Jesus Defines Greatness

Tom Shrader examines Mark 9:30-37, where Jesus corrects His disciples after they argue about who is the greatest among them. Jesus redefines greatness entirely, declaring that the first must be last and servant of all, and He illustrates the point by placing a child in their midst as a model of humility and lowly status. Shrader applies this to everyday life, calling believers to resist the world's measures of success and instead pursue a humble, servant-minded life empowered by the indwelling Spirit.

“Someone is great based on the number of people that are serving them — Jesus would say no, someone is great based on the number of people that they're serving.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2005)

Recorded: 2005 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 56 min

Themes: humility, greatness, service, pride, ambition, servant leadership, success, following jesus, struggling with pride, competing with others, young adult, new to leadership, navigating conflict, feeling overlooked, mentor, parent

Scripture: Mark 9:30-37, Mark 8:27-33, Mark 9:2-9, Mark 8:34-37, Matthew 18:1-5, Matthew 20:20-28, Luke 9:46-48, Luke 18:15-17, James 2:1-4, 1 Thessalonians 1:9, Philippians 2:19-21, Ephesians 4:29

Theological Themes: kenosis, servant leadership, sanctification, becoming holy, pneumatology, holy spirit empowerment, discipleship, biblical authority

Full Transcript

Jesus Defines Greatness

We desire more than anything else to be Yours, to have You in control of our lives, to have all that we say and all that we do be a source of honor and glory to You, that our words would represent the truth that You have planted in our hearts. God, we thank You for the great gift of eternal life that we find in Your Son, Jesus. We pray to You in His name, amen.

Setting the Scene

Mark chapter nine, verse 30. I want to look at a scene from the life of Christ and His interaction with the disciples. Many of you who have been around Scripture for a while will be familiar with it, and that is because there are two or three occasions that are very similar to this. This particular occasion is reported by Mark here in chapter nine, Luke in chapter nine, and Matthew in chapter eighteen. I am drawn to this exchange because I can see myself in it. Let me read it with you and then we will come back and break it apart.

Verse 30: "They went on from there and passed through Galilee."

Jesus Teaches His Disciples

"He did not want any to know, for He was teaching His disciples and He was saying to them, verse 31, 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."

Moving into verse 33: "And they went to Capernaum and when He was in the house He asked them, what were you discussing on the way? But they kept silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And He sat down and called the twelve and said to them, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And He took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, He said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me."

That is the incident we are going to look at. Jesus and the disciples are moving through the area of Galilee, and Jesus' preference here, as you see in verse 30, is to keep this low key — to fly under the radar. He is moving from place to place, and the scripture says He did not want anyone to know.

There is a real shift taking place in the ministry of Christ. He has been dealing with the twelve and with the masses as well, but for all practical purposes, He is done with the masses. There will be times when He deals with groups, but His intense teaching now is with the twelve. In fact, that is the very occasion before us here.

The Son of Man Must Be Killed and Rise Again

He has this opportunity to teach them, and here is what He says in verse 31: "The Son of Man is going to be delivered up to the hands of men and they will kill Him and when He is killed, after three days He will rise." This is not the first time they have heard this information.

Look back with me to chapter eight, verse 27. This is the scene where Jesus gathers the disciples together as they are walking along, and He says to them, who do the people say that I am? They answer in verse 28: some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say one of the prophets. Then He asks the question that matters: who do you say that He is? Peter said, "You are the Christ," and then Jesus strictly charged them to tell no one about it.

One of the other gospel writers adds to that moment. He records Jesus saying to Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon Peter, because flesh and blood did not reveal that to you, but it was revealed by the Spirit of God." This is a pivotal moment, and we can fast-forward to Gilbert, Arizona, in 2005 and ask the very same question: who do you say Jesus is?

There are all sorts of answers, and they fall into recognizable categories. Some say He was a prophet. The dominant answer tends to be that He was a good man, a magnificent teacher, a moral teacher. Others say He was self-deluded — that He claimed to be God, which He indeed did, but surely God would not be walking around on the earth. And then there are those of you who just took communion, whose answer is the same as Peter's: You are the Christ. You are the anointed one. You are the Messiah. You are God come in the flesh, so that we might have eternal life — that is why You are here.

Who do you say that He is? That is such an important question.

Plain Words They Could Not Yet Grasp

Right after that exchange, still in Mark chapter eight, He began to teach them, saying the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, be killed, and rise after three days. Verse 32 tells us He said this very plainly — this was unmistakably clear in its delivery.

Now if you compare verse 31 of chapter eight with verse 31 of chapter nine, you will see they are very similar, except that Jesus adds a detail. He says, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered." That word is also translated as betrayed — it is the very word used to describe Judas' betrayal of Jesus Christ. So Jesus is giving them just a little more information each time.

As we work through this, I am reminded of the extraordinary advantage and disadvantage we have in looking back on these events with perfect hindsight. We have seen all of it unfold. When we hear the words "be killed and rise again," we have the crucifixion, the three days in the tomb, the resurrection, Good Friday, Easter, the forty days, the ascension, and the establishment of the church. These men had none of that. Try, somehow, to put yourself in their place as they hear this. This is new information to them, and it is not information they easily embrace.

If we go back to chapter eight, after Jesus said this plainly, Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him — and Jesus responded, "Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man." What Jesus is saying to Peter is this: if you want to block this death and this resurrection, you are intervening in the things of God. You are thinking like a man. You are constructing your own version of what the Messiah should be.

And that is precisely the problem these men are facing. They are receiving these bits and pieces, and we may read the words and think them perfectly plain — but they are not plain to these men. Now they hear that He is going to be delivered, going to be betrayed, and they are left to wonder how that will happen. There is new information here: apparently someone from the inner circle is involved. This is an inside job. Someone in here.

The Disciples' Fear and Confusion

Jesus is gradually revealing to the disciples what is about to take place. He is shrinking the time He spends with multitudes and focusing on these twelve, preparing them for a very difficult moment. They have invested everything in Him, and He knows what is coming will shake them deeply. And yet they don't get it. It remains confusing to them.

There are many unbelievers I talk to who will say that Jesus was just moving along, and what really happened is He started getting a little cocky, started pushing the envelope, started challenging the authorities, and frankly the whole thing just got away from Him. That is not true at all. Jesus is not a helpless victim swept away in an avalanche of events beyond His control. Jesus understood exactly what was going to take place. He predicted with accuracy that He would be betrayed, that He would be killed, and that He would rise again in three days. He understood it the night before He died — "Father, if it's possible, remove this cup from me." He could have come down from that cross. He had the power to do that. He is God.

Truth in a Subjective Age

Peter is a lot like you and me in that we often want to prescribe our own method of salvation. We live in a time that Francis Schaeffer, before he died, coined with the phrase "true truth." Everyone talks about truth, but it has become a very subjective thing. We are driven by feelings and by things as we perceive them to be, not by truth itself.

When we bring the things of God or Scripture into the culture, people will often say, "I'm glad you found something that's true for you." That is a fascinating phrase when you begin to break it down. Something cannot be true for me and false for you at the same time. It is either true or it is false. Yet when Jesus gives His disciples the truth, we see in them — and in ourselves — the impulse to come with all sorts of different options, anything that will allow us to keep our pride and ego intact, anything that lets us somehow earn our own salvation or retain something of value we see in ourselves. Jesus says no to all of that.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

We need to keep before us the fact that these disciples do not have the advantage you and I have of two thousand years of history, the completed Scriptures, and the established church. So when they hear something that startles them — that someone is going to deliver Him up — it lands very differently than it does for us. Look at verse 32: "They didn't understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask Him."

As we read through the Gospels, we see all sorts of dialogue between Jesus and the disciples. They generally seem very comfortable asking Him questions. My suspicion here is that they simply don't want to know the answer. This didn't sound right and it didn't sound good, so their response is don't ask, don't tell. They don't understand it, and they are afraid of it.

As I read through Scripture, I cannot think of a single time Jesus rebukes the disciples merely for asking a question. He may answer with "O you of little faith," and there may be some rebuke embedded in the answer, but He never says, "Don't you dare ask me questions. Who do you think you are?" We never see that. He seems open to questions, welcoming them, engaging in them. And yet here, they stay silent.

The Walk to Capernaum

In verse 33, we read: "And when they came to Capernaum, and when He was in the house..." Capernaum is essentially Jesus' home base. The house He frequently used there was either Peter's house or his mother-in-law's house, and that detail is likely significant. Many scholars suggest that when Jesus shortly takes a child as an illustration, this could well be Peter's own child — certainly a child familiar with Jesus. Not to put it in a flip way, but this would be a child who would look up and say, "Hi, Uncle Jesus." There would be that kind of relationship going on.

So He is in Capernaum, at home base, and He turns to the disciples and essentially says: I noticed you were talking as we walked along. What were you talking about? It is a perfectly natural question — the kind of thing you do all the time. You walk into a room where two people are speaking and say, "What are you talking about?" You run into someone you haven't seen in a while and ask what's new.

The Disciples' Argument About Greatness

They kept quiet. Why? Because on the way, they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. All of a sudden, Jesus had them. He is God. He knows exactly what they were talking about. The discussion among the twelve was this: which one of us is the greatest? I think I am better than you. I think I am the best of all. When they were caught, they kept silent, as though embarrassed by it. They may not even have been able to articulate exactly what had taken place, but they knew the discussion was inappropriate.

At least give them credit for this: they did not try to engage in a conversation, unpack it, argue about it, or defend it. They did something really smart. They just kept quiet.

The Transfiguration as the Genesis of the Argument

What would have caused this discussion? Look back at chapter 9, verse 2. Chapter 9, verses 2 through 9, is what we call the transfiguration. Let's read it and see if this might be the genesis, the cause of this discussion.

"After six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them, and His clothes became radiant, intensely white as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared with Him Elijah and Moses, and they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.' For he did not know what to say, and they were terrified. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, 'This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.' And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but only Jesus. And as they were coming down the mountain, He charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might be."

Figuring It Out as They Go

Remember what we said earlier? They are figuring this out as they go. They have just had this extraordinary experience — Peter, James, and John. Jesus is transformed before them, this risen, heavenly body. There is Elijah. There is Moses. And Jesus says, "I do not want you to tell anyone about this until I rise from the dead." And they are wondering: what is this rising from the dead?

Do you see how difficult this was for these men? They are thinking, what does that mean? People do not rise from the dead. If someone came to you and said, "I am going to be killed, and in three days I am going to rise," you would know that does not happen. You would say, that does not make any sense. And that is exactly what is happening here. They are coming to understand who He is, but this does not fit anything they have ever seen. They have no category for it.

The Argument Begins Among the Twelve

So they are walking along. Some time has passed. The three have rejoined the nine, and they are on the road together. I am absolutely confident the three did not say what they had seen, though I am sure the nine asked: what happened up on the mountain? And the answer was, essentially, it is in the vault. We cannot tell you. A secret.

And then the discussion starts. You can picture Peter pitching in and saying, well, obviously there are three of us here out of the twelve, and we are clearly significant. And frankly, John and James, it seems obvious to me that I am the greatest of the three. The others are not simply accepting that. They are saying, wait a minute — we have been through the same things. We were just out casting out demons, healing, doing these great works. We have given up just as much as you have. And so the argument begins.

It is very similar, though not identical, to the one recorded in Matthew 20, where James and John's mother comes to Jesus and says, when You come into Your kingdom, give my boys a good spot. Do not make them Secretary of the Interior or Transportation. They should be Secretary of State, Defense — Chief of Staff. That is the nature of this argument. Who is going to be the greatest? I wish we had a recording of it. We do not. We cannot hear their arguments for their own candidacy. We can only imagine. And we can only take our own sinful minds, put them in that situation, fill in the blanks, and probably do it fairly accurately.

Jesus Sits Down to Teach

They are quiet. He asks what they were discussing, and they do not answer. Then, in verse 35, Jesus sat down. That is the position of teaching. He is getting ready to teach. And He says to them, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."

Notice two things. First, He did not chastise them for wanting to be great. He did not say, who do you think you are to want to be great? You should never have that ambition. Wipe that idea out of your mind entirely. He does not say that.

Greatness Redefined

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do great things for God. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious for God. What Jesus does, however, is redirect the discussion — not to argue about who is great, but to ask what it actually means to be great.

This was deeply counter to their culture. One Old Testament scholar writes: "At all points in worship and administration of justice, at meals, in dealings, there constantly arose the question of who was greater, and estimating the honor due to each was a task which had constantly to be fulfilled and was felt to be very important." In other words, it mattered enormously where you sat, who you knew, and how you were ranked. How you were perceived was very important in that culture.

Consider what happens when somebody invites you to a banquet and there are eighty tables. If you are seated at table eighty, the implication is that you do not know the right people and do not have much going on. The place to be is the head table, and even at the head table, the place of honor is as close to the podium as possible. That is how they valued things.

The Problem Carries Into the Church

This way of thinking translated directly into the early church. James dealt with that very problem in the book of James. He told his readers: here is the problem in your church. If someone comes in dressed in purple with a lot of gold — pictures of wealth — you bring them right to the front. There were not many seats; people were standing, people were sitting on the floor. But if someone had money, James says, you put them in the front row, give them a place of honor, and take the people who do not have much and put them off to the side.

And then, James implies, you go out into the community and say, "You should have seen who was at our church." That instinct is still with us. Who do you know? Can you get the right ticket to the game? Can you open the right door? Do you have the right connection? Jesus understands that impulse — it is human. It is the way we naturally think about achievement and proximity to the top.

How We Measure Greatness

We measure greatness by what you have, who you know, who knows you, and what you know. We talk about the PhDs people hold. We talk about successful people we can reach by phone, or sold-out concert tickets we can obtain. We talk about rising to the upper tier of management or leadership within a company. By that standard, someone is great based on the number of people who are serving them.

Jesus says the opposite. Someone is great based on the number of people they are serving. He turns it completely upside down. The Christian life is countercultural. Jesus is saying that we have an entirely different relationship with the people, places, and things in our lives — we are not here to use people; we are here to serve them.

I spoke recently with a man about why he had left his church. He said the pastor was manipulative — someone who simply used people, moved them around, and exploited them for what he could get out of them. Now, that pastor may have credentials and credibility, and the church may be fairly large. But in God's economy, if what this man said is true, that pastor is not the greatest of all. In God's economy, that is a failure. God did not call us to be served. He called us to serve. That is what the word *ministry* literally means — to serve.

Turning the World Upside Down

Jesus turns the whole world upside down. He turns our thinking entirely around. Someone came up after the first service and said, "My business has taken off, I have every kind of success, but my wife and I are having serious problems. Exactly what you said this morning is true — by every standard the people around us think we are succeeding, when in fact we have never been more of a failure in our entire lives." That is the struggle we all face.

It is one thing to say Jesus is Lord. It is one thing to embrace that in your heart. It may even be one thing to study His Word. But then we have to go and actually live it. When we go out into this world, we are going to live counterculture. And each of us has to decide: do you want to please God or please man? Do you want to follow His agenda or your own agenda? Because they are in conflict, and that is exactly the choice Jesus is pressing upon us here.

The Same Principle, Stated Again

He could not make it any more plain. If you want to be the greatest of all, you have to be the least of all. It is absolutely the same principle we saw in the previous passage. Look at verse 34 of chapter 8: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, for whoever would save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's sake will save it. And what does a man profit, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?" You can have every deal closed, every ambition fulfilled — be the captain of the team, earn the scholarship, have everything work out — and still have lost what matters most.

Results vs. Process

It is that time of the year for college football — twenty days until Iowa's first game. I love it. I have read all the magazines, and some of them have the Hawks ranked as low as fifteen, most of them around ten. The CBS poll has them at number two behind USC, and everybody is behind USC. Right now we are all winners; nobody has lost a game yet.

No one cares about injuries, no one cares about bad calls, nobody cares about dropped passes. When it is all over, they want to know one thing: did you win or did you lose? That is all that matters. The same thing happens in business. You go back and say, "Listen, I almost had the deal made, but the guy—" and the boss says, "Don't bore me with the details. Did you get the order or not? Did you close the deal? Did you finish the project on time?" That is how the world sees it.

And God says, "That is not how I see it." God says here is what is important to Him — not the end result, but the process. We are results-oriented. Even when people try to give you technique at seminars and meetings, the only reason they give you the technique is to get the deal done. But here is what Jesus says: I do not care about whether you get the deal done. I care about the process. It is more important to Me that you honor and glorify Me in the process than that the deal happens.

It is just like when we evangelize. We can use all sorts of clever bait-and-switch tactics, change things around, and soften the gospel — but we do not need to do that. In gentleness and love, we need to declare the truth, and at that point God is pleased with you. Whether that person ever responds or not is irrelevant to this discussion, because only God can touch that person's heart.

The Greatest Must Be the Least

So here is what He says: if you want to be the greatest of all, you need to be the least of all. And He gives an object lesson. He took a child — the word could also be translated as infant-like, likely a very young child, perhaps eighteen to twenty-four months old. He put the child in His arms and said, "Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives not Me, but the one who sent Me."

This was countercultural. The Talmud said that spending time with a child was a waste of time. One rabbi wrote, "Morning sleep, midday wine, chattering with children, and tearing in places where men of common people associate destroy a man." Another ancient teacher taught that keeping company with children added nothing to a man. We may even see some of that thinking leak into the apostles, as in Luke chapter 18, where children are coming to Jesus and the disciples say, "Get them out of here."

Jesus takes this child and makes him an object lesson. Some speculate it might be Peter's child, though that is really irrelevant — it does not matter. Matthew adds this detail: He took the child and said, "Whoever humbles himself as a child is greatest in the kingdom of God." He also says, "Whoever is converted like a child." The word "converted" is in the passive tense, which means it is something that happens to you. It carries the idea of turning around, repenting, going in an opposite direction.

By definition, when you turn from something, you turn to something. That is what Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 9: "We are thrilled to hear the reports that you have turned from the idols and turned to God." So here is what Jesus is saying, expanded a little further in Matthew 18: we must be converted. That is where it begins.

Consider this: the disciples are having an argument about who is the greatest, and the very first teaching they ever heard was, "Blessed are the — " what? "Poor in spirit." That is where the whole thing started. "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt. But now along comes something brand new: unless you come as a child.

Seven Qualities of Childlikeness

What Jesus is talking about here is not the bad qualities of a child. We can look at a child and say they lack understanding, they lack focus. But D.A. Carson writes this: "The child is a model in this context not of innocence or purity, but of humility and unconcern for social status. Jesus assumed that people are not naturally like that, and they must change to become little children."

I want to take just a moment here. This morning I was finished with the lesson, and I remembered that I had made some notes in this Bible — this is the first study Bible I ever had. This is the Bible I was using when my kids were small. I knew I had made some notes about childlikeness, so I went home and got it. As I was teaching through this material back then, I was relating it to my own children at the very age they were at, so all the illustrations come from their lives.

Let me make this clear: Jesus is saying to you and me not to be childish, but to be childlike. I listed seven qualities of a child. Number one is a sense of wonder. In my Bible, all the illustrations are from when the girls were small — they were about four and two years old. Lesson Jerry Taylor had given us a fish tank, and the fish tank sat in a position in the house that about—

Childlike Wonder

There is an awesomeness about life. I remember when our girls discovered their toes for the very first time — they would look at them, and you could see it all come together for them: "This is me." There is wonder in that. There is awe in that.

We had a fish tank when the girls were young, and for about ten minutes a day the sun had a direct shot through it. The water would act as a prism and cast color and light on the wall, and the girls would just sit there and stare. Every once in a while a fish would move through, and all of a sudden the colors would dance, and the kids were in absolute awe — childlike awe.

There is also trust. I remember taking the kids and putting them up on the counter and saying, "Jump. Jump, I'll catch you." There would be a little hesitancy at first, but after a while they would just dive. They trusted.

And then there is obedience, especially when children are young. You tell them something and they simply do it. In our house we had an old-fashioned notion that we would not buy something unless we could pay cash for it. So all we had in our living room was a balance beam. Haley was two and could barely walk on it, but she would jump. Les would say, "Haley, I think you're the greatest jumper I've ever seen. If there's ever an Olympic event with hopping, you're going to be in the Olympics." And she would just hop around the room. Kids outgrow this sense of obedience, as you well know.

Children also forgive. Some of the most humbling and yet rewarding times I have had in my life are those moments when I went to my kids and said, "I blew it. I screwed up." And they forgave me. There is an openness about a child — very little inhibition. And there is sincerity. Last night our kids were absolutely certain they heard Santa on the roof. They heard the bells. Sincere? Completely. And there is questioning. Any parent can tell you that is how kids are: why, why, why? Sarah asked me one day why we sleep lying down. She had just seen a show where astronauts were strapped in sleeping upright, and the question made perfect sense to her.

Coming to God as a Child

Here is the point. Jesus said, "I want you to come to Me like a child." Not childish — childlike. So let me ask you: as you deal with God, do you have a sense of wonder? Of awe?

When we are at summer camp I hear the word "awesome" thousands of times. But here is what is truly awesome: God. What is awesome is that while you hated Him, He loved you enough to send His Son to die so that you might have eternal life. What is awesome is that He gives you your next breath, that He allows you to navigate your way into this room. What is awesome is that He loves you more than you love yourself.

Do you have trust? Here is what I have learned in life: not everything goes exactly like you want it to. Not everything is convenient. But oftentimes we stop, take a breath, and realize that God has something else in mind. I thought it would be this, but it is not. I thought I needed that, and God says, "No. Trust Me. I know what is best." Do you hear Him say that to you? Do you trust Him?

The Disconnect of Selective Obedience

Now consider obedience. Here is what I am discovering: there is a gigantic disconnect between people who say they are followers of Christ and how they actually live. It is as though every little group or every individual has carved out their own exception. You have people saying, "Yes, I am a follower of Christ. I am serious about it. I study. I pray. I am also sexually active — but that is a separate thing." That is selective obedience. Said another way, it is flat disobedience.

Are you obedient? Do you do what God tells you to do? On vacation every year I observe a lot of children and a lot of parents in public settings, and I am stunned at the poor caliber of parenting I see. I do not understand why a parent would want to live in constant negotiation with a child at a checkout counter — arguing about whether they can have a soda, a magazine, a candy bar, a toy. "No" means no. That is obedience.

It is the same with God. He is not looking to barter with you. He is not looking for a discussion. Those of you who are parents — put yourself in God's position.

Receiving Others with Humility

I know this is dangerous, but how are you when your kids come to you and they want to talk, they want to debate, they want to argue, they want to negotiate? You say, "I don't want to negotiate. Do it because I said." God is not bartering with you. He is not interested in what you think about His word. It is true. Do it. And forgive — do you forgive others? Some of you are carrying around a great deal of bitterness, and it is really ugly to watch.

Are you open with God? Do you have any problem going to Him and saying, "Father, this is how I feel, this is where we are"? Are you open to what He says in Scripture, because He may be teaching you something you had not seen before? Sincerity matters, and so does questioning — it is okay to ask God, it is okay to wonder.

What Jesus is talking about here is not that if you are good to children, you will suddenly find some sort of favor with Him. What He is saying is that these children represent a picture of humility. They represent the lowliest of society, and if you receive them, you receive Him. That is the relationship we ought to have. Just as there is a sense of humility there, there ought to be a sense of humility in your life and mine.

The Burdens That Block Humility

So here is the "so what" of this. When we look at our own lives, is there brokenness there? Is there repentance of sin there? How do you view your life — are you humble, or are you proud?

In his book *The Pursuit of God*, A. W. Tozer identifies four burdens, and they are all very similar. The first is the burden of pride. The second is the burden of pretense — by that he means pretending to be something we are not and hiding what we really are. That is a form of pride as well. Statistics vary, but somewhere between one out of three and one out of two of you were hired with a false resume. You had to puff up who you were. You are pretending to be something you are not, and at the same time hiding what you really are. You have that part of your life — that thing you are hiding. Sin loves darkness. That is the whole idea of pretense.

Then Tozer talks about the burden of artificiality — beginning to live that way as a pattern. And then he talks about the burden of self-struggle. Paul says it this way: "Forgetting what lies behind, I strain toward what is ahead and I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me."

Jesus is not saying it is wrong to desire to be great. He is not saying to you and me, "Don't be ambitious." He is simply saying to put that ambition, that desire, in the right context and for the right thing. If your real desire is to be great, you need to understand how greatness works in His economy — not to be the best of all, not to be the first of all, but to be the servant of all.

Six Characteristics of a Humble Person

Before I came over this morning I wrote down six characteristics I see in a humble person. Number one, they are teachable. You listen, you follow, you do.

Number two, you are coachable. Now, those may sound the same, but the distinction in my mind is this: teachable is pregame, coachable is mid-game. Teachable is, "Here is what we are going to do, here are the X's and O's, here is the play we are going to run." Coachable is when someone says, "We have to scrap the game plan — things have changed," and you begin to listen. A coachable person can take criticism. Someone can approach you and say, "Here is what I am seeing in your life, and you have an issue there." Pride, more often than not, will get in the way of receiving that.

Number three, a humble person has a gentle spirit. There is not an edge to them. I am absolutely fascinated by the fact — and we saw it today — that a child would let Jesus take them and be comfortable with Him, and that children were attracted to Him. I am fascinated by the fact that prostitutes and drunkards would spend time with Him, and that those who wanted to throw accusations at Him would say, "He hangs out with them. He eats with them." And yet Jesus never compromised the truth, did He? He never wavered in the truth a single bit. And yet there was a gentleness, a softness there — there was no edge, no harshness.

Number four, and it lines up with that, is that a humble person is approachable. I meet many people who are in ministry, or desire to be in ministry, who are serving or want to serve, and their face screams, "Stay away. Don't ask me. Don't even bring it here." And yet they want to serve God in some great and mighty way. I have discovered — and I will admit this is my own observation — that many who want to teach are often like this. They do not want anything to do with people. They just want to deliver their intellectual content and move on, going deep in the things of God. But there is nothing deeper in the things of God than loving one another, caring for one another, and living out this Word. Many of those who want to expound and teach — and we love them, we read their books, we love to listen to them — will not let you anywhere near them personally. You do not see that in Jesus.

Number five, a humble person listens — listens to God, and listens to other people. Paul is writing in Ephesians chapter 4, and it is actually a passage we looked at during the marriage conference in Tucson. He says, "Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according

Humility Means Listening and Serving Others

If I am going to edify you according to the need of the moment, I am going to have to understand what your need is. The only way I am going to understand your need is if I listen. Paul is talking about speech — do not let any unwholesome word come out of your mouth, no worthless or rotten word, but only what is beneficial for the listener. How do I know what is beneficial? I have to listen.

Someone who is humble is going to be concerned about what is best for other people. If I am going to be a humble person, then what I must be concerned about is you — what is your need, and how perhaps has God gifted me in the midst of this equation so I can come alongside and be used by Him. Not to manipulate you or to exalt myself, but to help you become what God has called you to be. That is what Jesus is saying.

Ambition Redefined by God

My suspicion is — or at least I hope — that there are people here today who have a desire to be great in the kingdom of God and in the things of God. I hope you do. I hope you are ambitious. But I hope it is ambition and desire held within the context God places around it, with an understanding that I do not get it the way the world gets it.

The world says be on the cover of Forbes. The world says be above the fold on the front page of the newspaper. The world says accumulate, acquire, and if need be, cut, slice, and look out for number one. And God says no — just the opposite. Serve Me. Serve others. As you come across people who treat you unjustly, "Vengeance is Mine," says the Lord. As far as it depends on you, live at peace with one another.

And we respond, "I cannot do that." That is exactly right — that is His whole point. You cannot do that on your own. But you are not on your own. You have the indwelling Spirit of God residing in you, and you can do awesome and mighty things. We are not talking about positive thinking. We are saying you can become a person of self-control, a person of patience. You can get rid of that harshness and that edge and become a person of love. That is the call.

The Model of Timothy

If someone came to you and said, "I am a Christian now and I want to really grow in my faith," I know exactly what we would do. We would walk them out to the book counter and say, "Get this book, read this book, move through this." And that is fine. But that is not what Jesus said.

At one point, Jesus is getting ready to make a move — He is getting ready to send someone out. It is to Philippi. And to the church at Philippi, Paul writes this: "I hope in the Lord Jesus Christ to send Timothy to you soon so that I too may be cheered by the news of you." He is going to have Timothy go, get a report, and bring it back.

Then in verse 20, Paul says: "For I have no one like him." Here is Paul saying, I am sending you a man, and there is no one out there like him. I am sending you somebody you really need. Now if we received that word today — that someone remarkable was being sent to us — we would think, this person must be a great teacher. But here is what Paul actually says: "I have no one else like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. They all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ."

The Call to Greatness

Paul says, here is the best man I have — and here is what makes him the best. He is not concerned about his own agenda and his own kingdom. He is concerned about you. Is that you? That is the call. That is the call to greatness. That is God's call to greatness in your life and in mine.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for this time. We pray that as we begin to digest this, we would understand the great peril and temptation of this world to acquire and accumulate — that things can become dangerous for us because we tend to serve them rather than You. God, help us understand that apart from You, we are absolutely nothing, that we deserve nothing from You, but You love us enough to send Your Son to give us eternal life.

Father, help us resist the temptation to carry around the burden of pride and the burden of self-exaltation and the burden of self-promotion. My sense is that right now there are people listening to this who are saying, "This makes all the sense in the world. It is absolutely true. My experience tells it to me. The Scripture tells it to me. I know it is accurate." And God, they are getting ready to go into that world tomorrow, and that world is going to try to rob that idea from them. The world is going to try to sell them on the idea that it is all nonsense.

God, let us take this Word and implant it in our hearts. Let that implanted Word grow, and let us become the people You have called us to be — people who manifest that calling in a gentle, coachable, teachable, approachable spirit, where we seek to serve others and not ourselves. Father, we thank You for Your Son, Jesus. We pray to You in His name, Amen.