[[LONG]] JESUS IS THE GREATEST

INTRO IDEAS

[[In the Super Bowl post-game interviews, there are a few things I always expect to hear… For example…]]

All of the highest calibre athletes are quick to recognize that greatness is not achieved alone: “I couldn’t be here without my team.” Which is so interesting! I mean, these are some of the very best—world champions in their craft. And yet they realize that having great players can only get you so far. Because if you have a player who thinks that greatness is all about themselves, then at times they will end up sacrificing the offense, or sacrificing the play, or making a rash decision, or hogging the ball—all in the interest of making themselves look better than everyone else. It’s like they get tunnel vision, and it destroys the team! Nobody likes playing with that kind of person! It’s so obvious to everyone else on the team that you are just in it for yourself!

And yet, so often in our lives we treat greatness this way. We treat greatness like it’s a solo sport. I just need to look out for myself. I just need to get mine. I just need to make sure I’m a little bit ahead of everybody else. And we get down the line and we turn around and we realize that we’ve alienated the other people in our lives. We may get to the top of the hill, but we end up alone.

So as we get going this morning, what I want you to write down from this illustration is the following sentence: How you measure greatness will determine how you pursue greatness. It’s true in sports, but it’s true in life as well. And this means that the problem is NOT wanting to be great; the problem is how we define greatness.

[[Because the reality is that very few people want to be mediocre. Naturally, we all desire greatness. I think this is part of the way we’re wired as human beings made in God’s image. We want to be great in our careers. We want to be great parents. We want to be great spouses. We want to be people of stature. Sometimes life has a way of pounding that desire for greatness out of us, but deep down we all want our lives to matter—and that’s true whether you’re here today as a committed follower of Christ or not!]]

But that still leaves us with the question, How do we define greatness—or even, how does God define greatness, and how can we get there? If all this is true, then we need to know how greatness is measured in the Kingdom of God. And what we’re going to see in our passage today is how, like us, Jesus’ Twelve disciples wrestled with their definition of greatness, how Jesus redefines greatness, and how He calls us to pursue greatness.

PASSAGE SET UP

So if you’ve got your Bibles, you can start finding your way to Luke chapter nine with me. And as you do, I just want to remind us of where we’re at in our study of Luke’s gospel just in case you’re new to our study.

Jesus is gaining fame and notoriety. He is continuing to reveal Himself to people through His miracles and teachings, and to His disciples through this thing called the transfiguration, and by predicting that He is going to be crucified, which has already been mentioned by the time our passage picks up. To everyone living at the time, it seemed like things were going great! And in all likelihood, people may have been wondering based on all that Jesus did whether He might be the greatest of all time! And so with that backdrop, let’s read the Text, and see what we can learn from Jesus’ words.

>Read Luke 9:43b–50

“While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.

An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”

“Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.””

The Word of the Lord! You may be seated.

BODY

POINT ONE [The disciple’s greatness problem]

As we get going, let me just help you to picture this! Like we read last week, Jesus has just cast out this demon and delivered a young boy. Jesus has just done the impossible again. He has just shown His power again. His ministry is picking up steam again. The crowds are recognizing Him as one of God’s great servants! They’re praising God for Jesus, who has such great power over the darkness!

And then we read that “While everyone was marveling.” So, in the midst of a crowd singing His praises and rejoicing in His greatness, Jesus turns to His disciples and says, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.”

And the reason I want to point this context out to you is because right in these first verses of our passage, in the background, you can see this conflict of greatness beginning to take shape. All the people, including the disciples, thought that Jesus was great because of His power and authority! And now as the disciples learn that Jesus’ ministry isn’t going to be a one-way fast track to the top, Luke tells us that “[the disciples] did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.”

Now, what does Luke mean by this? I mean, is he saying that the disciples literally could not understand the words that Jesus was saying? That they were somehow mystically kept from making sense of the grammar and syntax of Jesus’ words? Did they literally not understand the words themselves?

Well, I don’t think that is quite what is going on here. And part of the reason is that, back in Matthew’s version, he ends the passage by noting that “the disciples were filled with grief” over what Jesus says! So then, clearly they understand at some level that Jesus is referring to His own death.

The answer, I think, has to do with the connection between Jesus’ greatness and the cross. They understood that Jesus is great, that He is Messiah; and they understood that Jesus was saying that He was going to suffer and die, but they could not by any means, and under any circumstances imagine a connection between the two. They didn’t understand how the greatness of God and the humility of Jesus could co-exist. It would be to them like having a square circle. They are mutually exclusive! That is, one totally and completely excludes the possibility of the other.

And this is where we begin to see that the disciple’s had a greatness problem. And the problem is this: Jesus is telling them what’s coming, but they can’t understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus was revealing to the disciples the very greatest thing to ever take place: The crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of God! And yet they they couldn’t comprehend what Jesus was saying because they thought, like the crowd, that Jesus’ fame was just going to grow and grow. That He would just do more and more miracles. That He would prove Himself to be Messiah, and to be the Son of God, and that He would then carry Israel on His back to the top of the pile! But instead, He kept on talking about carrying a cross to His own execution. This is incredible to me: Because of their greatness problem, the disciples saw the cross and these passion predictions as self-sabotage! Like, if Jesus would just be quiet about this cross stuff, then we could really have something great going on here!

They wanted greatness, but they wanted it on their terms. And it was this desire that made it impossible for them to comprehend what God actually had in mind. So let me ask you: Have you ever considered that your definition of greatness might be the thing that is keeping you from seeing the great thing that God is doing in your life right now?

Because friends, the truth is that, until we are able to set aside our definition of greatness, we, like the disciples, will never be able to see Jesus for who He really is. We’ll never be able to see the move of God for what it really is. We’ll be so locked in to what we think God should do that we will be ignorant to what He’s already doing. We will be stuck looking for an escalator to the throne, when God is trying to show us what it really means to follow Jesus, and the life He’s calling us to.

But now back in our Text, Luke includes another irony for us. First, we had the wonder of the crowds compared with the prediction of Jesus’ death, and now we have the prediction of Jesus’ death compared with this argument that started among the disciples “as to which of them would be the greatest.” Luke puts this all right in a row to help us see the contrast here: Jesus is headed for a cross, but the disciples all still think that they are headed for a shortcut to glory, and now they’re arguing about who’s “first in line!” So we get to see the greatness problem coming up on full display.

And what this argument amongst the disciples helps us to see is that they thought that greatness was about having an elevated position. And this idea actually becomes clear elsewhere, for example, when the disciples ask Jesus to sit at His right hand and at His left (cf. Mt 20:21). The problem is that the disciples, like the rest of the ancient world were totally preoccupied with their position and status. And so you can imagine that as Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, they’re wondering where they stack up! You can imagine with me that it’s like the disciples think that Jesus is going to be elected King of Israel, and they’re all out on the campaign trail, and they’re trying to figure out who’s going to be VP. In other words, they thought that they would ride Jesus’ coattails to the very top of political and military prestige.

And yet… even though this made sense for their culture, and even though it may be natural, the fact that it comes right after Jesus predicting His death shows us just how far off their attitudes were from the attitude of Christ. See, not only do they fail to understand Jesus’ mission, but this petty argument reveals the condition of their hearts. To them, greatness was all about rising to the top. But Jesus has something very different in mind, and that’s what He talks about next—but before we get to Jesus’ response, I want to skip down to see something else about the disciple’s greatness problem in these last two verses of our text.

So now let’s jump down to verse 48. Because Jesus responds to them which we’ll look at in a second, but then again we read down in verse 48, “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” And at first look in the NIV this might seem like it’s disconnected with this conversation about greatness. But what’s interesting is that if you’re reading this account in most other English translations, like the ESV for instance, notice that it doesn’t say that John said that they saw someone driving out demons—rather, it says that “John replied!”—which is a more literal translation of the Greek. And so in this way, we see that, at least in John’s mind, there is some connection between this conversation about greatness, and what he says next. So now let’s look more closely to discover the connection.

He says that “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” So in other words, the disciples were the witnesses of a miracle—because casting a demon out of someone is a miraculous act of deliverance—in the name of Jesus!!!… And their response was to roll in and shut it down. They weren’t in awe of God’s saving power. They weren’t focused on how the kingdom of God was moving forward. They weren’t blown away by the power of Jesus, in whose name darkness runs for cover! They were focused on the fact that, as John says, “he is not one of us,” or to translate it literally, “he does not follow with us.” In other words, the disciples were shutting it down NOT because it was an invalid miracle. NOT because the person was not a follower of Christ! NOT because the guy is doing anything wrong! They tried to shut him down because he was not WITH US—a part of their own group, part of the Twelve disciples who followed Jesus as the insiders.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably thinking that it seems like the disciples felt the way that you and I felt on December 15, 2017 during the midnight release of Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi. In this highly controversial film, there’s a change in the way that the force is understood. See, for the entire canonical timeline, only the Jedi could really use the Force—but in this movie, all of the sudden, Princess Leah, who is importantly not a Jedi, gets blown into space. And she’s floating around, actively freezing to death until, out of nowhere, with no training whatsoever, she just uses the Force to fly herself through open space back to her ship, showing that now, according to this new and very messed up canon, anyone can use the force?! How messed up is that?! It just feels like it cheapens the whole idea of the plot of Star Wars with Luke being the chosen one! I mean, it took Luke days and days of training under one of the greatest masters in the universe to be able to stack rocks using the force, and now Leah can just fly? In the immortal wards of Han Solo, “That’s not how the force works!”

But all of that to say… Why were we all equally upset about this scene? Because up until this point, the Force had been exclusive power and authority! The Jedi were an elite group of specially trained warriors. But now all of the sudden, just anybody can use the force? It doesn’t seem right! And I wonder if that is exactly what is going on with the disciples. We’re elite! We’re the Twelve! In Luke 9:1 Jesus gave us power and authority over all demons! So who does this guy think He is going around and ministering to people in the name of Jesus?

But notice, the disciples have no regard for the very real healing and deliverance that’s going on. Instead, they feel threatened by someone else who Jesus is using to advance the interests of His kingdom. They tried to stop him because he was not a part of their insider group, but this reveals that their version of greatness was about having exclusive power and authority. And so, tragically, they turn the power that Jesus gave them to serve the interests of the kingdom and to proclaim the Good News of the kingdom into a way to boost their own pride and status. Once again, they make it all about themselves. And so Jesus replies and says “Do not stop him… for whoever is not against you is for you.”

YES, you are given power and authority, but that’s not what true greatness is about! Greatness is not about what I have and what others don’t. Rather, it’s about how we can serve together to be a testimony to THE great one, Jesus Christ.

This is why Jesus says in the parallel text in Mark 9:39, ““Do not stop him,” Jesus said. [why??] “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me” In other words, when they cast out demons in my name, it is demonstrating MY (Jesus’) greatness, not theirs! And when you do great things in my name, it is not about promoting you and your agenda and your kingdom; it’s about the kingdom of God! [Your gifts and mine, the ways that we serve God, they aren’t about us at all. Our gifts and our good works are not to well up to our own glory, but they are always supposed to be directing the glory and the honor to our Father in heaven.]

So to sum it all up, this is the disciples’ greatness problem: They were focused on being raised up. They were focussed on being stationed above the rest. They were focused on exclusive power and authority. In other words, and you can write this down, they were focused on what Jesus’ Kingdom could do for them.

And friends, we fall into the same trap. How can following Jesus make my life better? How can following Jesus help me to get what I want? How can following Jesus lead me to my version of greatness. Because honestly, even if we never admit it, we have this same greatness problem. It’s a problem of definitions that leads to an empty life of self-satisfaction.

We think that a great life is a life full of comfort, and free of pain. We think that a great life is full of money, and free from need. We think that a great life is full of success, and free from difficulty. We think that a great life is full of fame, and free of obscurity. We think that a great life is full of power, and free from weakness.

But in all of these cases, all that we’re thinking about is ourselves! All I’m thinking about is me! My comfort, my money, my success, my fame, my power, my influence. Yet this is all just another way of talking about me being the king of my own life. It’s just another version of me sitting on the throne in my own heart. It’s an idolatry that will destroy our life, and turn everything else into a means toward the end of my own happiness and self-actualization.

The question this raises is, Who am I really living for? Does my version of greatness make my life all about me?

If it does, and for those of us who right now are identifying a greatness problem in our hearts, then there’s good news. Because if the Holy Spirit is pointing to one of these things, one of these idols in your heart, one of these “patterns of this world,” one of these broken, sinful ways of thinking that lead to broken, sinful ways of living… then He’s doing exactly what Jesus did in our Text: He is confronting your greatness problem to help you live a truly great life. But what we need is to recognize and confess our greatness problem so that we can receive Jesus’ gospel solution. And that’s what I want to show you with the time we have left.

POINT TWO [Jesus’ gospel solution]

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

So what Jesus does is that, knowing their thoughts, or more literally, “Knowing the logic/thinking in their hearts”—that is, seeing as God into their hearts and identifying their greatness problem, Jesus acts. And what He does is He confronts their greatness problem by giving the disciples a living example in this child. But if we’re going to understand the point of the living example of this child, we need to understand how children were viewed in that day. Because the reality is that Jesus' life, ministry, and teaching directly contradicted the worldly view of greatness. 

See, when we imagine this story, we imagine Jesus taking a child--that is, someone under the age of 12 or so, and putting the child next to Him, and the child is just sort of standing there politely, silently, innocently. We think of children in this sentimental, idealized way in our world, and we make the child into the innocent center of attention. But that’s not at all the way that they thought of children in the ancient world, or in the First Century!

As we saw, the disciples are having this argument about greatness because they were, and the First Century culture in general was, totally preoccupied with status. Where do I stack up? How do I compare? In the ancient world, your status in society dictated just about everything about your social relationships—who you could interact with, how important you were, what people could do to you or couldn’t do to you. It all came back to your social standing. And in this world that was totally preoccupied with status, “children had none” (Keener). They had no status, no money, no position, no power, no intelligence. They had nothing to offer in terms of what the ancient world thought of when it comes to greatness! There was no point in having a transactional relationship with a child, because in their minds the child had nothing to offer in return. They were seen primarily as immature; childish. Children were seen as easily frightened, aimless, unserious, like unformed and unhelpful raw material (erudire). As one author I read summed it up, there was an altogether “low estimation of the child” (TDNT).

So Jesus hears them arguing about greatness, and look what He does. He takes someone that the world would have seen as the least of these, and He places them right by His side. And He says to the disciples, if you want to be great, you need to be willing to get up off your high horse, to interrupt and surrender your delusions of grandeur, get down onto your knees, and welcome in the lowly. In other words, greatness is not about self-promotion! It’s about having a humble spirit—or as Jesus says back in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So Jesus’ illustration shows that greatness is not about being raised up; rather, greatness is about being brought low.

But not only are we being brought low, but notice that Jesus says “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me!” So Jesus is helping them understand that the call to follow Jesus isn’t a call to elevate status, it’s a call to humility and willingness to love and engage and welcome all people!

And then Jesus tells us why. Why should we welcome the least of these? Jesus explains: “For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.” And in Mark’s account, Jesus goes a step further when He says “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mk 9:35).

They’re so caught up in how they are going to rule, and Jesus is trying to help the disciples see that greatness is not about ruling. It’s about serving. So Jesus’ illustration shows that greatness is about being brought low, and Jesus’ teaching shows that greatness is about the way we serve others. The great life is not about building up my own kingdom, and looking out for myself, and playing all the cut-throat corporate games! The great life is about receiving the least of these in order to love and serve them in the name of the king!

And this means that [[greatness is not a race to the top, it’s a race to the bottom]]. In my marriage, in my family, in my workplace, in my friend group. And so the counter-cultural teaching of Jesus is that as long as you’re so preoccupied with your own status, and power, and authority, you will totally miss out on a life of greatness. Greatness isn’t something you achieve by climbing up to the top and beating out everyone else. It’s not something you accomplish by looking out for yourself. It’s something that happens when you begin to have this shift in your mindset where your life becomes not about serving yourself, but about serving God by serving others.

Because the reality is that true greatness is not about elevating ourselves to lead, but about lowering ourselves to love.

And that’s not easy. If it was easy, then the disciples wouldn’t have a greatness problem, and we wouldn’t either! But friends, while this may not be easy, what I want you to consider as we close our time this morning is that this is exactly the example that we see in Jesus!

Remember where this all started! Jesus is receiving the praise and the honor of hundreds, even thousands, who want to make Him King, and give Him the position, and the power, and the wealth, and the authority, and Jesus says NO! That is not the path to greatness! Greatness comes not by me elevating myself to a throne, but by me lowering myself in the greatest expression of love that this world has ever known! So “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men,” because THIS IS HOW GOD WAS PLEASED TO DEMONSTRATE HIS OWN LOVE FOR US! Or as Paul says in Romans 5:7–8, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” FOR US! The lowly! The sinners! Those who are not great in ourselves. Those who are lost and dead to sin! Greatness comes when we are willing to take the lowest place. Jesus models greatness by becoming “the least” on the cross for the sake of the lost! He welcomed in the least, and He did it not for personal advancement, but at great personal cost. What did it cost Jesus to welcome us home? It cost Him everything. And friends, this is why Jesus IS the greatest! See, I think too often we think that Jesus’ greatness has everything to do with the fact that He is fully God. But being God is not the only thing that makes Jesus great!--at least, not according to Philippians 2! Not according to Revelation 4 and 5! He is God; BUT… Worthy is the Lamb, why? BECAUSE YOU WERE SLAIN. Jesus’ death proves that greatness is not about self-advancement, but humble, others-centered, loving self-sacrifice. This is why it says that Jesus… “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” AND… “THEREFORE God exalted Him” (Phil 2:6-8).

CONCLUSION

So what about us?

Because I believe that God wants every person in this room to live a great life! The question is, how are you going to define greatness? Is it going to be all about you, your comfort, your position, your advancement, your way… Is it going to be about building your own kingdom? Or will you receive Jesus’ greatness solution, and begin to focus on what Jesus’ example can lead you to do for others?

Whose greatness is your life building toward? Is your life a testimony to your own greatness? Or, is your whole life a testimony to the greatness of Jesus, the lamb that was slain for your sin and for mine?

With our whole life, we should be seeking to magnify not ourselves, but to magnify Christ! We should be seeking not to elevate ourselves, but like John the Baptist said about Jesus shortly before he was beheaded, “He must become greater; I must become less” (Jn 3:30).

[[Baptism Connection]]

That’s what we’re going to sing as we end our time in worship. We’re going to declare before one another, “I won’t bow to idol! I’ll stand strong and worship You alone, Jesus! And if that means less of me, then so be it! If that puts me through fire, then I will rejoice because you’re there too. And if the path of greatness is the path of the cross, and if that cross is what is going to transform my life, where I begin to die to myself so that I can truly live, then like Paul I will sing “I have been crucified with Christ! It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me!” So if the cross brings transformation, I’ll be crucified with you, King Jesus—because that dying to myself is just a doorway into the true greatness of resurrection life. And if I join you in your suffering, then I’ll join you when you rise! And from this day forward, my whole life will be defined by this anthem: OH! CHRIST BE MAGNIFIED IN ME!