"Service and Sacrifice" Matthew 20:24-28 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew chapter 20 this morning.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read our scripture for us, then we'll get into God's word together.

Matthew 20, verse 24.

Matthew 20:24

We're picking up in the middle of the story that Ryan preached on last week.

Of course, it's the mother that of uh James and John that asked for them to be seated better at a better seat in the kingdom of heaven.

And since it was a Mother's Day request, and by God's providence it fell on Mother's Day, I thought it'd be a great passage for Ryan to preach.

But we'll pick it up in the middle of it here, verse 24.

When the ten heard of it, meaning their request, they were indignant at the two brothers.

But Jesus called to them and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.

It shall not be so among you.

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

Whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

This is the word of God.

I pray he would seal it on your hearts.

Last week I was not just uh dodging preaching that text on Mother's Day, but I was in Los Angeles for the graduation ceremony of the Master's Seminary.

Three of our own students from Manual Bible Church graduated from the Master's Seminary uh this week.

Um, and I'm excited for them and to see what the Lord is gonna do with their lives.

On Saturday night, we had a banquet for those students.

It was at the Ritz Carlton in Los Angeles.

That's a great place for seminary banquet because many of those students are gonna go and be pastors of small rural churches around the country.

They'll never be allowed into the same zip code as the Ritz Carlton ever again.

It was the 40th graduating class from the Master Seminary, and as I was thinking back on it, I believe that I have been to 26 of those banquets now.

And uh I enjoy them.

This particular banquet, I was seated at table 12, since you were curious.

Um there's about 40 tables there.

Table 12 was like the second row in the middle, but they assigned everybody their their seats by little name tags, and so I was assigned at the bottom of the table, so my back was to the stage.

Do you know that that seat?

It's kind of an awkward seat to have.

I just turn it around for the the talk.

I kind of wish I had a better seat a little bit.

If I was further back, like the back row, I could misbehave.

If I was more like the front row of tables, I'd feel more important.

Instead, I had like that middle row with my back to the stage.

Anyway, I've made a goal now.

My goal over the next year is to earn myself a better seat assignment next year.

I'm open to any strategies, any suggestions.

How to work my way up, sit in the front row, maybe even sit next to the speaker.

That would be nice.

Imagine.

I bet they get served their food first up there.

Is this a weird conversation?

Is it feeling awkward?

It is a very odd thing to talk about, isn't it?

Most Americans don't think that way.

Like we don't think, oh, the seating assignment is really that important or it reflects how good of a person you are, your status in society.

We don't really think like that.

Honestly, and I know you can think of exceptions.

I know you might think of a person that really cares about that.

But most of you, when you go to a wedding and you see the seating assignments, you look at the seating assignments, and you're not wondering how close them out of the front.

You're probably wondering, who did I get seated next to?

I hope I don't get seated next to somebody boring for the next hour of my life.

That would be lame.

Oh, look, it's cool people.

And that's about the extent of what we think about.

Not true in the Jewish world.

In the Jewish world, it's a very much an honor culture, and that honor is seen at these kind of banquets, at these kind of weddings.

The Jewish world revolves around these Shabbat dinners.

Friday night, the families get together and the seating is very orchestrated, choreographed.

Not every Friday night do you do a big, massive thing inviting lots of families, but many Friday nights you do, even to this day.

And in Israel, some families will rent hotel rooms on Friday night and the banquet hall at hotels on Friday night, and they'll bring a bunch of people over because whoever you have Shabbat dinner with, you'll spend that Friday night and Saturday, most of Saturday with, and the seating is very important.

How close you sit to the host is a huge deal.

Sometimes there's multiple tables and there's debates about would you rather sit at the foot of the table one or the head of table two?

Like which is actually more honoring.

It seems like an abstract or weird conversation to us to have, not so in the Jewish world.

That is a huge deal.

In our mind, it sounds childish or funny.

Hopefully, you knew I was joking when I said it's my goal to get a better seating assignment next year.

I was joking.

If that was my goal, that would be sad and pathetic.

Not true in the Jewish worlds.

That would be a very noble goal.

I loved Ryan's message for last week for a lot of reasons.

If you didn't hear it, I would encourage you to listen to it.

But he brought out some good elements of that request and some dangerous elements of that request.

But I do feel that sometimes our American ears miss what is actually being asked for.

When the mom comes to Jesus and says, I want my kids seated next to you.

She's talking about them being honored in the kingdom of heaven in a way that the Jews would have ears to hear and understand.

I mean, it is important where you are seated.

How many times in John's writing, in John's gospel, does he let you know, by the way, I was the one who got to sit next to Jesus at the table?

It's his way of telling you it's important to them.

The disciples understood the hierarchy.

There's 12 disciples, they're always described in more or less the same order.

In groups.

And inside of those groups, the order may vary, but there was no doubt of the hierarchy in the disciples' mind.

They knew who sat where.

And it was important to them.

Now, this has been going on for a while in Matthew's gospel.

Going back to chapter 18, the disciples are asking Jesus, who's going to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Again, from an American perspective, it's an odd question.

Not in the Jewish world.

And Jesus answers in a very odd way by taking children to himself and saying, These children are going to be the most important in the kingdom of heaven.

They'll be the greatest there.

Speaking of the childlike nature of their faith.

This goes on to produce a debate and a dispute.

They're arguing on the roads about where they're going to get to sit in the kingdom.

Jesus brings more children to him.

Self in chapter 19 and says, I'm telling you, to such belong the kingdom of heaven.

These are the greatest that are there.

So James and John have changed approaches now.

Peter's been trying to muscle the kids out of the way.

James and John push their mom forward.

Well, when the ten hear about this, they are indignant, is the word that's used in the SV.

It's a word that means angry, furious, like the cat pet backwards to the point of anger, getting bit.

That's this word.

The other ten cannot believe that those two guys who they know would stoop so low to have their mom angle to get them promoted and the one-seating chart that is eternal.

You've got to be kidding me.

That's their attitude.

Well, Jesus doesn't rebuke the question.

Instead, he actually answers it in a way that describes how to climb the ladder of greatness.

And that'll be our outline this morning, climbing the kingdom ladder.

You want to navigate to a better table assignment in heaven?

Here you go.

Jesus will tell you how.

Now, as I mentioned, the question aggravated the disciples.

That's what verse 24 says, but hopefully Jesus' answer aggravates us.

His main point in Christ's kingdom, greatness is not seized through power, but through humble service.

He gets at this in verse 25.

Jesus called them to himself.

Team meeting.

Remember, they're on the road towards Jericho here.

Team meeting, he says, pulls them all together, pulls the camel over, so to speak.

Says, listen, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them.

It is an interpretive issue here, whether Gentiles means literally ethnically Gentiles or all of those outside the kingdom of heaven, because what he describes matches the Jewish culture of feasts and Shabbat dinners very well.

But it's also true of the Roman world, although slightly differently.

In the Roman world, when people would go to banquets, they would be dressed according to their rank.

Political leaders would have sashes on them that would identify them.

You could tell somebody's importance by how many servants they had with them.

This person comes with an entourage of people.

He must be more important than me.

I only have one or two servants.

They had that hierarchy even in the Roman world.

And so Jesus is talking about that.

The rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them.

You already saw in the Sermon on the Mount when some great and wealthy people were giving things, they would have trumpets.

I mean, what good is it to be an honorable and powerful person if the people you're crossing on the street don't know how honorable and powerful you are?

Like, why even bother being the greatest in your neighborhood if your neighbors don't know how great you are?

You should at least have a bumper sticker.

Greatest in the 22313.

Look out.

The Romans would have sashes, the Jews might have trumpets.

The point was they were lording over other people, their greatness.

And this goes all the way to how they understood authority in verse 25.

The great ones exercise authority over them.

Jesus is not even critiquing this, he's just saying it almost axiomatically, like he's just saying it's obviously true.

Their greatest leaders are ones that exercise authority.

If you were to ask a Roman who is the greatest of your leaders, he would obviously say the one with the most authority.

Who is the greatest political leader?

He's the one that wins the elections.

Who is the greatest in the military?

The highest ranking guy?

Who's the greatest in this squadron or at this base?

The one with the highest rank, the one with the most authority.

That seems so obvious to us.

And Jesus isn't even critiquing it, he's just saying it like a fact.

The guy who's in charge is the one with the most authority.

But then he says, What's going to be shocking to the disciples?

Verse 26, it shall not be so among you.

It's not going to be that way in the church.

What is greatness going to be like in the church?

Well, the greatest person in the church is going to be first a deacon.

He says in verse 26, whoever should be great among you must be your servant.

And the ESV says servant there, you'll see a little footnote.

It's the Greek word diakonos.

It's the word that comes in the English as servants, of course.

We use it as the word deacon.

We just transliterate it, diakonos to deacon.

We have deacons in the church.

We recognize our deacons every year.

A deacon is a servant.

Because of that, we lose how shocking what it is what Jesus says here.

We've cleaned up the word diakonos.

Christianese is the language that Christians speak, and words have different meanings than they do in the rest of the world.

Christianese.

The word diakonos has been obfuscated by Christianese.

It's become a positive term.

It's good to be recognized as a deacon.

But this, when Jesus says it, is a secular word.

There was no church when Jesus was teaching here.

The church hadn't started yet.

There were no deacons.

This is a secular word, and it is the word for the lowest of the servants.

Some commentaries say there's up to 40 different words Jesus could have chosen from here.

The Roman world was very hierarchical.

There were all kinds of different servants, and they had different words for the servants that worked in the fields, the servants who were day laborers, the servants who worked for seasonal time, the servants who worked in the house, the servants who did the laundry, the servants who did the food, the cooks in the house, the body man.

They had a word for the body man, the one who would follow you around and carry your bags.

They had words for all kinds of different servants.

All kinds of different slaves had words.

Slaves that had been kidnapped, slaves that had been purchased, slaves that had been redeemed.

They all had different words for them.

Something like 40 words.

Jesus chooses here the lowest word.

A diacono is the one who does the most menial tasks.

A diacono is the one who changes the chamber pot.

The one who busses the table.

The one who is cleaning out the trash.

That's a diacono.

That's the word Jesus uses.

The greatest among you is going to be the diacono, the deacon, the slave, the lowly servant.

Gentile leaders lorded over by their authority.

Christian leaders are marked by being great, by how they serve one another.

Leadership in the church will be marked by service, Jesus says.

Your greatness in the kingdom is not marked by your authority.

It is not marked by your status or your persuasion.

Greatness in the kingdom is marked by your service.

How low you're willing to serve.

That's why when we use the word deacon, we mean it as a compliment.

It was meant as an insult in Jesus' lifetime.

But the effect of Jesus' teaching here, and you should appreciate this, the effect of Jesus' teaching is such that now the word deacon is a compliment.

If you get a letter in the mail from the church saying, hey, we're going to recognize you as a deacon, you probably don't go, how dare they?

I'm insulted.

It's not meant as an insult, it's meant as a compliment.

And the very fact that our deacons receive it as a compliment shows you how thoroughly Jesus' teaching here has infiltrated the church.

Deacon now is a compliment.

It's a measure of greatness.

And listen, churches prize teaching, of course they do.

They prize preaching.

Paul describes in the book of Romans the difference between speaking gifts and serving gifts.

And obviously, he tells the Corinthians the speaking gifts are the more prominent gifts because speaking gifts happen in front of everybody.

I'm speaking right now, I'm preaching right now.

I have the gift of teaching, and all of you are looking at me, and that itself is kind of awkward.

I'm learning to navigate it over the years.

That's the nature of a speaking gift.

A speaking gift is not the measure of greatness, and we sometimes conflate the two.

You think of famous Christians or Christians you think are going to be great in heaven.

And you might think of pastors or preachers or evangelists or missionaries.

Well, they might have good speaking gifts.

That does not equate to greatness in heaven.

Greatness in heaven is marked by serving, by service in this life, even.

Greatness is seen in service.

Now, this is true.

Jesus is not only talking about the church.

This is true in every area of life.

By God's standard, he measures greatness through service.

Think of marriage.

In marriage, those with the greatest marriages are those that serve each other the most.

Greatness in marriage is seen in service.

Is there a concept of authority in marriage?

Of course there is.

A husband has authority.

But a husband with authority who exercises that authority or who lords over that authority is not a great husband.

A husband who serves his family is a great husband.

Leadership in the secular level is marked by service.

Effective leadership is marked by service.

A manager or a boss, of course, has to clearly communicate to his employees.

You have to give them expectations and parameters, and you have to be a steward of the money and the authority that's been given to you.

Of course you do.

You have to tell your employees what you want them to do and what your measures of success are, and a good boss clearly communicates those things.

But that does not make a great boss.

A great boss is marked by service, how he serves his employees.

And you can see this so obviously in the military, where say somebody who has command, he has authority over those under his command.

Every person with command, with the same kind of numbers of people and responsibilities underneath them, had the same level of authority.

And yes, they have to give command.

This they have to tell people what to do and maintain order and discipline in their units.

Of course they do.

But that is not the measure of greatness.

Everybody with command, in a sense, has the same level of authority.

If you're all the same rank and with the same responsibility, you have the same level of authority.

What makes somebody great in God's estimation in that is how well that person serves those who are underneath them.

It's just so counter-cultural.

Our DC world even has the expression, you're networking upward.

But scripture describes serving downward.

Honestly, leadership in God's eyes is better represented by a towel than it is by a ladder.

By washing people's feet.

Another side note here, you see this in churches.

Leadership in the church should be marked by service, not by authority, not by dogmatic sayings.

And I have seen so many churches, even churches that I have loved, that start to go off the rails when leadership becomes marked by authority, by bossing people, by saying things like, I'm an elder, I'm a pastor, I'm in charge, so this is what you have to do.

When you hear that kind of line, that doesn't mean the church is dying, but it means the organs are failing, that's for sure.

In the Christian world, leaders lead by service.

Yes, pastors and elders guard the flock with their voice, of course they do.

But they shepherd their flock by serving them.

The position of pastor or elder doesn't bestow greatness, it's service that bestows greatness.

Commanding people to agree with you because you're in charge reveals weakness, not greatness.

I used to work at a car dealership in Albuquerque, a BMW, and Range Rover dealership.

It was uh I actually liked it.

I had a I had a deacon style job for sure.

I was washing cars and picking up trash, it was my job.

It was owned by a guy who was very, very wealthy.

Uh, this is how wealthy he was.

One day he drove a lotus, uh, which is a fancy sports car, and decided to buy a lotus dealership to add to the mix.

That was the kind of money he had.

Super expensive suits.

He had a rule at our car dealership.

Any trash that was visible had to be picked up immediately.

And by visible, he meant even a trash can.

Like a trash can in the showroom.

If you could see trash in it, whatever employee saw the trash has to take it out right away.

And when I when I first learned that rule, I thought, man, I don't think this guy understands what a trash can is for.

Like what it's for.

No, cannot see trash anywhere there.

Um kind of bugged me for a while, me with my minimum wage job, until one day I see him, this owner, in his like$10,000 suit, walking through the parking lot, and a piece of trash had blown through the parking lot and went underneath the car, and he got down on his knees and pulled the trash out under the car and took it to the trash can.

And I realized, okay, I guess if he can do that in his nice suit, I, in my minimum wage job, can do that.

It's this poor picture of what Jesus is talking about, but I hope it resonates with you.

Greatness in God's estimation through leadership is seen through service, not through commands.

And Christ can Greatness is seized not through power, but is received through humble service, through being a deacon.

Secondly, through being a doulos, a deacon, and secondly, a doulos.

That's the Greek word for slave.

And you see it here in verse 27.

Whoever would be first among you must be your doulos, must be your slave.

Again, there's so many different words Jesus could have used.

The word he uses here, doulos, that is the word for a slave.

It's sometimes not always translated slave.

I'm glad the ESV did it here because it's not American slavery.

It's not somebody who was kidnapped from Africa and shipped somewhere else into Europe to be a slave or whatever.

That's not what a dulas is.

A doulos is someone who was sold into slavery, probably by his family, to pay a debt.

He's owned by the person who bought him until he's around age 30, and then he's released, and he kind of has the status in society as the one who owned him.

It's, in a sense, more noble, you could say, than American slavery, but in a sense it's just as degrading because a slave does not have their own individual rights.

A dulas does not have his own rights.

He does not have his own identity.

He is in the eyes of the law of property.

He has rights, but they're the rights of his owner, not of himself.

If you assault a slave in the Roman world, you are treated by the law as if you had insulted or assaulted his owner.

So, in a sense, that affords you protection, but in a sense it's degrading because it's not protection because of who you are, because of who your owner is.

There's all kinds of writings in the Roman world from people who said they'd rather be day laborers than slaves, because day laborers could choose when to work and when not to work.

They work, they get paid, they provide for their family.

Not so with a slave.

A slave doesn't get to call in sick, he gets to crawl in sick.

A slave doesn't get paid once at the start, pays off a debt, and now he works as property for years.

It's somebody who's owned, who has no sense of personal identity.

That is so against our Western world.

Our Western world prizes autonomy, prizes personal freedom, prizes individual volition.

But Jesus does not speak of greatness in terms of autonomy and individual volition.

He speaks of greatness in terms of slavery.

This is the third of a pair of couplets in Greek.

If you read these verses, it has a rhyme to it.

They're written in couplets.

Gentiles lord it by bossing, by exercising authority.

Not you, you are serving.

The first among you is slaving.

So you get this kind of repetition in the Greek: lording, serving, slaving.

That's the idea.

You're brought low.

Slaves are not helpful like a deacon was.

Slaves are owns.

And Jesus is taking not the best parts of deacon and do loss, but he's taking the lowest parts of deacon and do loss to define slavery.

You will be great if you're being a deacon doing the lowest of the tasks, and you will be great if you are a slave with no sense of personal identity, but belonging to the whole.

It'd be one thing for a boss to say, hey, greatness here is defined by how well you serve me, everybody, so let's go.

But no, Jesus says greatness is defined by being a slave, and then he himself becomes a slave.

He serves us.

Philippians 2 says Christ, though having a quality with God, did not consider a quality with God something to be held on to, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.

That's the word dulos, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Only Christ, when he became a slave, he became a slave to the word of God.

In his deity, he is the author of the word of God.

In his humanity, he becomes a slave to the word of God.

He becomes under the word of God, only able to do what the word of God commands him to do.

His will was so submissive to the word of God that it is as if he was a slave to what he was commanded.

And he kept the word of God perfectly.

This is very different than our slavery.

We are born into this world slaves to sin because we're in the likeness of Adam.

Sin owns us, not the Word of God.

We prize human volition and free will and all of that.

But the truth is, outside of Christ, you have no real free will.

You are a slave to sin.

People say, do non-Christians have free will?

Sure.

They can choose any kind of sin they want to do.

But they are still a slave to sin.

And then the gospel comes and frees you from that, and you become a slave of Christ.

Would it surprise you to know that the most common New Testament word to describe a Christian is not Christian.

That's only used once or twice in the New Testament.

The second most common word is disciple, Mattheitas, a student, a learner.

But the most common word in the New Testament to describe a Christian is dulos, a slave of Christ.

Someone who is owned by Christ.

You were a slave of sin, you were purchased by Jesus, and now you belong to him.

But if you look carefully at verse 27, you'll notice that Jesus here is not talking about being his slave.

Whoever is going to be great among you must be your slave.

That's an odd expression.

It's kind of alone in the New Testament.

It means that greatness in the church is marked by belonging to the church.

Greatness in the church is marked by being part of the church in a very true way.

Where you are, in a sense, owned by the body of Christ.

Our lives are not our own.

We've been bought with a cost, the scripture says.

Your body is not your own body, Paul tells the Corinthians.

You've been bought, you belong to the body of Christ.

Now, Paul backs you into that analogy starting in 1 Corinthians 7, where he says, a husband's body does not belong to himself but to his wife, and a wife's body does not belong to herself but to her husband.

Now there's implications and applications of that in marriage that are unique to marriage, that Paul goes into the details of in 1 Corinthians 7, of course.

But later he goes back to that same analogy to say that in a different sense it is true of believers.

You do not belong to yourself, you are part of the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12, 27.

You are all of the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.

That's the truth.

We belong to each other.

And greatness in the church is seen in recognizing that.

I have often had people ask me, what is the point of becoming a member of the church?

Why can't I be a Christian without being a member of the church?

And I don't want to go into how much of the New Testament you need to believe in order to be a Christian.

You know, believe whatever you're presented with, whatever's in front of you.

Believe it, okay?

But I will tell you this: you cannot pursue greatness in the kingdom apart from being joined to the body of Christ.

At least not according to Matthew 20, verse 27.

Matthew 20:27

If you want greatness in the kingdom, you have to be part of the body of Christ.

You must be a member of the church.

The members belong to each other.

That's the analogy uses in 1 Corinthians 12.

That, you know, hey, how are you doing?

Oh, I'm doing great.

My appendix is doing terrible, but I'm doing great.

That doesn't make any sense.

The body is one.

If your thumb hurts, you hurt.

How are you doing?

Great.

You know, my thumb got crushed this week by a forklift, but I'm doing fine.

No.

The whole body hurts together.

Slaves are owns, Christians are owns, and are part of the body of Christ.

Well, this is the greatness seen by being a deacon, greatness seen by being a doolos, third greatness seen in the diadem in the crown.

Verse 28 Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.

Son of man is the messianic title from the book of Daniel.

This is a human being who knows the mind of God.

That's the Son of Man.

A human being who knows God's redemptive plan, who comes to earth to fulfill the 69 weeks described in the book of Daniel.

That's the Son of Man.

The Son of Man who is ushered into Jerusalem to restore all things.

The Son of Man who will die and be cut off by his own people.

Speaking of the cross of Christ.

Speaking of his burial and his descent into the grave.

The Son of Man who will be resurrected and who will ultimately restore all things to Israel.

That's the Son of Man.

Here Jesus is describing himself as a son of man.

It's a title that speaks of his deity, that he knows the mind of God and his humanity, that he is very literally a son of man.

It is two natures in one person, and Jesus says, this is him.

And he did not come to be served.

If anybody in world history could have said they came to be served, it would be Jesus, but he says, I did not come to be served.

I mean, who doted on Jesus in his lifetime?

Anyone?

Maybe the woman at the banquet where the seating arrangements became an issue, remember?

Jesus was towards the front because he was the guest.

This woman comes in and muscles her way to the head table, is weeping all over Jesus' feet, breaks an alapaster jar and anoints him with perfume.

The host is upset, and Jesus rebukes the host and says, Man, you had so many chances to wash my hands or wash my feet.

I don't see a towel around here.

She is anointing me.

And then Jesus says, She's anointing me for my burial.

That's a downer thing to say at a banquet, isn't it?

Leave her alone because I'm gonna die, and she's at least getting my body ready for it.

She doted on Jesus.

And Jesus made it about his death.

He did not come to be served, but to serve by going to the cross.

He didn't come to be adored.

He came, honestly, to be listened to.

He came as a mouthpiece of God, the word of God incarnate.

He came as the word of God to speak the word of God, to be listened to by the people of God, but he came to his own, his own people did not receive him, instead, they rejected him, slandered him.

I mean, he is the one who made the universe by speech.

He is the author of speech, he's the giver of speech.

Speech is a gift from him.

He came to speak.

His people closed their ears and used their own speech to lie about him and slander him and lie about him to turn him over to die and be murdered because of their gossip.

That's what they did with their speech.

And Jesus, when he went to the cross, closed his mouth and did not say a word.

The Lord of speech zipped his lips.

So when he says he didn't come to be served, but to serve and give his life, that's what he's talking about.

He's the one who made the universe and he had no place to lay his head.

That's how the slavery of Jesus is seen.

He's the one that made angels and in his hour of need did not call on angels to help him.

That's what he means when he says he didn't come to be served.

He's the one who clothes the lilies in beauty.

He gives nature its beauty.

And he is stripped naked and humiliated.

He has a crown of thorns and a purple sash to mock him.

That's what he means when he says he didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life.

Did he come to be served?

No, although he deserved it.

He came as a servant, he came as a slave, and not just any kind of deacon, but the one doing the lowest task, going all the way to the cross.

And that leads to the last phrase here, to give his life as a ransom for many.

That word ransom, it's the same word for redemption, which is another word that was a secular word.

When Jesus is using it, this is not a Christian word.

It's become a Christian word over the years.

It is not a Christian word when Jesus says it here.

It is a word for buying a slave out of the marketplace.

They had a word for that, and that's the word Jesus uses here.

He came to give his life to redeem people or ransom people.

I'll tell you this: slaves do not ransom other slaves.

A person could be bought out of slavery.

I mean, everything's for sale.

They were sold into slavery, they could be bought out of slavery.

Maybe the slave gets enough money, maybe his family buys him out.

That happened.

It was unusual, but it happened.

Let me tell you what never happened.

A slave never bought out another slave from slavery.

I mean, think back to when you were like in middle school history and they're teaching you about the debtor's prison concept that England used to have.

You owe a hundred bucks, so they throw you in jail until you get a hundred bucks.

But guess what?

You don't get in jail.

A hundred bucks.

You're there forever.

Unless a friend or family member buys you out, nobody would buy out somebody else.

A slave in prison would not buy out another slave.

But that's exactly what Jesus does.

He comes as a slave to the Word of God, truly man, and he purchases us from our slavery to sin.

How do you buy someone out of slavery to sin?

What currency can buy somebody away from sin?

Well, the wages of sin is death.

What you need to be purchased out of that is life.

It can't be any life.

It has to be a sinless, spotless, holy life.

A righteous life, a perfectly righteous life.

That's the currency that's required to buy you out of sin, to ransom you out of the clutches of sin.

That is exactly the currency that zero of us have.

Sometimes people will teach this concept that there are people who led really good lives that have excess righteousness and they can lend it to you to shorten your time in purgatory or whatnot.

Not a biblical concept.

There's nobody with excess righteousness to shop to you or your friends.

Righteousness is a gift of God that was accumulated by Christ alone through his perfectly obedient life.

So when he purchases us from the marketplace of sin, he's purchasing us with the righteousness of his life that he obeyed every command of the Bible.

Everything God gives, he did.

He fulfilled the word of God from the inside out and yet was still betrayed, still lied about, still goes to the cross where he takes our sin on himself and gives his righteousness to spring us free from the power of sin and death.

That's what it means that he ransoms many people.

He buys us from the marketplace of sin at the cost of his own life.

This is one of the texts in the Bible that teach what people sometimes call limited atonement.

Not my favorite phrase, limited atonement, but it is taught in passages like this: the concept that Jesus did not pay the ransom for every human being in the world.

He didn't pay a potential ransom for lots of people that aren't going to take it.

He paid a real, actual ransom for his children.

And it is an effective ransom that actually springs them from the clutches of sin.

He didn't pay the ransom for Goliath, for example, to choose one name from the Old Testament.

Somebody who's already in hell.

He didn't spring him from sin, from the power of the grave.

He pays the ransom for his children.

Now you're born into this world, a slave to sin, thousands of years after Jesus paid your ransom.

You don't know about it.

You're walking in the clutches of sin, serving as a slave to sin, but then you encounter the news that Jesus paid your ransom, you believe it, and the chains are broken.

That's why it says Jesus paid the ransom for many people.

Not most people.

Most people die and go to hell.

But many people receive the ransom that Christ paid.

This is the zenith, the capstone of Jesus' teaching.

It doesn't get higher than this.

The Son of Man, who is the Son of God, came to earth and led a sinless life and was rejected by his own people, but through that rejection offers you eternal life if you would believe it.

And the disciples are arguing about who gets to sit where in heaven.

This answer is so far outside of what they're concerned about, it's almost like they don't have the vocabulary to receive it.

They want to sit here and there, and they'll get her to ask, and not him, and not that person.

And Jesus is saying, I did not come to be served, but to serve you by dying.

So you can go to the cross.

The disciples wanted the Son of Man to be glorified without the suffering, but that's not what Daniel prophesied.

Daniel said the Son of Man would be cut off.

The disciples wanted the glory with the exaltation without the grave.

They wanted the cross to be empty.

They wanted the crown to be a crown with jewels, not a crown of thorns.

They wanted the ascension, I'm sure, but not without the empty grave that made it necessary.

They didn't understand what Jesus was talking about.

They wanted the reigning without the serving.

The crown without the cross.

But Jesus presents them a model of greatness fundamentally different.

The slave became a ransom, and now the king calls us to follow him.

The diadem of greatness rests upon the brow that wore the thorns.

And that becomes the instruction for our greatness.

You want to be great in the kingdom of heaven?

You want the diadem of greatness?

It comes through serving and slaving, deaconing and do lossing through going low.

Lord, we're grateful that in your kingdom greatness isn't attained by power, privilege, or prominence, prestige.

Greatness comes through serving, through being low.

You are a God, the servant king, who gave your life as a ransom for us.

Pray for anyone here today that has never trusted you with their heart, that's never believed the good news of eternal life.

I pray today you would work in their heart, soften their heart, and help them believe the truth.

I know we have many family and friends in town for this weekend.

I do pray that this message would resonate with their hearts, be encouraging to them, and show them the way to eternal life.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.