"What Is Christian Greatness?" - Mark 9:30-41

Well, if you've been with us, you know that we've reached the breaking point in Mark.

Back in Mark chapter 8, Jesus confronts the disciples with a question,

Mark 8 · chapter mention

who do you say that I am? And Peter responds, you are the Christ,

the Son of the living God.

And Jesus responds in kind saying, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah,

for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, my Father who is in heaven.

The first half of Mark is really putting Jesus on display. Who is this guy?

Remember, Mark's writing to a lot of people who don't know who Jesus is.

They may have heard his name, but they don't know who he is.

Unlike the culture we live in, he's literally trying to lay a framework for who Jesus was.

The back half of Mark is more along the lines of what has this Messiah,

what has this Jesus came to do?

He says his name is Christos.

Peter says, you are the Christ. In Hebrew, that's Mashiach, just means Messiah or anointed one.

What does the anointed one come to do? And Jesus has made it pretty clear to

this point that his plan is to give himself over to evil powers of the day,

to be tried and to be found unlawfully guilty and to be murdered at the hands

of sinful men and to raise again three days later.

And the disciples do not believe him. They don't.

And they find different ways around that. They find different ways to circumvent that.

We've all done this. When someone tells us something as plain as can be that

we don't want to hear, we'll take that information and we'll go,

well, it's got to mean something else.

Everyone has done this with their kids or their boss, tells them,

hey, I need you to do this.

And it's something you do not want to do. So what do you do?

You go back and you think, well, what else could that mean?

Right? That could mean something else. Well, you know, he didn't specifically

say when or how or why we would do that. So that couldn't be what he meant. Right?

Jesus in this section of Mark is going to do this three times.

We saw in Mark 8.31, he's going to do it in this passage in Mark 9.30.

He's going to do it again in Mark 10. I will suffer and die.

And his disciples still don't understand. I love in the Gospel of Luke in this

same section, right after the transfiguration, he tells his disciples what he's going to do.

It says this in Luke 9.51, When the days drew near for him to be taken up,

He set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Jesus sets his face. In other words, he turns his face to Jerusalem.

Everything he is doing from this point on is a walk towards Calvary.

It's a walk towards the cross. It's a walk towards his condemnation before men

and his exaltation of his father.

He will be despised and rejected and humiliated. His disciples will abandon him.

The crowds that cheer for him will call for his crucifixion.

And Jesus doesn't just go there to say, well, I wish not, or I should have gone

somewhere else. There's no regrets. Jesus from this point on saying,

I'm setting my face to those things.

The disciples rightly think, well, if that's the Savior, if that's the Christ,

if that's this Jesus who we're following, what's that mean for us?

How's that work? If the CEO of the company is saying, we're going bankrupt,

what's that mean for me? How's this going to work out for me?

And Jesus is going to explain to them how this is going to work out for them.

And in the long term, it's going to be very good. In the short term,

it's going to be very bad.

So if you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Mark 9. If you want to grab

a Bible off the back, feel free to run back there and grab one.

It's on page 937.

Let's jump into this. This is Mark 9, again, starting in verse 30.

He says, they went on from there and passed through Galilee.

He did not want anyone to know.

So we already know he's kind of passing through Galilee, but he wants to keep

this circle small. He's going to teach his disciples something here.

He was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the son of man is going to be

delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him.

And when he is killed, after three days, he will rise.

But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him.

We'll get into that in a minute.

Verse 33, and they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house,

he asked them, what were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent from the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

And he sat down and called the 12 to him. And he said to them,

if anyone would be first, he must be last and servant of all.

And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking them in his

arms, he said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me,

but whoever receives me, receives not me, but him who sent me.

John said to him, teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and

we tried to stop him because he was not following us.

But Jesus said, do not stop him for no one who does a mighty work in my name

will be able to soon afterwards speak evil of me for the one who is not against us is for us.

For truly I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you

belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.

If I were to ask you this question, what is Christian greatness?

What does it mean to be a great Christian?

Some of us would go the route of someone we knew growing up,

maybe a grandparent, a parent, a friend, and I watched that person and they

were great. They were great Christian.

Some of us would go the route of saying, man, Charles Spurgeon or Jonathan Edwards

or Augustine or Billy Graham, whatever your person is, man, those were great Christians.

I think oftentimes when we think of great Christians, we think of accomplishments.

We think of what they aspire to. We think of what they did.

Jesus is going to give us the definition of what a godly follower of Jesus looks

like, what they look like.

So again, just to set the scene, beginning of 930 here, he calls his disciples

to himself and he tells them what he's already told them.

He said, listen, the son of man, I'm going to be delivered up.

I'm going to be killed. I'm going to raise three days later.

They go from that conversation and as they're walking, which this is such a

cool picture to think the disciples and Jesus is just walking, walking and talking.

When's the time you went on a walk and just talked to someone,

right? It's one of the missing joys probably of our day because of when we live and how we live.

Probably be watched by a flock camera now. So you got to look out for that.

That was not an opinion one way or the other. It was just a joke.

Don't come up to me afterwards. I don't care. Alright, so.

They're walking and talking. So Jesus overhears them talking.

What was their conversation about?

He says, what were you discussing? And they kept silent. Now,

obviously they kept silent because if the guy you're following has just said

multiple times out loud, I'm going to get killed, right?

I'm going to get killed. I'm going to give myself over to these people.

They're not just going to come and take me against my will. I'm going to give myself to them.

And your immediate conversation is, who do you think is the greatest?

Who do you think is gonna sit at the head of the table? Who do you think is

gonna sit at Jesus' right hand?

Who do you think of us should sit there? You can just see this conversation.

Obviously, Peter speaks first and he's like, oh, did anyone else walk on water?

Okay, cool, cool. And the other is I was like, dude, it was like three seconds and you fell, right?

And then Matthew's like, well, I'm really good with money and he's gonna need

a secondhand guy to deal with the money. So that's probably my area of expertise.

James and John are like, listen, he named us the sons of thunder.

Does anybody else have a cool nickname?

Right. It's like kids arguing about whose dad can beat up whose dad,

right. Who has the coolest thing. And listen, nothing's really changed.

Adults do this same thing. We're not as direct about it, but we suddenly dropped titles in our name.

Right. Well, I'm this title. I work at this place. I do these things. I live in this area.

I've accomplished this level of education or training.

We're pecking order of people. We want to know, well, who's in charge here? Who sets the tone?

In Jewish culture, this was everywhere. Your title was everything.

Where you sat was everything. What you wore was everything.

It set the cultural norms of the day. You see even Jesus in places like Matthew

23 talking about where to sit at a table.

He's telling his disciples, hey, when you go in to sit somewhere,

the place of honor is up front, but why don't you just go sit at the other table? Sit at the kiddie table.

Don't assume those titles. Don't assume those places.

In James 2, James warns against the church, putting more honor on people that

have better clothes and therefore better money, right?

James is telling this church, hey, listen, you're going to be tempted when somebody

walks in with a Rolex and a pair of Lucchese boots to treat them differently

than the person who walks in with a Timex and a pair of,

I don't know, what's a cheap pair of boots? Justin?

Cheap, yeah. a cheap pair of justins yeah that you got from goodwill yeah.

Salvation army whatever i don't know if i've ever been to salvation it doesn't

matter all right but you're attempting to treat people why because you know

in your head when you see that you're going listen this person can help us you

know we got this person to join,

we may be able to get bottled water.

Just saying. We're able to get nicer coffee. We're able to get a bigger building.

Okay. So y'all are guilty of this. Good. All right. So, but that we're all,

we're all prone to do that. We're all prone to look at who is the greatest.

And secondarily, how can I become the greatest?

This is true of every organization, every friend group you get into,

you can find out real quickly what sets the tone here what do i need to be good

at what do i need to excel at to to rise up the chain to not be treated like

the low man on the totem pole,

You see this in churches constantly. Every church you go into has a culture.

We have a culture, we do, right? And every church can say till it's blue in

the face, like, hey, come as you are, it's no big deal. We just want to accept people as they are.

You have to try real hard not to fall into this. There's certain churches you

come in and the more tattered you look, the higher you rise,

because that's cool, right? We're casual.

Some guy walks in in a suit and some churches are like, that guy's gross.

The flip is also true. You can walk into certain churches wearing tattered clothes

and then go, hey, man, I think you're looking for a different church.

You're looking for action, verb, whatever church, okay? Not us.

I was having this conversation with me and Travis talking about it this week.

This phrase, I've paid my dues. Yurts might say, I've paid my dues.

Even in that phrase, there's an underlying sense of, I'm above that now.

I've reached a level that I don't need to do that anymore, right?

Those things are for someone else And for the record, i'm not talking about

like moving chairs. That's a young man's game. All right Once you get married,

no one to impress anymore. All right. I'm moving one chair at a time.

I'm already married You're not married move four good for you.

Okay. Oh, you can carry two tables Congratulations. My back hurts.

Okay But that's usually not what we're talking about when we say i've paid my

dues. What are we usually saying?

You're just saying well, listen, I I would do that but I kind of grew out of that.

I'm kind of more important now. I know some theology now and some people in

the church really look up to me and they gave me keys.

You realize that's a mixed blessing when you have keys, by the way.

If you get keys, that means somebody's calling all the time.

Can you let me in? Can you let me in?

But we love the way that those things work. And again, I hesitate to give too

many examples because there's always a way around an example,

But you hopefully understand what I'm saying.

The disciples are having this discussion, trying to figure out which one of

us is the greatest, which one of us does Jesus value the most.

It's interesting, too, because most of these guys came from nothing.

Again, maybe not nothing in the way we think about it, but they were obscure people.

Matthew was a tax collector, but there's thousands of tax collectors.

A lot of these guys were fishermen, thousands upon thousands of fishermen.

What's happening is they're getting a taste of what they've always wanted.

Everybody wants to be in charge. Everybody wants to be the greatest.

And they're getting a taste of, man, you know, it's kind of nice that we walk

around and people look at us differently.

You know, I walk into places and people are like, hey, were you with that guy

that fed 5,000, 10,000 people? And you're like, yeah, that's me.

That's me. I carried the baskets. Yeah, you wouldn't believe it.

Are you one of those ones that was casting out demons? Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Jesus gave me the authority to cast out demons. That was me. You're welcome.

And in their minds, they have convinced themselves, okay, we've been given this power.

We've been given this authority. We've been given this privilege.

So that must mean we're the greatest. Now, the question is among us that are

also in the club, which one of us is the greatest of the great?

We see this again, all the time on this side of heaven, you find out how to

be the greatest and you watch people, hopefully no one in this room,

but you watch people, their lives

are consumed with getting to the top and they'll do anything they can.

They'll scrap and claw, they'll lie and cheat, they'll throw banana peels,

whatever it is they need to do to get to the top of whatever they're trying to get to.

Jesus says, hey, this is not how this works. And this is what Jesus always does, isn't it?

Jesus is always turning worldly paradigms upside down.

Jesus says, 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. He says, he who is first shall

be last and he who is last shall be first.

The way to greatness is the way of service.

If you want to be great, you must be the greatest servant you can be.

This is how Jesus works. This is his MO.

This is Jesus walking into a world that's ruled by demonic forces and saying,

listen, these things have lied to you.

They have made you think that this world is the most important thing that you could ever take hold of.

And Jesus is over and over again is saying, let that go, let that go.

I think a lot of our aversion to humble living and being a servant is because,

it can easily get wrapped up in cowardice and passivity.

That's especially hard when you live in Texas and you see come and take it flags everywhere you go.

And we're always reminding people like, hey, everybody else is a state.

We're a republic. We are different.

Nobody messes with us. It's literally your motto. Don't mess with Texas.

And so when we hear things like that, we try and circumvent how that looks and what that looks like.

Jesus, trying to drive the point home, grabs what would have been the lowliest

example of service in the first century universe that they lived in, which is a child.

Now, everyone here loves children. I wouldn't say America as a whole loves children,

but I would say everyone here does.

I heard someone say this week, most families are not patriarchies, are matriarchies.

They're kindergarties, right? They're just ruled by their kids.

And I heard him say that and I was like, dang, that cuts deep as I'm like packing

for another practice, right?

But that's not how they thought of kids, right? Kids in the ancient world were another mouth to feed.

Once you had one boy, maybe two, you were set.

Girls were certainly not valued. Girls just cost you money, right?

You had to give a dowry for them to get married off so you didn't have to pay for them anymore.

There's incredibly graphic stories of what they would do with some of the kids they would have.

They wouldn't even give kids names until after they were passed about the toddler

stage because if they didn't make it, they'd just throw them on the trash heap and move on.

So what does Jesus do? Jesus grabs this child and puts it in his lap.

He says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

Whoever receives me, he receives not just me, but him who sent me.

Again, Jesus isn't asking you to lower yourself to be like a child.

He is asking yourself, asking you and me to serve people like this child.

Jesus is saying, do you want to be great? You got to go low.

You got to go low. But this isn't a call to cowardice or passivity.

This isn't a call to be the least that you could possibly be,

or to not accomplish anything, to not be aggressively seeking out accomplishing

goals, or making money, or rising in your career.

All those are wonderful things. Jesus never tells you not to do those things.

What Jesus actually says is, hey, when you reach the greatest heights you can

reach, as you climb the ladder, always be reaching down, Always be looking down.

Always be ministering to people that are lower than you.

Always be trying to bless those that don't have what you have.

Like children, as he puts this child on his lap and says, what can this child do for me?

You can imagine him asking that question. What can this kid do for me?

Nothing. The child doesn't make you any money. It doesn't give you any free time.

It doesn't offer anything to you. There's no service it can do.

It only cost you something to serve a child. And Jesus is saying,

listen, greatness in the kingdom of God is not met by how high you can go,

but how low you are willing to serve.

Just to drive home this point that this isn't passivity, because again,

I think a lot of times I hear this principle said when people just don't want to do something, right?

When people want to be cowardice, when there's something that needs to happen,

there's something that needs to be said.

There's a decision that needs to be made and,

Instead of doing the hard thing, we say things like, well, Jesus told me to

be a servant, so I'm just, you know, I'm not going to say anything.

I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to let them do what they want to

do. I just want to be humble here.

Listen, not doing what God's called you to do is not humble service. It's cowardice.

It's not passive. It's active. Just think of a few examples here.

Abraham in Genesis 14 rescues Lot. All right, Lot's his nephew.

It says, when Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive,

he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan.

During the night, Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them,

pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods

and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions together with women and other people.

That's Christian leadership. That's humble leadership. That's service.

The opposite of that would have been to him say, well, Lot got himself in that

position. He shouldn't have been living where he was living.

That's his problem to deal with.

Who am I to go attack these people? No, that's not how Abraham thinks.

What about the midwives of Exodus 1? When the Pharaoh, the one in charge comes

to them and says, hey, listen, we're going to start killing off all the firstborn boys.

Do they go, well, listen, man, you're in charge.

And if I say no to you, that's going to cost me something. And when I get to

heaven and God says, why'd you do that? I'm just going to go,

listen, man, I wasn't in charge.

Wasn't my call to make. I was just doing what I was told.

No, they said, but the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded.

Who are they serving? They're serving the lowly ones. These kids that they're

saving are doing nothing for these midwives.

They're not saving children and those children are going to turn around and

do something for them that day. That never happened. Peter and John in the midst of a.

Counsel, the same ones that would have killed Jesus that had the authority to kill them in Acts 4.

Peter and John answer them when they're accosting them, whether it is right

in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you must judge.

And then later in Acts 5, they say, we must obey God rather than man.

That's what humble leadership looks like. That's what Christian greatness looks like.

We must obey God rather than man. And so Jesus talking to his disciples in Mark

9 is trying to get them to see, listen, you have been given an incredibly great thing.

You are walking with the Messiah every single day.

You have been given power to do things that you would not have the power to

do. You've been given access to things that you would have never had.

Use those things to serve the people around you. Go low.

Go low. Find the lowest point that you can serve.

And the irony is, the greater you get, the lower you should go.

Who is putting this child in their lap?

It's God in the flesh. Are you greater than God in the flesh?

Do you have more power than he does? Do you have more esteem than he does?

Everything that was created was created by him, through him,

and for him. He owns everything.

He has everything. He can do whatever he wants.

And here he is sitting in first century Galilee with a bunch of jokers that

don't listen to him with a child on his lap saying, listen, if you want to do

what God has really called you to do, serve people like this.

Serve people like this person.

End of 1 Corinthians, Paul says, therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters,

be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

Do you think of those two things as synonyms? Be steadfast and immovable,

always abounding in the work of the Lord.

That's what Christian greatness looks like. Steadfast, immovable,

courage, always abounding in serving others.

Those two things are not false dichotomies. Those two things do not,

they're not at odds with each other.

And again, we have two epidemics. One would be again, that we want to be the greatest.

We want to get on top. We want, we don't want to do menial tasks.

We don't want to serve low.

The second though, which I think

is honestly worse, is we just want to be passive and call it humility.

We just want to take the easiest route we can possibly get to heaven and go, I was just being humble.

I was just trying to serve, just trying to stay out of the way.

That's not at all what God has called us to. And again, over and over,

the testimony of the Lord, the testimony of God's word is this,

rise as high as you can without sinning.

Get the job, make the money, go after the promotion, right? Get the title,

get the degree, get the education, go and do great things.

Go and accomplish great things. Christians should be the best employees,

the best students, the best fathers, the best mothers, the best kids.

Christians should be the cream of the crop everywhere they go.

And yet when they reach those heights, They should be the quickest ones to take

everything they've gained, whether it's money, position, or power,

and say, who can I serve with this?

Who can I reach down and serve with this?

This is exactly the example that Christ has given us.

It says in 2 Corinthians, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

that though he was rich, yet for your sake became poor. Now,

that's an interesting statement because when Jesus is walking around on the

earth, is he actually poor?

Can Jesus do whatever he wants? Absolutely, he can.

Even on the cross, right? Jesus said he could call down a thousand angels if

he wanted to. No problem.

It's not that Jesus is poor. It's that he's functionally poor.

To look at him is to look at someone who is poor, who is downtrodden,

right? Remember when Isaiah is talking about Jesus, he said,

nothing about his appearance made us think he was anything special.

In the same way, you can have a lot of money and a lot of stuff and a lot of

power and a lot of prestige and be poor for the people around you.

Go low for the people around you.

He is the greatest person to have ever walked the earth. And what did he do? He served his kids.

He humbly served his kids.

I pray that that's the heart that we cultivate at Trinity, that as we rise in

our lives and our status, even as we grow as a church, I mean,

I say this often joking, but if you were here a year and a half ago to be in

this room with this many people, it's kind of wild. It's a wild place.

But as those things become true of us, is our first priority to grow and to

be big and to have impact and to get our name out there?

Or is it to serve people, namely the people in this room, to go low and to serve?

Sibb says it this way. He says, the deeply humbled soul thinks everyone better than himself.

Again, not that everyone is better than himself. This isn't some false humility,

but he thinks of everyone better than himself and is glad of the lowest place for it is there.

He is surely with the Lord.

It is there at the lowliest place that you are surely with the Lord.

That is where the Lord was most comfortable, in the lowest place.

Now, again, surely his disciples get it.

Surely at this point, they've been called out, right? He asked them a question.

They don't want to answer it because they're scared. They know what they're

saying is wrong. They know they've missed the point. They don't get it.

So what is John going to do? Well, John's going to try and come up with something that he did.

This is what we do. This is how we work. This is how our sinful brains work.

Jesus doesn't get onto them, but he's trying to clarify some of them.

They feel a pressure of what he's teaching them.

And what is John going to do? Well, Jesus, since you're putting that pressure

on me, let me tell you about something I did for you.

Let me tell you about this good work I did. John says in verse 38,

teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. We tried to stop him

because he was not following us.

Do good, Jesus? Look how awesome I am. He wasn't in our club,

man. He wasn't a part of this.

He wasn't a part of that 70 that you sent out. So I told him,

hey, you got to cut that out.

Jesus, as he continues to humble his disciples, says, do not stop him.

For one who does a mighty work in my name will be able to soon afterwards not

be able to speak evil of me.

A quick clarification, when Jesus says doing a work in my name,

that doesn't just mean they're using the name Jesus.

That's not what Jesus is saying. He's not saying as long as you say Jesus,

you can do whatever you want.

If you're watching TV at 11 o'clock at night and you see some preacher on there

saying, like, I've got this special cloth that I can send you for 18 payments

of $9.99, and it's going to heal all your diseases.

And Jesus told me that it was like, that's not what Jesus is saying.

Is saying is, if they truly say it in my name, the true Jesus of the Bible,

right? Not the Jehovah's Witness Jesus, not the Mormon Jesus,

not the Muslim Jesus, this Jesus.

When they do it in my name, in that Jesus' name, don't stop them, right?

It doesn't matter that he doesn't look like you, right? When John says he wasn't

following us, John's still thinking, hey, we're the in crowd here,

and he didn't approve that with us.

He's just out there all willy-nilly doing the work of the Lord. Can't do that.

That didn't go through the proper channels. He didn't submit it to us.

We didn't review it. We didn't give him our stamp of approval.

In some ways, what Jesus is saying is, hey, who do you think you are?

Who's given you the authority to decide how God is going to work?

Who's given you the authority to decide how God is going to accomplish what

he's going to accomplish?

You can't even figure out what

I came to do. And now you're worried about what other people are doing?

Again, is it not our human nature that when we come across something we can't

understand, we revert back to what we do understand because that's where we're

comfortable. That's where we get it.

And John is saying, listen, Jesus, I don't really get what you're saying,

but I can tell you what I do know.

We told him to stop. You're welcome. And Jesus says, that's not how this works.

That's not how this works.

I think a good way to decide or to discern if you have this kind of heart in you.

Looking at the people in your life and saying, are there people that I'm more

willing to forgive the sins of than others?

Am I more willing to overlook the sins of certain people, to let them get brushed

under the rug, to not make a big scene of them versus other people?

Because these people are in my club.

I know these people. They talk

like me. They act like me. They dress like me. We read the same books.

We like the same theologians. We like the same music.

And so when they sin, well, it's obviously not as bad, but these people,

right, when they do it, it's the worst thing that could ever happen.

Do you see that in yourself? It's amazing how many churches fail.

And I don't mean close, but I mean fail, fail to serve the world that God has

called them to serve because of the sin of preference, because they prefer something.

And so they serve their preference other than Christ.

And when it comes down to saying, I'm gonna do what Christ wants me to do to

serve humbly, to go low, to support and to love or to serve my preferences, my preferences win.

That's what Jesus is trying to get his disciples to understand,

hey, listen, this isn't about you.

This isn't about the 12 people in this circle. This isn't about the 70 people I sent out.

This is about God and his kingdom and his kingdom coming to earth.

And it's about God and him rescuing his children from slavery and sin and death.

It's about what God wants to do in this world. And he can do it however he wants to do it.

And he can accomplish those by any means he deems necessary.

And it's not up to you or me or John to say, that's not how this works.

Just say, I'm a fan of gospel preaching churches.

I'm a fan of, do we have disagreements? Absolutely. Absolutely.

We talked about a little bit this morning in Bible study, but I think one of

the greatest travesties that has happened in churches is that we have built

churches to make sinners and unsaved people as comfortable as they can possibly be.

I think that's not a good thing.

However, if the church preaches the gospel, I think I'm in good company with

the Apostle Paul and saying, I rejoice in that.

If there's fog machines and lights, I can't go in there. I realize I've gotten too old. I don't know.

Y'all have heard me tell this story before. I was at a church and this light

kept hitting me in the face and I was losing my mind.

My wife literally had to grab my arm and be like, my wife, like y'all don't

know her. And Kareth had to grab my arm and be like, hey, you look angry.

It's like, because I am angry.

It's like, well, they're singing about the joy of the Lord. I'm like,

not with this light in my face. We're not. Okay, this is the worst thing in the world.

And why are the lights down? I can't read my Bible. What's going on in here?

Though. Because you know what I heard that morning when I got over myself? The gospel.

I heard that I was a sinner in need of a Savior, that Jesus was that Savior,

that I could repent and believe, that I could come to God boldly because of

what Christ had accomplished for me on the cross, that it was about

Him and His work and not me and my work, that it was about His grace towards

me and not my works towards Him. That's what I heard that morning.

And I realized in that moment, like, man, you've gotten really spoiled.

Because especially at that time at this church, there was like nine of us.

And listen, we did exactly whatever we wanted, right? There was no preferences.

It was just like, yeah, the nine of us agree on everything that should happen.

We all agreed. This is great. We all agreed on the type of coffee we should use. True story.

What the AC should be set at. We just had a little meeting with eight or nine of us.

Really seven, because we didn't ask the kids, right?

Right. We all agreed on everything. And so when I went to this place where all

of a sudden I'm in a room with people that I don't know and people that I probably

disagree with on all kinds of issues.

Now, all of a sudden it becomes about me.

Turn those off, turn the lights on, turn, just stop with all the loud noises.

Why don't we have two drummers?

That really did happen, by the way. I'm not, I'm not joking.

I was like, musically, I just didn't get it. Now that's just could be me.

But then when they were both playing, I was like, this feels like a little drummer

boy play. Like I can't really revealing the sin in my heart is what I'm trying to do this morning.

This morning, as I prepared this message through the week.

I read across all kinds of denominational lines, historical lines,

and I joke all the time with guys who get into Reformed theology and they start

reading Luther and Calvin, and that's all they want to talk about.

I always like to remind them, hey, you would have been kicked out of both of their churches.

They would have had nothing to do with you.

I read from Richard Sibbes this morning, who I love. Richard Sibbes was an Anglican.

You've heard me talk about R.C. Sproul. He's one of my favorite people of all time. Presbyterian.

Congregationalist. Right. There is people around us that will not agree with

what we do. And that's fine.

Listen, Trinity does things a certain way because we believe a certain way.

We value certain things. For me, we were talking about music this week.

For me, I want to hear your voices more than I want to hear anything else. That's me.

Now, can I make a theological case for that? I believe I can.

Do I tell my friends who have rock bands at their churches that they're wrong?

I do. I absolutely do.

Do I tell my Presbyterian friends every time they baptize a baby,

I think they're doing something really wrong? Yes, I do.

Are we still friends? Absolutely, we are. Absolutely, we are.

And in many ways, I know guys like that who I consider much greater Christians

than I, because our disagreements on things are not first order issues.

They are gospel-believing people. They believe in this Jesus,

in the God of this book, and the spirit that it talks about.

They live their lives in service to him.

We have to be careful, especially as small as we are, that we don't look around

and go, these dumb big churches, dude, they don't get it.

Right? These big, all their big stuff and their big budgets and their big stuff,

man, they're just a bunch of idiots.

Now, listen, can you have an honest disagreement? Absolutely.

I disagree with a lot of things.

One of the things you'll hear us talk about a lot is pastoral,

eldership, leadership.

I really have a conviction that your church can't outgrow its leaders.

You can't have 900 people per pastor. You can't do that.

People need to know their pastor. They need to know their elders.

They need to know the people whose souls

they are putting themselves under authority of. They need to do that.

But when I see that, by God's grace, my first thought is not, what a bunch of idiots.

Because what I've found is when

I talk to these men, oftentimes it's just they're more missional than me.

In their mind, the first thing they think of is, how can I get the most people

safe? How can I get the most people through the door? How can I get the most

people to hear the gospel?

Now, we have a fundamental disagreement on what that is and what church is and

what church is for, and that's fine. But I can appreciate that.

I wish I had that kind of missional fervor at times.

Most of the time, I'm trying to figure out, how can I get out of this conversation?

How can I get in a small group of people? Why are these people doing that?

Right online ordering is the worst thing that ever happened to me because i'm

like i don't have to go to walmart anymore it's the best thing in the world.

That thing where you're walking down an aisle and you see someone,

you're like, no, no, I don't need cereal.

We don't need cereal. It's like, we actually don't need milk.

We don't need meat. In fact, I'm just going to leave. I don't need any of this stuff.

You go to the Walmart in 64, that's 30 minutes away. Cause you're like,

I won't know anyone over there.

Again, what's my point? I know we've rambled on this a minute,

but I just wanted to say, it's so important that we don't fall into that.

Because again, when you do that, what John is saying out loud,

Hey, we saw him do that. And we just want you to know, we told them,

that's not how this works.

You're failing to do what Jesus has just told them. Hey, why don't you just

serve these people? Love these people.

One of the greatest injustices that we do to the Bible is we take our current

cultural norms and we supplant it on top of it.

Listen, in the first century, when this was written, and a good way of reading

your Bible is to say, it can't mean to me what it didn't mean to them.

Now it can be applied differently, but it can't mean something different.

It has to mean what it meant to them.

When they were hearing things like this, they weren't thinking,

well, I saw all of these churches on Facebook, right?

I was online and I saw all these people that I could judge. No,

their worlds were what was around them.

I think that's a good polemic here.

Think of the world that God has placed you in, the people that God has placed

you around, not the people you see on a screen, not the people you see on TV,

the people that God has placed you around, the people in your family and the people in this room.

And think, how can I serve those people?

Even if they look a little different, if they act a little different,

if they believe a little differently, if they're not on the same theological

level as you, how can you serve those people well?

I can tell you how to not serve them well, is that every time they try and do

something for the gospel, you come behind them and go, hey, that's not how we do that.

Hey, you use this word. You should have used that word. Hey,

I know you said that, but you kind of messed that up a little bit.

Why don't you come to my house and I'll give you a nine hour lecture on why you were wrong.

Promise you that doesn't serve people well. Now, what may be helpful is to say,

hey, I saw you doing that. That was awesome. I saw you sharing the gospel.

I see you trying to love your friends, love your family, to be a good dad,

be a good husband, be a good mom, be a good wife, be a good kid.

Man, I see you trying to do those things for the Lord. Can I help you?

The Lord has shown me some things in my life. I've been able to be exposed to

certain things in my life, certain theological things, certain biblical things,

certain life experience things, and I really think I can help you and go low,

and meet them where they are.

Don't just drive by theological shoot at them and say, go figure it out.

So what is Christian greatness? What is Christian greatness?

Christian greatness is achieving the greatest things you can achieve and sharing

those things, blessing other people with those things, with the realization

that nothing you have is your own.

Nothing you have is your own. These disciples are arguing about who is the greatest.

And Jesus would have been within his rights to say, have you seen yourselves?

You don't understand what I'm saying. You fall asleep every time I go to pray.

Every time I leave, you're in shambles.

You doubt me every step of the way. I literally fed 5,000 people.

You saw me do that. We were in another group of 5,000 people and you said, hey, we're out of food.

Jesus has every right to treat his disciples like the idiotic sinners that they

are, just in the same way he has every right to treat you and me that way. And he does not do that.

He walks with them. He patiently endures with them.

He patiently does everything he can to help them see what they cannot see immediately.

Is never quick to walk away from someone, but he is ever faithful to walk with someone.

We should be the same. We should be the same. Again, I feel like I have to give a disclaimer.

That is not meaning don't call out sin, to be passive, to be a coward.

If someone's doing something they're not supposed to do, whether it's your kid

or your boss, say something.

Right? Whether it's anyone in this room or it's me, say something.

I'm not above anybody else. I can sin just like everybody else,

right? Don't be a coward. Don't be passive. No, be active.

So again, what is Christian greatness? It is taking what you have been given,

no matter how great it is, and blessing those that God has placed around you.

That's number one. Number two, what is Christian greatness?

Loving people that aren't on your team, but are on God's.

Loving people that aren't on your team, but are on God's. Again, that can be tough.

I said it last week. I'll say it again. We all come from places where we feel

like we've been hurt. We've been beaten down by certain places and churches. I get it.

If you want to grab lunch sometime, we can swap stories. We'll do it one time

and then we'll shake hands and say, we're never going to talk about it again.

We're not going to bring it up because we're not going to be bitter.

We're not going to be angry.

And we're not going to get in here as a group of Christians and say,

you know, Trinity's finally figured it out.

We have not. We just haven't had our first church fight yet.

It's going to happen. Everybody buckle in, right? We're humans.

Serve others. Don't worry about what team you're on.

Last thing, we'll close with this. Jesus finishes this by saying,

for truly I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you

belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.

Need any other reason to serve a fellow believer other than that they're a believer.

That's the only reason you need.

You don't have to like them. You don't have to get along with them.

You don't have to care about them. You don't have to see them every day.

You don't have to be best friends with them. Not at all saying that.

Listen, there are certain people that I know are Christians that I care nothing

about being friends with. That's fine.

But if I see a need in my brother or sister, and I refuse to meet it,

John is pretty clear what he says about those kinds of people.

The love of the Father is not in you.

You don't need any other reason to serve your Christian brothers and sisters

other than them being Christian brothers and sisters. Stop waiting on one.

Find someone to serve. Look around the room. Who's not here? Call them.

Take someone some dinner. Reach out to them. You don't have to wait on anybody.

Why would you do that when And somebody says, why are you doing that?

Because they're my brother. They're my sister. It's the example Christ gave me.

Thomas Watson says it this way, who was a congregationalist, by the way.

God walks with the humble. He

reveals himself to the lowly. He gives understanding to the little ones.

Do you want to walk with God? Be humble. Do you want God to reveal himself to

you? Be lowly. Do you want to have understanding?

Approach him like a child. Let's pray.

Father, again, as always, thank you for this morning. Thank you for Trinity

Bible Church and the way that you have blessed it.

I pray that we would be a people that are obsessed with serving others.

We would find ourselves as, again, passive people or cowardly people,

people unwilling to do the hard thing, say the hard thing because of what it might cost us.

But God, that we would do all of those things. We would do the courageous thing.

We would do the hard thing and serve others because of it.

We would serve our communities well. We would serve our families well.

We would serve this church well by living the life that you've called us to

live, by serving those that are lowly,

by looking for brothers and sisters to serve, by not trying to figure out who's

on our team, but just trying to do what you have asked us to do.

God, I thank you for that.

I thank you for those at this church who already do so much of that.

There's so many people in this room that do things every week for Trinity that you would never know.

They never ask for credit. They never ask for any money. They never ask for

any recognition. God, they just show up and they serve. and I thank you for that.

Pray that we would build ourselves up in humility that way.

God, I pray for every church that's meeting this morning in East Texas that's

preaching the gospel, that you would be with them, that you would guide them.

God, that your spirit would be at work in those places, that through the preaching

of your gospel, that people would come to know you, that people would be set

free from sin and bondage, free from death.

God, that you would bless those pastors, give them wisdom as they move forward,

that we would be humble even in our disagreements, in our convictions. And I pray, amen.