Matthew 20:20-28 – Foundations

Our reading today is from Matthew chapter twenty, verses twenty to twenty-eight.

A mother's request.

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked him for something.

And he said to her, What do you want?

She said to him, Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.

Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking.

Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?

They said to him, We are able.

He said to them, You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father.

And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers.

But Jesus called to them them to him 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, and 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 to give his life as a ransom for money.

And so reads God's Word.

My name's Mark.

Uh welcome to you if you're new or you're visiting with us here at City Church.

It's great to have you.

If you've joined us for the first time, we are in week three of uh of a series where we're kind of looking at uh some foundational aspects of our life at City Church.

Uh five key foundations we've just looked in the last two weeks.

First of all, about the uh the call to be disciples, who make disciples, that call of the Lord Jesus to go, because he is the risen one with all authority.

He sends us to all nations to teach them uh all the things that he commanded, and he is with us always, even to the end of the age, that that is the very heart and heartbeat of our life as a church.

Last week uh we did a bit of a deeper dive into uh what it means to be people who are uh built upon and uh and founded upon the the scriptures and why it is that we can have confidence uh in the scriptures as the word of God and how it shapes our life together.

And today we come to our our third foundation.

And the third foundation that we want to bring to you today is that of courageous, humble servant leadership.

Courageous, humble servant leadership.

And maybe that feels like a little bit of a left turn.

You kind of get why, okay, Christians are to go to the nations, and uh we go, yeah, it's okay, they're people of the people of the book.

That's what we get called, and of course it should be uh we should be founded on the scriptures, and if you're not founded on the scriptures, you're you're not really a church, but uh but why leadership?

Why are we talking about that as a as a core value, as a foundation?

Ten years ago when we started City Church, nearly 10 years ago when we started uh City Church, it uh it wasn't one of our articulated core values.

But times have changed.

And it needs to be said because, well, for two reasons.

One, because well, Irish people in general uh have a strained relationship with authority.

Um but particularly, and quite seriously, uh church authority, uh there has not been courageous, humble servant leadership within the history of the church in our land.

And that leads to the second reason why it's worth thinking about, is because I think that there is a renewed focus in the church more globally within the what people might term quote unquote evangelical community abuses of church leadership, a lack of uh transparency and accountability.

Church leaders can end up uh drifting into becoming a little bit like CEOs rather than shepherds of the of the flock.

And so, very sadly, you you get headlines uh if you follow any of those about uh church leaders not leading as they as they should.

And and so we think it's important to kind of give our position of what we think the Bible teaches about, uh, about servant leadership.

But also because we all together are servants of the Lord Jesus, and that is part of how we grow as disciples of Him.

As we search for guidance on this answer or this question rather of leadership, then we must turn to the scriptures and be informed by it.

And what we read here from Jesus' own words is an example, a paradigm of what it means to be a uh a leader that is different to that which the world offers.

It's a different sort of authority.

It's not that he turns to the disciples and says, You can't have any authority over any people.

But the question is, can you have authority and be genuinely loving?

Is it possible to be both a leader and a servant?

This is what the Bible is speaking about.

And so we're gonna look at three things.

The first one is much longer than the other two.

The first one is we're gonna look at what is the nature of servant leadership from this passage.

And then secondly, I'm gonna give you uh just a brief insight as to how we translate that into our life at City Church.

If you want to know uh how we seek to be uh open and lead as servants, we'll articulate some of that, and you can ask questions about that afterwards.

And then thirdly and finally, we'll see how that impact all of us as those who seek to serve in the context of local church.

But first of all, and uh uh much more chiefly, what is the nature of servant leadership?

The context, we didn't read it, but the context is fascinating in the sense that just before the passage that Lisa read, Jesus has predicted his death for the third time.

If you don't have a Bible, uh you can run down and grab one or you can look it up on your phone, you can go to Bible Gateway and be looking at uh at Matthew chapter 20.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

And so you can be following along with us.

But in verses 17 to 19, Jesus has just told his disciples that when he gets to Jerusalem, he's gonna be arrested and he's gonna be killed, and on the third day, he's gonna rise again.

And so the context is that of a his death prediction, that death for many, that death in service of others.

And it's in that context, quite bizarrely, that you really do have a left turn because you have this request.

That in the context of Jesus self-sacrifice, you have disciples concerned about power, prestige, position, and leadership.

And so we come to the passage.

And to be honest, nothing says that you are ready for power, prestige, and ultimate authority than sending your mum to ask a question.

This is the request.

Mummy comes along and says to Jesus, give my sons the places of highest honor.

Now, sons, particularly Irish sons with Irish mummies, you know that your mum would make this request.

Perhaps more seriously, the desire or the drive or the pressure to succeed, to gain honor or prestige or position or financial success can often be driven by a parent.

Perhaps it's worth noting that sometimes the way parents either consciously or unconsciously drive their child to succeed is actually antithetical to the values of the kingdom.

Jesus here, after all, has just predicted his death.

And this request comes off the back of that, and it reveals just how much the disciples don't get what Jesus is bringing about, what he's seeking to do.

And there's a leadership lesson for all of us that it's church leaders or people who serve in the context of the church, to turn immediately from looking upon Jesus' self-sacrificial love and to turn immediately to questions of honor and prestige and power and position and being seen shows a disconnect from the culture of the kingdom that should be invading our hearts.

In his response in verse 22, uh, look at it with me.

And he said to her, uh, sorry, and Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking.

Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?

And they said, We are able.

The song that we sang for the kid's song uh is great as far as it goes, but it actually doesn't go far enough because sin isn't sickness, sin's death.

You're not just sick, you're dead.

Sick people need medicine, dead people need resurrection.

The cup is the cup of God's wrath against sin that kills us dead.

It is the cup that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane would be taken from him, but just a day later, he would drain it to the dregs.

And so he looks at James and John and he says, Are you able to, are you able to drink that cup?

Are you able to take that into yourself upon yourself?

But they are either so arrogant or so blind that perhaps they they think that it is the cup of feasting and glory, and so they say with puffed up chests, oh, we're able to bring it on.

Or they have such bravado that they know in some sense it's a cup of suffering, but they have no earthly idea what that will entail.

Then Jesus makes a tragic prediction over their lives and says, You will, in fact, drink the cup that I am to drink.

James himself, the leader of the church in Jerusalem after the resurrection, will be the first of the disciples to die.

He'll be beheaded.

You can read about that in the in the book of Acts.

John will suffer much, he'll be the last of the disciples to die, but not after much torment and torture, and he will finally die alone on the prison island of Patmos in the Mediterranean Sea.

But if you read on, at the end of their life, you'll see that they are changed men.

Their foolish arrogance and bravado has given way to gospel confidence.

And what happens in between?

Suffer for the name.

And they realize that they have been counted worthy to drink part of that cup.

To lead is to be willing to suffer.

And to do so knowing that as we as we suffer for the name, we gain not arrogance, but a gospel shape, confidence.

He says, Uh, are you able to drink the cup that I am going to drink?

Uh it says, We are able.

He said to them, Well, this is verse 23, uh, you will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it is being prepared by my father.

Jesus says, I don't have authority to grant your request.

Isn't that amazing?

That the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is saying, Do you know what?

In my position, I don't have that authority.

What a wonderful confidence in his heavenly father's love for him.

What a wonderful assurance of his own position.

There's no insecurity in Jesus.

It's like, do you know what?

I don't have that kind of power, guys.

It's not for me to grant, it's for my father.

Such a stable stability to Jesus' own identity, his assuredness of his love as the Son of God.

He's content in his position.

There's no grasping.

Then we read that the other disciples are indignant.

What does indignant mean?

Well, they're angry and they're disgruntled.

Why?

Because they're like, well, James, I can't believe that you guys asked that.

No, it's I can't believe that those guys asked it first.

That's why they're angry and disgruntled.

It's not that they think, oh well, uh, I can't believe that James and John are so unholy.

It's like, oh, they got their request in.

Where's my mom?

It's that's that sort of indignance.

And so it is into that that Jesus speaks.

Here we have a leadership dynamic, a leadership culture, where James and John are driven by by mummy to to succeed, uh, to grasp at position and prestige.

And what else what do you have by the other 10 disciples?

Well, you have so much insecurity and envy and jealousy that they become discordant and angry at the other disciples, at James and John.

It is a culture in which everyone is considering themselves.

How are they coming across?

How am I advancing?

Where am I in the hierarchy of the disciples?

Can I get to the top?

And it is into that that Jesus gathers the disciples around and says, Look, let me teach you.

And so he says, verse 25, but Jesus called 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, and 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 to give his life as a ransom for many.

What does servant-hearted leadership look like?

Well, firstly, Jesus contrasts human forms of leadership and authority over what he is bringing about through his kingdom.

Human authority looks like lording it over.

Is having authority bad?

You look at uh at verse 25 again, where that second clause says, and their great ones exercise authority over them.

You think you have to think, well, where do I put the emphasis there?

Is it that Jesus is criticizing the executive, the exercise of authority?

Should it be read as, and their great ones exercise authority over them?

Or should it be, and their great ones exercise authority over them?

And I think it's that second one because I think it's paralleled with lording.

It's an undue oppressive, tyrannical type of authority, a repression and a crushing of those who are below you.

It is not that the exercise of authority is bad, it's the way the authority is being exercised.

It's a lording authority.

There's a tendency in the human heart to become addicted to power, to flaunt authority, to fall in love with position, and uh to degrade towards the tyrannical.

One of the ways that I think that this expresses itself in the church, if I could say, is, and particularly in the the modern church here in the West, is when leaders within the church call those who disagree with them disloyal.

And when leaders demand loyalty.

The closest thing you'll get is the end of Hebrews chapter 13, where it says to esteem leaders highly.

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

But the rationale there is because those are the ones who are serving first, the ones who will give an account on that last day for the Lord Jesus.

Far too many pastors more and more that I hear about are demanding loyalty from their people.

No, no, that's a mistake.

Loyalty is a consequence of good godly leadership, not a goal to be grasped at and achieved.

It is not a goal in itself.

That is lording it over sort of authority.

Because it allows you then to write people off if they disagree with you, if they offer critique of your ministry.

We just spent a whole day yesterday with everybody who's serving it at City Church, thinking through how to do things better.

We were like, oh, I hope you're not too discouraged.

I'm not discouraged at all.

The fact that 35 people showed up on a Saturday to talk about how to serve better at church, and I wouldn't have had the conversation if I didn't think there was stuff to do better.

I didn't hear any of the critique or criticism as a personal attack on me.

Because it's not about you being loyal to me, loyal to Jesus.

And as a consequence, by God's grace, of good godly leadership, you remain invested in the mission of city church.

Loyalty is a consequence, it's not a goal.

And secondly, in the same way, uh, Jesus says that uh that if loyalty is not a goal, neither's greatness.

It's worth thinking through what to do with the expressions of greatness here.

Because what I so he says in verse 26, 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 your slave.

One of the things I was wrestling about this week is is Jesus saying that that those things are a goal to aim at, just change how you aim at it?

Or is he saying that they are a consequence?

And I think it's the second.

I think that greatness in the kingdom is as a consequence of servant-hearted, self-giving, and loving leadership.

I think it can be summarized in C.

S.

Lewis says it like this.

C.

S.

Lewis says, if you aim at heaven, you'll get earth thrown in.

But if you aim at earth, you'll get neither.

It's kind of like that.

If you aim at greatness, you'll get nothing.

But if you aim at servant-hearted leadership, then you'll get greatness thrown in.

That's why Jesus can say of John the Baptist that he was the greatest one that ever lived.

He never aimed at it.

He was there in a hair shirt and eating locusts.

And yet Jesus says that as a consequence of his service, that he is the greatest man who was ever born.

Greatness is not a goal, it is a consequence.

You cannot aim at greatness and at servanthood, but you can aim at service, and greatness can graciously follow.

Why is and look, we're not a we're not a political church, right?

And I don't normally talk about politics or my politics or global affairs.

Like that.

But why are people so moved by the death of Elizabeth?

Why is she counted as great?

Because she aimed at greatness.

No, the thing that keeps on being told about by her is her faith and her service.

We regard her as great, and I was moved by her example because she, yes, she was in this position of privilege, but she didn't aim at it.

She aimed at duty and service right from her vow that she gave in South Africa when she was 21 years old to give herself in duty and service of her people.

She aimed at heaven and at earth thrown in.

Jesus contrasts human authority and the authority of the kingdom.

He says that loyalty, or sorry, he says that greatness is not a goal, but a consequence.

And then thirdly, he says that good leadership and authority is marked by self-sacrificial service, becoming the least, becoming the slave of all.

Leaders in the church are not generals in a war room.

Leaders in the church are not generals who sit in a war room and issue commands down the line to the trenches saying attack the enemy.

Leaders in the church are those sergeants who lead little companies and are first up over the top.

Leaders in the church are the first to die.

First to die to self, first to die to our own preferences.

If you don't like the war image, in some ways we're often like parents.

Parents often turn aside from their own desires, preferences, in order to see that their children are loved and cared for and uh and sustained.

We we give of ourselves uh tirelessly in order to see them flourish.

Or the biblical image is that of a shepherd.

The shepherd when he sees the wolf coming or the lion coming, he doesn't hightail it and save his own skin.

No, he steps in front of the sheep, no matter the consequence, he's the first to die.

He's the first over the top to set aside their preferences.

Good leadership, good service, the good and godly exercise of authority, Jesus says, is to be the servant of all, to be the slave, the one who willingly, joyfully, voluntarily binds yourself to the care of others.

And this is modeled by Jesus supremely, wonderfully.

Jesus says verse 28, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus is the Son of Man.

Who is the Son of Man?

The Son of Man is an image from Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Daniel has this vision at night where he says, I see or I saw someone like a son of man coming towards the ancient of days, that's God, and receiving an eternal kingdom that will have no end.

He receives power and glory and prestige.

And Jesus says, I'm the Son of Man, but the way to my coronation is the way of the cross.

The way to receiving that eternal kingdom is the way of shame and ignominy and agony.

It is the way to the grave.

And it is after his resurrection and glorious ascension that he receives that eternal kingdom, that ultimate authority.

But how does he receive it?

By becoming a sacrifice.

And a sacrifice for whom?

For many.

A ransom for many.

That is, Jesus in his death stands in your place, pays that ransom that you might be set free, held in chains, as we sang about, because of our sin, willingly bound by nature and choice.

Jesus breaks those bonds and sets us free by his death for us.

No greater service has ever been rendered in all of human history.

He is the model of selfless service and love, as Paul writes in Philippians 2, that he did not counter quality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.

Taking on the form of a servant and being found in human likeness, he humbled himself, became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, as a result of that non-grasping, as a result of not aiming for vain glory, as a result of his obedience, as a result of his sacrificial death, therefore, God has exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

One of the things that I was saying to the guys yesterday as we were meeting, do you know what's really wonderful about that?

Is that Paul doesn't just set it up as an example to follow.

It is.

It is an example to follow.

It is a supreme model of service.

But do you know what Paul says before he gets into that bit that I've just recited to you?

He says, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

You have that mind by faith united to Jesus.

That faith of, oh, that mind of self-sacrificial, servant-hearted love.

If Jesus is just the supreme example and you're given no ability, it's bewildering.

It's crushing.

You think, how am I ever to attain that?

How can I ever strive to even expressing a fraction of that in my life?

But that's not what Paul says.

Paul says Jesus is the example and he empowers you to follow it.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours by faith in Christ Jesus.

To follow him, to give of yourself, to turn aside from power and prestige and the relentless, exhausting, anxiety-producing pursuit of greatness.

To aim at heaven, in the hope that one day earth will be thrown in too.

In the church, do pastors, shepherds, leaders do they have authority?

Yes, they do.

How is it to be used in the loving, gentle, patient, self-sacrificial service of the flock?

What kind of authority do they have?

It is derived from the Good Shepherd.

It is loving and it is limited.

I can demand nothing of you that Scripture does not compel me to demand.

Paul elsewhere in 1 Thessalonians 5 says to those in leadership roles, he says, you know, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, bind up the weak.

And then he says, and be patient with them all.

One of the things that leaders everywhere, but perhaps in the church as well, can often lack is patience and mercy.

They must temper all that we do and in how we lead.

What does leadership look like at City?

I'm gonna give you four insights.

Leadership at City, first of all, is plural.

I am not the only leader.

There is no single man at the top of the hierarchy.

We have a board of elders, and we have a a group of some eight deacons.

We check one another, we temper one another, we don't always agree, and we encourage one another to lead with godliness.

I can assure you that if you sit in our elders' meetings, there is great affection between the four of us.

But I do not have three other yes men.

The second way that is expressed is that our leadership seeks to be accountable.

As we grow, it is necessary for us to put structures in place in order to facilitate that.

Chief among them is membership.

If you're planning on joining City, or if you have joined City, as in you've been coming regularly, if you've been coming for the last couple of months and you haven't become a member with us, if you're here for a year or more, you should become a member.

Because in becoming a member and partnering with us in the mission of City Church, you also get to see under the hood of all of the leadership activities and how we're thinking and the kind of direction that we're wanting to go in and how we use our finances, the money that you so graciously entrust to us.

We don't have time on a Sunday morning.

It's not appropriate on a Sunday morning to start opening all of that up.

And so we invite you to undertake for yourself that membership covenant of joining with us, of partnering with us.

And our reciprocity to you is we we open our hearts and we invite your questioning, your feedback, your criticism.

We journey forward together.

What's more, by virtue of our membership with a group of churches under the umbrella of Irish Church missions, uh, we will be submitting triennially to a leadership audit where other godly men and women will be coming and say, how is Mark leading?

How are the elders leading?

In order that you can be assured that we take the leadership of God's people extraordinarily seriously.

We want it to be plural, we also want it to be accountable.

Thirdly, we want our leadership at City to be transparent, that overlaps with what I have just said, and we are seeking at the moment to write ever clearer policies so that we can be transparent and not just do things kind of ad hoc, which is how things have been for the last nine years.

As a church plan, you're kind of you're kind of flying a plane and building it at the same time.

But as we get older and bigger, it's important to kind of put those things in place so that we're not just reacting all the time and so that people can kind of look and go, well, what is your what is your safeguarding and child protection policy?

We have that that's on our uh that's on our website, or we can get access, uh give you access to that.

But that's just one thing of wanting to be transparent about how we manage the affairs of the church.

And the fourth way that leadership is expressed at City, and we seek to express it in this servant-hearted way, is I've said that it should be embodied.

What I mean by that is that leaders of the church should be present in the life of the church.

One of the worst things that could happen is that is that I could go to the elders and go, do you know what?

I'm really like I'm really busy.

I am quite busy at the minute.

I'm really busy.

I just I can't lead a community group, and you know, I I can't really be part of one for the next little while.

It'd be so easy just for me to just to kind of uh fade into the background.

I'd show up on a Sunday morning, I'd do this, and then nobody would see me during the rest of the week.

No, no.

Leadership, if it is to be accountable and transparent, and plural, it needs to also be embodied.

It needs to be in the life of the church, which with you all.

I want you to feel like you can come to me or any of the other elders.

Peter, who led the service, Ben, who's playing guitar, Duncan, who's somewhere.

Duncan's there, give us a wave, Duncan.

Yeah.

That we are with you in the life of the church, present, available, confessing sin and weakness, open and honest, as far and as appropriately as we can be.

Can I ask?

Can I ask you to pray for us in that?

Because do you know what?

One of the things that you need to know is that we will fail you.

One of the things that you need to know is that we're not perfect.

Spend any length of time with us and you'll realize that.

That we make wrong calls and do things wrong.

But do you know what?

If you expect perfection from me or from any of the other leaders, you're asking to be lied to.

You're asking to be deceived.

What I'm inviting you to is to journey with brothers who take their role extraordinarily seriously.

And that when we sin, we'll ask for forgiveness and we'll seek to learn and grow.

We want to model that and build that out in our life.

Too much in the celebrity pastor class where the people get taken down because people expect them to be perfect and they're not.

Want to adjust your expectations here and now.

Ask my wife.

I'm not perfect.

Well, she's not here this Sunday because I kept her home.

No, I didn't.

Our kids are sick.

You know what I'm saying.

What about service at City?

What about all of us together?

Let me say this.

Servanthood, self-sacrificial servanthood is at the core of discipleship.

Our mission as a church is to connect people to Jesus that they might grow to spiritual maturity, serve the community, and go to the nations.

Four verbs.

Connect, grow, serve, go.

How do you grow as a Christian?

How do you grow as a disciple?

Is it that we need another suite of classes and programs?

No, I don't think so.

Classes and programs can be useful as far as they go, but one of the ways that you grow as a disciple of the Lord Jesus is by service, by leaning in to that gospel self-forgetfulness, of learning to prefer the needs of others, of giving of your time and your talents for the sake of the body.

Service is at the very core of what it means to grow as a disciple.

And so that is why we encourage all of us at City Church to engage in humble service as part of our discipleship, in order that we might all together grow in Christ's likeness.

Service sometimes sucks.

It means getting up early.

Things don't work right, things break, the lights in the kids' room are broken this morning.

That's a frustration for the people on the setup team stuff.

Doesn't go right.

Sometimes service sucks.

Sometimes it is hard.

Often it is unseen.

Indeed, the service of the Lord Jesus was one of shame and trial.

But we are called to serve where there is need.

It is an honor for sure to use our particular God-given gifts in the servants of the King.

But even if we do not feel particularly motivated, the call of the Lord Jesus is to embody, to lean into, to express and to cultivate in our hearts an attitude of other person-centered love.

That's the very core of the gospel.

It's the very core of Jesus' attitude and his mission.

That he didn't love himself, he loved others.

I invite you to think through ways that you can express that in your life, in your life more generally, in your marriage, in the relationships that you have.

And in your partnership with us here at City Church.

As we begin this new year, and as people join us, my invitation to you is that as we want to open our hearts to you as leaders and seek to be accountable and transparent and embodied among you, that we invite you to partner with us as we seek to serve the community, as we seek to serve one another and bring glory to God the Father as a result.

If you are new or if you have never visited it, can I invite you today, now, even right now, pull out your phone, go to citychurchdublin.ie and click the little tab that says get plugged in.

There's drop-down menus there.

It's very swish.

Ross did a great job making it.

And you can see the different service areas.

You can see the ways that you can partner with us as a way of growing as a disciple and being bringing glory to God in our midst and beyond.

If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, visit our website found in the links below.