I'll pray.

Hey, Jesus, I pray that you would build our church. And to be honest with you guys, like 90% of me, my heart in that is really wanting God to build our church so that he would be honored in our city. But there's also a little bit of awareness that a byproduct of God answering that prayer means I look really Great. You know, part of me is asking like Jesus, will you fulfill my selfish desires and make me great? And probably like if you have a prayer life, you approach Jesus and ask him some form of the same thing, like Jesus, like, will you give me this promotion so I look competent?

Jesus, will you make my kid the successful one so that I look like a great parent? Jesus, will you bless me in whatever I am doing so I can elevate myself? And just like James and John, so much of what we ask Jesus for is dipped in selfish desires. This is why at King Church we often say that we don't pray from the poverty of our own spirit, but we pray from the riches of of God's word is because we know that we need to consistently start our prayers with a verse from Scripture to reorient ourselves to what God's desires are in honoring him, instead of praying from whatever comes to the top of our mind. Because we know as we pray from the poverty of our own spirit, we will drift into our selfish desires more and more and more.

And so we aim in our prayer life. Let God set the agenda of the things even that we pray for. So we ask for things that we ought, like his glory instead of our own. Because while James and John might seem like they're might be a little more open with their selfish desire, we have the same issue. Verse 38, Jesus said to them, you do not know what you're asking.

Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? Okay, so real quick, just explain this. Jesus uses two Old Testament images here. The first one's the cup. The second one is baptism.

So the cup, let's start there. All throughout the Bible, the cup is used to symbolize someone's divinely appointed destiny. Right? The cup. Think about like your lot in life.

And so to drink the cup would be to walk through what God had prepared for you. Throughout the Bible, it's almost always used in a negative way to talk about hardship. You would drink the cup of God's wrath. You would drink the cup of suffering, the cup of sorrow. And here's the truth, it has a negative connotation here too.

In fact, the passage right before this, if you go back and read it, it's about Jesus predicting his death for the third time to his disciples. And they don't really understand what he's saying, but he's saying, hey, that's my cup. And then number two is the baptism. And so this isn't baptism like we would Think about it like, at this time, like, Christian baptism wasn't yet a thing. There was no explicit baptism in the Old Testament.

But it was a word that literally meant to immerse, right? And so if you were baptized, it meant that you were overtaken or submerged or overwhelmed by some catastrophe. A good example is from Luke 12:50, where Jesus says, I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished? Meaning he is going to be overwhelmed by catastrophe, right? And this is part of what Christian baptism is.

But Jesus takes baptism and he redeems it. Baptism, saying, hey, I have died. I've been overwhelmed, overtaken, died to myself. And Jesus redeemed it by raising me to new life. Which is why when we baptize people, we don't just leave them under, but we bring them back up.

But the picture that Jesus is painting here is that his cup, as he drinks it, he is going to be overtaken by it or fully submersed in it. He is going to be consumed by the cup. Or in plain language, the suffering that Jesus is destined to walk through ends in his death, right? His path to glory goes through the cross. Jesus will become great by giving himself away.

And what he is telling James and John is that if they want to become great, they are going to have to walk this same path. His path will become their path. And his question to them is, are you able? Here's what they say. They said to him, we are able.

And Jesus said to them, the cup that I drink, you will drink. And with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those whom it has been prepared. All right? So without skipping a beat, James and John are like, we're in.

All right. Sons of thunder are nothing if not confident. But here's what they're assuming in that response, right? They're assuming that they are signing up for glory, right? Because they know that Jesus is destined to be a great king.

And so they're thinking, his cup is full of pleasure and honor and glory and fame. And they're thinking, yeah, we'll drink that cup. They had no idea what they were signing up for was. And what's striking about this passage is that Jesus doesn't even argue with him, right? He says, you're right.

You will drink that cup and you will be baptized. And James will become the first apostle to be martyred for his faith. You can read about in Acts, chapter 12 and John will be exiled to the island of Patmos and then die in isolation. And so they will drink the cup. But then Jesus says, and your request is not mine to grant, right?

That's God, the Father, who determines your greatness, your seat in the kingdom. And so you're kind of just asking the wrong person. So you definitely will suffer. But we'll see about this whole greatness thing where that kind of lands. That's where Jesus answers.

And that's probably not what James and John wanted to hear. All right, verse 41, here's what happens next. It says, and when the 10 heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. Okay? So the other disciples hear about this and they get angry, right?

To be indignant literally means they're resentful, annoyed, frustrated at James and John. And they're not mad because James and John are theologically wrong. They're not burdened to see their friends so blinded by pride. The reason they are angry is that they want the same thing that James and John just asked for. They want to sit at Jesus right hand.

They want to be great. And James and John just asked for the seat that they wanted, right? The selfish desires of those guys got in the way of my own selfish desires. And it's just like that that this community starts to fracture. Like these guys who have been traveling together, doing life together, eating meals together, sitting at the bonfire, gather, doing all these things together, are now divided because of their selfish desires, right?

And this is, I mean, James, the book of James talks about this. James 4:1. It says this. It says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you. Is it not that your passions are at war within you?

And what this verse is doing is it's giving us the anatomy of pretty much any relational conflict you have ever experienced, right? Because when you enter into community with the purpose of fulfilling your selfish desires, it always, every single time, will lead to conflict. It's why you've wronged others, and it's why you have been wronged by others. It happens in every relational environment in our lives. It's the anatomy of conflict.

It goes like this. Here's the first part of conflict. 1. A selfish desire. That's the first thing.

So it starts with something, hey, that I want or something that I think I deserve, or something I think I need to be happy. The starting point of all conflict is me thinking about me. And if I'm only thinking about me, then the other people and other people enter to the equation, right? It always leads to number two. A perceived threat.

A perceived threat. It says, hey, you are getting in the way of what I want. For the disciples, James and John were doing this because they were competing for recognition and honor from Jesus. This is often how it works out in your place of work. It's why when someone gets the promotion instead of you, you're not actually happy for that person, even though you may say you're happy for that person because you're actually just kind of angry about that.

Because they're getting what I want and it threatens my happiness. Or this is why for so many couples, marriage is so hard. Like what marriage is, it's two people bringing their selfish desires together and then the mess of trying to figure out how those things fit together. And we don't think this explicitly, but if I sat you down and asked you enough questions, you and your spouse, then you would learn the reason that you fight with your spouse is because, hey, they're getting in the way of what I want. I want comfort, I want to watch tv.

And they keep asking me to do things around the house, right? I want to feel chosen. I want to feel validated. And he didn't even recognize my haircut. I want control and security to disaster, proof my life.

But they keep spending all my money, right? You're getting in the way of what I want. It's a perceived threat to my own selfish desire. And it leads to number three, indignation. It's the emotional response that comes from our hearts when our selfish desires are under attack.

For some of us, this looks like lashing out. It's like I'm holding in my emotions and they're building up, up, up, up. Until one day I just let it spill and I just let it out. Or for others, it looks more like emotional leakage, right? Where you start to subtly saying little comments here and there instead of one big moment where it all comes out.

It leads to this, like, kind of constant bickering in your relationship. But in any case, this stage of conflict always brings relational distance. It fractures and divides. And that's what's happening here, right? All the disciples have a selfish desire to gain power and honor, and this is the dividing them.

And Jesus sees this and then gives his response in the next couple verses. Here's what he 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. 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 as a ransom for many. So Jesus response to conflict is a discourse on being a servant, right? And so it's a really interesting response because Jesus is addressing the problem of selfish ambition by giving us a solution of being a servant, right? By being someone who gladly gives of themselves for the good of others.

And here's what serving does. It short circuits conflict. Because by definition it means that you are putting away your own selfish ambition and gladly elevating others. And let me just say this. If you are someone with a lot of relational conflict in your life, there is a pretty good chance you are not living into all that Jesus is calling you to be in terms of being a servant.

Because what you are doing when you serve is you are training yourself away from envy, away from covetousness, away from all of your selfish desires that cause conflict in. Towards godliness, towards becoming a servant. And so really, the rest of our time together, I'm gonna take the rest of our time. And I just wanna give you two realizations from Jesus, little discourse here that you need to have if you want to become a servant. So let's start with the first one.

First one's this. Jesus came to serve you. First realization. Jesus came to serve you. Okay, guys, this is the startling truth of Christianity.

We sometimes don't think this is startling. It's easy for us to hear that and be like, yeah, I know, Check. Got it. Because Jesus, God in the flesh, creator of all things, ruler of the entire universe, came to serve you, right? That's the purpose statement of his life.

Jesus came because he wanted to help you, because he wanted to serve you. Guys. The word serve in the Greek is diaconus, and it referred to a servant who waited on tables, right? Like, these are low wage, unskilled workers at Jesus time, who served at the whim of the wealthy. Guys, this is the chick Fil, a waiter coming and saying, hey, can I refresh your beverage?

Like, is there anything that you need from me? Like, that's the kind of picture that Jesus is painting. He says, I came to serve. It's like, guys, it is a wild thing. It is a wild thing that Jesus would say he came to serve you.

It feels like blasphemy, except it's God who's the one who says it, guys. But I always say, like, this is an offensive truth. Like, if you talk to someone from another religion, like if you talk to a Muslim and you tell them that, hey, that we have a God that serves us, they will tell you you are making a categorical error. Because by definition, God cannot serve. God is only served.

That's what it means to be God. And Jesus, he could have done this, right? He was all powerful. He could have created an earthly empire where, you know, he brings his army of angels, he takes over Rome, he starts multiplying food for his pleasure, and then he's being served in the palace all day and night. He could have done that.

He had every right to do that. But he says, no, that's not why I came. I came to serve you. And I think one of the reasons why this is so hard for some people to swallow is because of their view of what authority is, right? The world's definition of authority is that authority means you are served, right?

That's kind of what it means. You count how much authority you have by how many people kind of report to you and serve you. But Jesus came and he taught the opposite. He said God's design for leadership, for authority is that it would be used for service. And this is what we see all throughout Jesus life, is that he uses his authority, his power, his influence so that he can serve others, right?

He uses his authority over disease to heal the sick. He uses his power over matter to multiply the food, to feed the hungry. He uses his authority over the demons to free people from spiritual torment. All his power and authority is used for service, right? But we live in a cultural moment where pretty much everyone, right, distrusts authority.

Like on some level, we are all a product of July 4, 1776, baby, you know, it's like, yeah, buck against authority. It's awesome. And guys, and it's like the political left is saying, like, defund this, abolish this, tear down the hierarchy. And the political right is saying, don't tread on me. And the subtext, ironically, of both sides is I don't like authority.

And guys, and Jesus is honest about this, he says, hey, there is bad authority. Like the Gentiles have authority. Like the non religious, they have an authority and they use it to lord it over those who they lead. And this is authority that's used for selfishness instead of service. And guys, here's the deal.

Like, honestly, when authority is used for selfishness, it's a curse. Like, it's damaging to those under their leadership because what they do is they use the people they lead to line their pockets, to increase their power, to accumulate more and more. And so it ends up steadily destroying whatever it is they have authority over. And we see that kind of leadership and here's what we do, we kind of think, okay, that leadership's bad, so all authority must be bad. However, right?

When you look at the life of Jesus, what Jesus says, no, God's design for leadership, like God's design for authority is not that it would be used for selfishness, but that would be used service. And you realize like the call to lead is actually the call to lay down your preferences and to serve those under your authority. And when authority is used that way, it promotes and protects the good of everyone under the authority and allows everyone to thrive and flourish. And so authority used for service is actually the ultimate gift and the entire life of Jesus, right? The greatest authority who ever came to earth came to earth and oriented his entire life around serving others.

Because one of the most stark examples of Jesus serving is when he, the night before he went to the cross, he got down on his hands and his knees to wash his disciples feet. Guys, in the first century the roads were dusty, everyone had sandals on, feet were gross. This would been a task that only like the lowest of the low of the servants would even consider doing right. This is the equivalent of today of the President of the United States coming to your house to wash your toilets. Like that's the kind of vibe this thing had.

And guys, it like barely that, that barely makes sense to us because we know people with power like that don't do things as lowly as that. And guys, I mean Peter thought this. When Jesus got on his hands and his knees, Peter said, you will never wash my feet like Jesus. Don't you know greatness doesn't do that. A power doesn't kneel.

We should be serving you. And do you know what Jesus response was? He says, if you don't let me do this, you have no part in me. He's saying, hey, if you want to do the Christian life, you need my help. You must be served.

It's the whole reason that I came. And so Jesus posture towards you is one of service, right? He wants to help you. And so the question we have to ask ourselves is, hey, am I letting him? And here's what that looks like in the Christian life.

Honestly, it looks like prayer. If you need someone's help, you ask for it. And it's the same thing with Jesus, right? He came to serve you. And so we ask him for help in our lives.

Like the act of praying is just admitting like God, I need your Help. I'm dependent on your strength, Jesus. I need you to break into my actual life and serve. Serve me like you said you would. If we want to have any shot at living out the Christian life like the Bible talks about, then your prayer life is essential.

Like, it's a non negotiable. To be prayerless is to be prideful. Like, if you are not praying for God's help in your life desperately, it's a sure sign that your life is full of pride. Like you've convinced yourself, I can do this on my own if I just work harder. If I just pull myself up by the bootstraps, then I can just figure this.

And Jesus is essentially telling us what he told Peter. Hey. Or we're telling Jesus, you shall never serve me. And Jesus saying, you need my help. It's the whole reason I came.

I came to serve you. That's the first realization you need to have to be a servant. Here's a second. Jesus wants to make you great by making you a servant. Jesus wants to make you great by making you a servant.

So Jesus acknowledges there is one way the world tries to be great, and it's by lording their authority over one another. And then he says, but it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be servant of all. And whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. And so this is really interesting because Jesus, he actually never ends up rebuking the disciples for their ambition to be great.

Instead he starts actually coaching them on how they can be great in the kingdom. He's reinforcing their ambition. Like, as a Christian, Jesus wants you to become great, but he just wants you to do it in the right way. And the main problem with James and John was not that they wanted greatness. The main problem was the way that they were going about attaining that greatness.

And so Jesus explains, he says, if you are a servant, you will be great. And then to kind of show us how this works, he intensifies it. He's like, and if you're a slave of all, you will be first. So the level of greatness directly correlates to your level of service. The more you give of yourself for the good of others, the greater you will be.

Guys, this is the counterintuitive truth of the kingdom of God, right? It's Jesus establishing a new economy of greatness. What Jesus does is he rigs the system so that our, our ambition aligns with the good of others. And what it does is it empowers the church to look vastly different from the world. Right?

Because we get to be a group of people that are constantly trying to out serve one another in love that we go into the community and we're not looking. Hey, what can I get from these people? But we are looking. Hey, how can I give myself for these people? Because actually, and not because we don't care about ourselves, but actually because our ambition is that we would be great, just great in the right kingdom.

And Jesus says, hey, if you want to be great, you follow his example and you serve. Let me tell you about someone in our church who's living this house. Someone in our church who is great. There's a guy in our church named Jacob Cheshire. And our staff team was talking about being a servant this week.

And as we were talking about it, we started to piece together how many service teams Jacob was on. And so let me just read this to you. He serves with King students on Wednesday nights. Like to lead our students. He serves with King's College on Thursday nights.

He serves with our setup team at 2:15 here. On Sundays. He serves with our greeter team at our 5:30 service. He serves with our tear down team after the service. He's in the process of becoming a community group leader.

He's on six teams. He doesn't even work here. And he spends more hours at King's church than I do. Guys, like. And here's the deal.

A lot of you have never met Jacob. But listen, so much of what you get to experience here at King's church is because of his service. And guys who even really cares about that? Even better, right? God does see it.

And he is the one who determines where you sit in the kingdom. And so man, he is saying this is greatness. By the way, ladies, he's single. Okay. Man of God.

I think he's in the service. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think he's single. I hope he's single after saying that.

I'm sorry if you're going on dates with someone. Okay. But anyways, okay, okay. Or some other people who are great in our church. Guys, this summer we have 75 college students doing City Project.

We didn't know that was gonna happen. It's a seven week missions program we're doing this summer. And City Project students, some of you guys are in here. You've been great. You're serving.

So grateful for. But really, here's what happened. We had 75 do it. We realized that 40 of them needed host homes if they were going to do this project. So here's the deal.

Different families in our church and adults that are in this room are hosting like five college students in their spare bedroom right now. And here's the reality. It's like all of your food is spontaneously gone, right? Your living room is way messier than it used to be. If you're housing college boys, there's like a low grade stench at all times that's unexplainable.

But guys, but here's what it is. This is what it looks like to be a servant. It's I'm giving of myself, of my comfort, of my living space for the good of others. And what happens as you do that is you are becoming great in the kingdom of God. And so really practically just like to put some training wheels on this.

Like two ingredients in every act of service that just needs to be on your radar. Two ingredients are sight and service, or sight and sacrifice. Rather, service equals sight and sacrifice. Okay, and by sight, meaning I need to open my eyes to see the needs around me, right? It's about awareness.

I need to be considering, hey, how can I contribute to the good of those around me? Like, some of us are hearing right now about, okay, I know we should be a servant, but honestly, we have no idea what it looks like in our lives. And the reason for that is probably not because the people around you don't have any needs. The reason for that is probably because we haven't ever looked or like we haven't ever noticed. It just hasn't been on our radar.

And so when we go about it, our lives, we should have an awareness as Christians that the way that God meets needs around us is by us going and looking for needs like we are. God's plan to do that, it's something he's called us to do. And then when we see it, right, we sacrifice. That's our definition of serving. It's just that we give of ourselves.

Which means that serving always costs me something. Right? It might be your time or your energy or your space or your comfort or authority or influence or money or whatever, but you take whatever that thing is and you use it for the good of someone else. And so this is key for some of us, this means that if you wait until serving is convenient in your life, you will never do is by definition a sacrifice. Like, listen, you will always feel like you don't have enough time.

You will always be more tired than you want to be. You can always convince yourself that the next season of life would be better to start serving. It's never convenient to Serve, because it means that you are sacrificing. But according to Jesus, that's the path to true greatness. And so here are a few areas you can start with.

Number one, your family. This is probably the most important area to serve. That is the easiest place to ignore. Like, we go out to work, or we go out with our friends and we just turn it on and we're like, go, go, go. And then we come home.

And what we have the tendency to do a lot of times is not disconnect from all responsibilities and try to feed my comfort as much as possible. But here's the deal. Like, guys, your family, it is the easiest place for you to have sight into how you can surf, right? Because no matter how much you might pretend like you don't see the dishes piling up in the sink, everyone knows you see them, right? And let me just talk specifically real quick to the husbands in the room.

Because husbands, you have been given the authority in the home, which means, according to Jesus, authority is given for service. And he says, hey, if you want to use that authority, well, what it looks like, it looks like you becoming a slave in your home. Like, you figure out what the needs in your home are. Yeah, it's a little quieter in here, Husbands. Yeah, I hear it.

All right. What the needs in your home are? Wife, this is not the time to jab your husband. I'm gonna do it for. So just don't, okay?

But you figure out what the needs of your home are, and you start doing it. You figure out, hey, what are the lowliest chores that no one wants to do? And how can I step into that? Guys, when you walk in your door, your wife should feel a sigh of relief that her life is going to get easier because you are home, right? Your kids should just assume that all daddies serve all mommies like that because it's the only thing they've ever seen.

You guys do. Like, you need to become great in your home by becoming a servant. Number two, your church, like, one of the clearest ways that service plays out in scripture is in the context of the church, right? You were given gifts from the Holy Spirit so that you might build up and edify the church. There are needs in the church that you are called to step into and meet, guys.

I mean, the easiest starting point to do that here is through our serve teams. Like, we are growing fast, and we have needs everywhere, right? We have needs in King's Kids ministry, needs on our guest services teams, needs in production, needs on our safety team, needs for community group leaders, how can you give of yourself for the good of your church? How can you become great here? Number three, your neighbors.

One clear indicator that God is calling you to serve is proximity. I think about neighbors, it's like, dude, I sleep within 30 yards of these people and I don't even talk to them. It's like, hey, who has God put around me because he didn't do that by accident? How can I step in and serve my neighbors? For most of us in our neighborhoods, like, hey, one small step of service will be seen as extravagance.

It's like, if you just bake cookies and bring them to your next door neighbor, it will blow their minds. If you mow their lawn, if you watch their dog, if you ask if they need anything from the grocery store, man, how differently would our neighborhoods look if the Christians in those neighborhoods were just intentional about serving their neighbors? Three ways to serve. Now, you may be thinking, being a servant sounds really great, but for most of us, it's like, hey, my problem isn't that I didn't know serving was good to do, but it's more of a question of, how do I go from where I'm at to being a servant? How do I all of a sudden start living for the good of others?

And the answer is actually found in the second half of verse 45, when Jesus says this. He 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 here's a question. What does Jesus giving his life as a ransom for many have to do a service? Well, Jesus, right, giving his life as a ransom for us was the greatest act of service in human history.

Think about it. When you pay a ransom, you pay ransom for someone who's being held hostage. And according to the Bible, you and me, we are being held hostage by sin, right? Like, we were enslaved to it. We could not free ourselves.

And it was the thing that was taking us and leading us into destruction and ultimately death. Every single time, sin leads to death. And what Jesus did on the cross was that he walked into this hostage situation and he paid the ransom for our lives, right? He traded his life for our life. He died so that we could go free, like, and think about it.

If serving, if giving is giving of the good, of yourself, of yourself, for the good of others, then when you give everything, like when you give your whole life, it is the ultimate act of service. Jesus gave us the ultimate sacrifice to meet our greatest need for our ultimate good. He died so that we could go free.

And that is an act of service that is so great that when we receive it, it makes us into service. Because here's what you begin to realize. As you begin to realize that Jesus gave his life for yours as a ransom, you begin to realize, hey, I can prioritize the needs of others because my greatest needs have already been taken care of on the cross. I don't have to look out for my own desires anymore because I know that Jesus has given me everything I need for eternal life. I don't have to lift myself up anymore because I know that Jesus already lifted me up by being lifted up on the cross.

I don't have to hang on to what's mine anymore, because Jesus, he has given me what's his.

So here's what Jesus did. He freed us to serve others. He freed us that we might enslave ourselves and become great. Not serving as a hostage under compulsion who's enslaved, but by serving joyfully and willingly, because we know that before we ever served, he served us. Martin Luther, he talks about this.

He says this. He says, a Christian man is the most free of all and subject to none. That's what he says. And then he says, and yet a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone. To be a Christian is to simultaneously be the most free of all people and the most dutiful of all servants you have been freed to serve.

Jesus met your needs so that you can look to the needs of others in King's Church. Like that's how you achieve true greatness in the kingdom of God. By becoming a servant of all, by giving yourself away in your home, in your church, on your street, and by realizing that Jesus enables me to sacrificially serve the people in my life because he has set me free.

Let me pray.

Father, we are thankful. Or that you are a God that saw us in our sin and sent your son as a ransom, that we might be free. And God, I pray that as we look to Jesus, the servant of all God, that we would be a church that is characterized by service. God, that you, you would put in us a holy ambition, that we might walk into the kingdom of God in all of its fullness one day and be made great because of the ways that we gave ourselves here and now.

God, help us to see the reality of eternity and help us to live accordingly. We love you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Hey, as always, we're going to stand and respond in worship, and we're going to respond with our prayer team down front.

So would you stand? Would you come?