Jesus Our Great Example

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Go ahead and find Mark chapter 9. We will be in verses 30-37. As we continue through the book of Mark, we are in what some might call the discipleship discourse where Jesus is teaching his disciples what being a true disciple looks like. A lot of teaching goes on between chapters 8-10 of Mark.
In our passage today, we see two conversations that really flow together. We have Jesus explaining to them about his death again, and then we have a discussion between the men about who is the greatest. So let us read God’s word.
Mark 9:30–37 ESV
30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him. 33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
Prayer
Just like many of you, I can think of quite a few people who have been in my life that I could look to as a sort of mentor. People who were great examples to me who taught me about certain things.
My grandparents and parents taught me a lot about what it means to work hard and provide for your family. I had one teacher in high school in particular who made a great impact on me, Mr. Burleson who was my ag teacher. I have had older Christian men in my life who I learned so much from and were amazing examples of what it meant to be a Christian, a man, a husband, and a father.
I could list people probably for the rest of our time here together today, but there would be an issue. There would be some area of my life where each and every one of them would fail me and would be a bad example for. And it is because we are all sinners. Sinners who may have been saved by grace, but still sinners.
So what do we do? If we will always be let down by people, who do we look to? Well the answer is Jesus. Jesus is our great example.

Main Idea: In everything in life, Jesus is our great example

We could look up to a lot of people. But are looking up to the greatest person. I don’t want to say that having earthly heroes is a bad thing. But we need to understand a level of importance to place them at.
We often think we just know everything. I saw a sign yesterday that said, “I’m not bossy, I just know what you should be doing”. And this is life for a lot of people. We just know everything. I could spend the next little bit picking on the children of the room about how kids just think they know it all. But it isn’t just children. We do it as adults. We are right and that is that.
If you want to attach an attribute to the disciples for our passage today, that is it. They think that they know best. But let’s take it a little further and put a little more truth on it. They think that they know better than God.
Probing Question: Do you think that you know better than God?
Let’s think about this a little more serious as we go through our passage for today. This comes down to trust. If you think that you know better than God, then you do not trust him. We see this in the disciples and their reaction to the statement that Jesus makes. I want to encourage us today, that even though we are much like the disciples at times, we need to hear the words of Christ and trust them.
Your bible probably splits up our passage today into 2 natural parts. So I am going to do that as well and we will have 2 sub points in our text today.

Jesus is the Great Offering

When we hear the word offering, our mind might go in different directions. Mine tends to go to the act in church of taking up money for the financial support of ministry. But in the context of what we are talking about today, it is Jesus being offered for us. This is the gospel on display for us. The words that Jesus tells his disciples here is some of the most important words that he ever speaks to them because he is telling them the reason that he came.
Let’s start off by setting the stage.
Mark 9:30 ESV
30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know,
Jesus wanted to keep some things a little closer to the vest. There are important times in the gospel accounts where it is just him and his close followers. This is one of those times. He didn’t want anyone to know what he was about to teach them.
Mark 9:31 ESV
31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
He is explaining to them what will happen to him. But he is also doing it in a way for them to understand, once again, that he is the Messiah. He uses Old Testament language from the book of Daniel here.
Daniel 7:13–14 ESV
13 “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. 14 And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
In his teaching of his death and resurrection, he is telling them that he is the one that Daniel saw in his vision. That he is going to be the one who has dominion and glory and a kingdom. That everyone will serve him. And that his rule will never end. He is the king of king and lord of lords. The alpha and the omega. He is the promised savior.
What Jesus says to them is the culmination of the gospel of Jesus. (God, man, Christ, response)
This is the offering that we see. We are told in Hebrews 9 that Jesus was offered up, once for all, for sins. Some translations even say that Jesus will be betrayed into the hands of men. We see this through the act of Judas. When Judas follows Jesus for his earthly ministry and then sold him to his death for 30 pieces of silver, that was betrayal. But none of this caught Jesus off guard. He knows that this will happen. He tells them, in this moment, what is going to happen. He will be offered up.
The death of Jesus though is not Judas’s fault. Let’s not get this mixed up. Jesus going to the cross and dying for sins was always plan A. This wasn’t a backup plan because Adam sinned, because Noah failed, because Moses wasn’t good enough, because David was a murderer. No, this was always the plan. Jesus being born of Mary, living a perfect life, going to the cross to die, and being raised from the dead to prove he is God.
But you know, there are times when we hear things, maybe something like what I just said, and we just don’t understand it. We can’t wrap our heads around why someone, God in particular, would die for people to save them. Especially people who have turned their back on him. I want to give you some reassurance that the disciples once were like this and ended up believing. And so can you.
Mark 9:32 ESV
32 But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.
They were afraid to ask him because they didn’t understand. Now, we are taught at a young age in school that if there is something that we don’t understand, that we need to ask. We need to gain an understanding. We need to ask. And God is a God that answers us. As Barbara said the other day in our bible study, sometimes the answer is no, but he answers us. James tells us if any of us lack wisdom, ask for it. If we don’t understand, we ask. We can ask God or we can even ask our brothers and sisters in Christ.
This is discipleship. We help each other grow in our knowledge and understanding and love for Jesus. Because Jesus is the great offering.

Jesus is the Great Servant

We come to the part in the passage that points us to how upside down the kingdom of God is. Jesus teaches them about what it means to be a follower. And to be great in the kingdom of God, you have to go against your human nature. My grandpa was a machinist and a mechanic. He taught me a few things when I was a child. One of the most important things to know when working on something is righty tighty, lefty loosey.
When I was 18, I got a job with a heating and air company. So I used a lot of those things that he taught me. Until I had to work on gas lines. Because gas lines are not righty tighty, lefty loosey. They are lefty tighty, righty loosey. They are backwards because they don’t want you hooking anything but gas up to a gas line. Sometimes, for things to be correct, they have to go against our natural inclination.
Mark 9:33 ESV
33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?”
This would be Jesus’s last time in Capernaum. He has spent a good deal of time there. It was almost like a home base for him. He would have likely stayed at Peter’s home and thought of it as him home. So when they got to the house, he questioned them. He did not do it publically. This was one of the things that he wanted to keep with his close followers.
They had been talking on their journey.
Mark 9:34 (ESV)
34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.
These men are not new disciples. They had been journeying with Jesus for quite some time. Yet, they are still missing it. We can look at this now and want to grab them and shake them. We would want to tell them, “hey, have you forgotten?”
Jesus had just taught them about dying to themselves and carrying their own cross. They had been taught about losing their life for the sake of the gospel. Jesus had even already taught them, twice, that he was going to die. Yet, they still are not looking at Christ the right way. They want to be co-equals with Jesus and not servants of Jesus. And it all boils down to one issue they have. Pride. This prideful nature that we have as humans really gets in the way of what Jesus wants for us.
Pride will consume us. It will eat at us. It will steal our joy away from us. We, as believers in Christ, must fight pride. Pride is the enemy of humility. And to be a follower of Jesus, we must have humility. James 4:6 “6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”” I read this and I can only ask one question. Do you want to receive grace from God or opposition. Then we must lay pride down and be humble.
This desire for a position within the kingdom of God is nothing more than pride. We are taught from a time when we are young that if we want to be happy, then we need to be the ones who are in charge. No one wants to be a servant. That is the bottom of the barrel. That is not where you want to be. These men believed that. They believed that for them to feel any sort of happiness or joy, that they needed to be named as the greatest. But Jesus tells them something different.
Mark 9:35 ESV
35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”
Up is down and down is up. If you want to be first, then you must be last. If you want the top spot in the kingdom, then you must be the last of all and servant of all. You want to know how to be great in the kingdom of God, serve. That is what Jesus is saying. You want to be the greatest, then be the greatest servant. The flesh will tell us that we need to be served if we want to be someone important.
And Jesus was the example. Not a good example but the example. He made himself last and servant. He tells them that he came not to be served but to serve. He goes to the cross to die. He is beaten and broken. He is the true servant. And we follow him by being servants in the world that we live in. We look for ways to serve others. This may be different for each of us and it will certainly different from day to day what that will look like for each of us. But we do it. And we don’t do it to try to earn a place in the kingdom of God. Jesus has bought that place for us and we do it so that we are more like Christ.
But then Jesus not only tells them but he gives them a visual as well.
Mark 9:36–37 ESV
36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
So, as we do from time to time, we need to look at this culturally. At the time of Jesus, child mortality rate was extremely high. There was a high rate of children that never made it into adulthood. So you would never put a child on a pedestal like Jesus does. You would not give a child some sort of picture of importance because there was that likelihood that they would die. So this would have been quite unusual for Jesus to have done this.
By Jesus doing this, he was truly painting a picture of the last. This child had no place of prominence in the world. But Jesus is painting a wonderful picture of how we are to be servants. He is saying that the “least of these” are who we need to focus on. For their time, they had lepers and mute and deaf who were the low class citizens.
Today, this looks like the homeless and the orphans and the widows and the mentally impaired. We serve them in any way that we can. We don’t turn our head when we have a way of serving. But again, we don’t serve to earn anything. We do it because of what we have already received. Jesus is the great servant.
Conclusion
I think when we look at a passage like this, we should look at it and ask ourselves, “so what do we do with this”.
I think that there are a couple of things here. First off, when looking at the first few verses, we need to see that God keeps his promises. Jesus tells them for a second time that he would be crucified and rise from the grave. We know, because we have the documentation to confirm it, that this happens. The word of God is true.
But also, when we read the last section of our text, it should really stir something up in our heart about how we view ourselves. Are we living a life of pride or a life of humility? Are we thinking that we deserve a place in a seat of greatness in the kingdom of God or do we realize that we don’t even deserve to be in the kingdom of God. Because this is the truth.
Well pastor, that is pretty harsh to say. Yes, but it is the truth. Each and every one of us deserves hell and punishment. This is the truth of the gospel. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone. Grace is us getting something that we do not deserve. We don’t deserve eternal life, but God…
Romans 5:8 “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While we were still his enemy, he sent Jesus to die for us. That we actually do now have a place in the kingdom of God. Not because of our greatness. But because of His greatness.
What do we do with this? Fight pride, be humble. Find a way this week to serve someone that you would have normally overlooked. Maybe it is buying a meal for someone or helping someone carry their groceries. Maybe it is having a conversation with them that leads to us having a gospel conversation and even inviting them to come and worship with us next Sunday.
Love others the way that Christ loves us. Serve others the way that Christ served.
Prayer
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