The Truth About Greatness

INTRODUCTION

The GOATs. Every sport, really every activity, has at least one person that is recognized as the GOAT. Who here is really into sports? A lot of people recognize Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback of all time. If you play football, you might have others that you would put in that category. If you’re into swimming, you know that Michael Phelps is the undisputed GOAT in swimming. One of the great debates in our era is over basketball, is Jordan or Lebron the GOAT?

Some of y’all are more musically inclined, and your GOAT list looks different. You might put Mozart at the top of the list, or the Beatles, or if you’re a swifty your blood pressure was rising the second I didn’t put Taylor Swift first on that list. Any swifties in the room? Haha, y’all are everywhere! Maybe you’re into acting or theater, and Meryl Streep or Lin Manuel Miranda are on your goated list.

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Great. Our culture is obsessed with greatness, and here’s what’s true: All of us want to be great at something. We want to excel, we want to be the most skilled, if you’re competitive you want to win, if you’re more on the creative side you want to create something that is meaningful, something to be proud of, something that other people recognize as great. We all want to be great at something.

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Money. And rightfully so! Greatness comes with some serious perks. There was nobody on that list earlier that isn’t a multi-millionaire. Our world rewards greatness with money, you get paid if you’re great at things! We talked a bit about that last week. We hear stories of athletes making millions off NIL deals and massive contracts, we see the lifestyles of musicians, the money that famous actors make, and we want what greatness gets us. Greatness gets you paid! But I think there’s one other perk of greatness that motivates us:

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Fame. Some people don’t really care about being famous or popular, but man if this is something that motivates you, it REALLY motivates you. When you’re great, people know who you are and hold you in high esteem. The great athletes at our schools become local celebrities. People that put the right videos out on insta and TikTok go viral and get famous. When we’re great at what we do people hold us in high esteem or are jealous of us.

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TENSION

Opinion. But there’s one question we should ask when it comes to being great, and it’s “greatness according to who?” The truth is that Greatness is an opinion. If you pursue greatness, it means you want to be great to somebody.

If you’re an athlete, you want to be great in the eyes of your coaches, your fans, and maybe your competitors. If you’re an artist you want to be great in the eyes of your teacher, in the eyes of your audience, and in the eyes of your peers. Whatever you want to be great in, it’s because you want to be great to somebody. And that’s where Christians run into a problem, who am I trying to be great to? The book of Galatians sums up this tension for believers really nicely:

Galatians 1:10 NIV

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

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Change. In other words, if you’re primarily trying to be great to people, you will not be great in the eyes of God. If you try to please people, you will not serve God, and here’s why: We end up changing for the people we want to be great to. If you want to be great to people, you’ll end up changing, working, shaping your life to be pleasing to them.

If you want to win the approval of your parents, you will change and shape your life, or at least what they know about your life, to match what they want.

If you want to win the approval of coaches, you’ll devote your life to the things they value and the goals they set for you.

If you want to win the approval of the opposite sex, it’ll change the way you dress, the way you talk, the things you’re willing to do in order to win their approval.

Make no mistake, who you want to be great to is one of the fundamental things that shapes EVERYTHING about you. You are formed by who you want to be great to.

How? Those of you who have a desire to be great, I have some really good news. God wants to redeem your desire for greatness by directing it towards himself. If you pursue greatness in this world, you’ll find yourself far from God quickly, but God himself wants to inspire and motivate you to reach for greatness in His kingdom. So tonight we’re asking the question: How do we become great in God’s eyes?

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TRUTH

Context. The disciples, who were the followers of Jesus while He walked the earth, asked this question. They wanted to be great, and they actually argued amongst themselves about who was the greatest among them, check out their question in Matthew 18:

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‌Matthew 18:1 NIV

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

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They were asking about who would be the greatest in heaven, but really they were thinking about which one of them was the best. In the book of Mark it tells the same story but it says that the question came out of an argument among the disciples about who was the greatest among them, jockeying for position. They wanted to be at the top of the disciple depth chart, first chair in the disciple ensemble, lead role in the disciple cast.

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What they’re asking is, if I were the greatest, how would I know? What tells me I’m great to God? My question for you is, what’s your measure for greatness?

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[Communicator Note: Share the way/ways that you pursued greatness in your life, or tend to pursue greatness. Even better, if you have any “symbols” or “trophies” of your pursuit of greatness show those for effect.]

When I was in high school and college, I wanted to be a great athlete, and lacrosse was my sport. Who here would say sports is the area you strive to be great in? I wanted to win state and national championships. I wanted to be an all-american, get scholarships, and keep on winning. And because that’s what I pursued, I worked hard and ended up being pretty good at my sport.

At my school there was a “Wall of Fame” where athletes who were successful at my high school had plaques hung up commemorating their successes forever. I walked in my freshman year, saw that wall, and made it my goal to make the wall, and I did. Here’s my plaque. It lists out my career, and to this day you could walk into the gym of Alpharetta high school and see this hanging up there. I got accolades, offers, and all these things, and I was good… but I wasn’t the greatest.

I ended up playing lacrosse in college, and played with some really great players, and I wanted to be better than them. I worked really hard, and my Junior and senior year won Defensive MVP for my team, and my senior year I was first team all-conference, honorable mention all-american. These are my trophies, and they’re the symbol that I was really great at my sport.

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‌Symbol. My symbol that I was doing great was my trophies. Maybe for you it’s the comment section on your social media account, or the compliments people give you, or your report card. We all have our own, but what does Jesus put forward as the symbol of greatness? Check it out:

Matthew 18:2-3 NIV

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Kind of a weird answer, haha. Imagine that, you’re talking to Jesus asking Him who the greatest is in His kingdom, and He takes a child and says, “unless you change and become like this kid, you’re not even getting in.” What does that mean?! Do I have to reverse age and become a kid again?! Obviously not. We have to change our perspective, our desires, and our behaviors into a certain child-like quality. We see what he means by what He says next:

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Matthew 18:4 NIV

4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

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In other words The symbol of greatness in God’s eyes is service with a humble heart. I’ll put it clearly for us: God isn’t impressed by the patches on our letterman’s jacket. God isn’t pleased by the number of views on our videos. God isn’t pleased when we’re praised by other people. God is pleased when we’re humble enough to serve the people around us. If you care about God’s opinion of you, He views greatness through the lens of His own character, and Scripture makes it clear that at God’s core He lovingly, joyfully, humbly serves even though He deserves the highest place. Two chapters later in the book of Matthew it says of Jesus that…

Matthew 20:28 NIV

the Son of Man (Jesus) did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

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[Communicator Note: Share the other side or end of your pursuit of greatness in your opening story. Maybe compare to spiritual achievements that don’t look “great” on the outside, but that you feel God is proud of.]

I spent a lot of time, energy, effort, and insecurity pursuing awards and wins in my sport, and I got them. But at the end of the day, these awards are symbols of the approval of people. God is not impressed by them, and they are worthless in eternity, and worth little to me now.

But I do have a different treasure. I have this box on my desk, and in it I keep the thank you letters from students and people that I’ve led and done life with over the years. I’ve kept memories from funeral services I’ve led, response cards from students that gave their life to Christ, little expressions of the way that I’ve used my position as a pastor to serve others. These trophies represent some of my worldly achievements, but this box represents some of my spiritual achievements, and I think represented in this box are at least some moments of service that God will be well-pleased by.

I desperately want to make God happy. I hope that one day when I get to heaven, I meet my maker and put a big smile on His face. I hope I live my life with such a servant’s heart that like Daniel, like John the Baptist, like Cornelius, heaven is talking about the damage I did to the gates of hell. If you desire to be great, you can be, just be careful about whose eyes you pursue greatness in, because if you live to please people, you will not take the positions that God views as great. Here’s how I want you to start thinking:

Your greatest achievements are your spiritual ones. What if the greatness God wants from you is to endure suffering well? What if the greatness God wants from you is to be patient in the midst of difficult circumstances? What if the greatness God wants from you is to serve others without recognition instead of being corrupted by the spotlight? What if God is storing up a treasures of praise to give to you in every unrecognized act of kindness and intentionality, every prayer for someone else’s good, every loss you take for someone else’s gain? Learn to pursue spiritual achievements, be grateful for the opportunities to pursue them even when they’re difficult, and learn to celebrate them when you see them in others.

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Compete. And for the competitors in the room I have one more verse for you that I hope fires you up. God wants you to be great for His name, and in the book of Romans he gives us this mandate to get there:

Romans 12:10 ESV

10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Christians should be competitive, but it’s a competition to the bottom, to out-serve, out-encourage, out-honor the next person so that we can be a reflection to the world of how Christ treats us.

APPLICATION

I want to leave you with a couple of practical thoughts on how to do this in your school. The first is this:

Associate with people in a lower position than you. Some of you are upperclassman, and you have no clue how much the underclassman beneath you look up to you. Maybe you look down on those younger than you because that’s how upperclassman treated you, or it’s just the culture of your school. You know what would please God? If you took one of them under your wing and started discipling them towards Jesus.

Maybe you’re a starter on your team, or a first chair, or a perennial lead role, or you’re just fairly popular. God didn’t put you in that position to serve yourself, he put you in that position to publicly display the culture of the kingdom, so that as many people as possible would see somebody in a high position abandon it to be with and serve those who are perceived as holding lower positions so that the love of Jesus could be displayed in your life. Make an intentional effort to serve those in “lower positions” than you.

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Others of you find that hard to apply, because you view yourself in a low position. I want to read a crazy passage of Scripture to you:

9 Believers in lowly circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation.

Embrace your lowly position as a calling to serve. If you are in a low position, thank God that you are in position for the greatest possible spiritual achievements. God has put you in the circumstances you are in to glorify Himself, and if you covet somebody else’s life, status, or achievements, you are going to miss out on what God wants to do in your own.

The greatest of you will be the servant of all, and Christ has called you to spiritual greatness. Whether that is in the church building, the school building, or in our houses, let’s be people that are great in the eyes of God. Let’s Pray.

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