Serving Others in a Me-First Culture

0:30Then the mother of the sons of Zebede came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, What do you want? She said to him, Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom. Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to him, We are able. He said to them, You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.

1:14And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

1:50This is God's Word. You may be seated. For the first time in history, there are more service companies than manufacturing companies on the Fortune 500 list. And if you consider some of these services that are offered today, they were unthinkable just a few years ago. No longer do you have to withdraw cash from an ATM to pay for goods and services. You can just open an app on your phone, or in some cases, just wave your phone over a sensor.

2:32No longer do you have to thumb through a catalog and pay $19.95 shipping and handling to order a product. You can simply scroll online and order a product that will be delivered in a few days, or in some cases, in a few hours. No longer do you have to wait for your favorite TV show a year or a season or even a week. Binge watch whatever you want, whenever you want to, entirely commercial-free. And no longer do moms even have to bring their children into the grocery store.

3:16You can simply pay a small fee or sign up for curbside pickup, which is very convenient, but this also means that you won't have the stories that we all have. Like the time one of my children in the checkout line ate an entire package of Rolos while they were still in the foil wrapper. Or the time one of my children, it may or may not be the same one, drank the jet dry. When we called poison control, they said there was little to worry about. One of the primary ingredients was alcohol.

4:05So at least he took a good nap that day. When we consider all of these services, there's so much to be thankful for. They make life easier. They give us, in theory, more time to spend on the things that are really important in this life. But stop and think for a moment about what the side effects are. What are the side effects? Effects of never having to wait in line, of getting exactly what you want when you want, of being able to be entertained in the way that you want at all times, of never having to be inconvenienced in any way.

4:50It's not hard to predict what that would do to a society, and it's not hard to see what it's doing to our society, except I think that we are growing blind to the effects of all of these wonderful innovations. Friends, we live in a me first culture, and I think for most people living today, we are dividing the world into three categories: those people who are giving us what we want, those people who are helping us to get what we want, or those people who are standing in our way.

5:33And when we view the world and the people in the world, whether the church or the people outside of the church, as fitting into the categories of giving us what we want, or helping us to get what we want, or standing in the way of what we want, we can't serve them because we're starting to view everyone through the lens of how can this person be of use to me. And it's into this kind of Of culture, this me first culture, that Jesus speaks the words that we find here in Matthew 20. Words that challenge both our selfishness and our very conceptions of what it means to be great.

6:15And so, friends, as we go through Matthew 20, verses 20 through 28 this morning, we're going to learn that only those who sacrificially serve others will be great in God's kingdom. So, let's look together again at the start of this passage, verse 20. Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked him for something. And he said to her, What do you want? The woman that's referred to in this passage is Zebedee's wife. We learn from the end of the Gospel of Matthew that her name is Salome. She's been following Jesus from his early ministry in Galilee along with her sons, James and John. Now, many of you know from this Gospel and the other Gospels that James and John were Zebedee's sons. They were fishermen along with their father. And when Jesus came and called them, they left their father and their fishing nets and the family business in order to follow Jesus. And these brothers became part of Jesus' inner circle. James and John were two of the three who accompanied him onto the mountain when he was transfigured. They were two of the three who accompanied him in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus. Sweat drops of blood as he prayed for the Father's will to be done before his betrayal and crucifixion.

7:39But James and John were concerned that Peter, along with Peter's brother Andrew, would be the ones who would be most prominent when Jesus set up his new kingdom. And James and John became convinced that if they acted quickly and if they acted wisely, they would be able to receive the promises that maybe were coming to Peter and Andrew. But see, in politics, you can't directly ask for favors. That's considered arrogant and immodest. And this indeed is a political situation. And so the solution that these brothers come up with is to send their mother, Salome, before Jesus. And this was a wise strategy because, first, who can resist someone's mom?

8:30But secondly, Jesus, as they knew, did not treat women as second-class citizens. The Bible in the 21st century, Jesus himself and his teachings are always presented as archaic and out-of-date and retrograde. Friends, Jesus was the only one in his society who viewed women as equals. Jesus was the only one in his society who counted women among his followers, who spoke with women publicly and privately. Who taught what had been taught from the beginning of the Old Testament that women had equal worth and value, had dignity. And so they send their mother before Jesus, knowing all of these things, and Salom kneels before him. Look at how she approaches Jesus. She's come to the right person in the right posture. This is a woman who believes that Jesus is the Messiah. She's going to be one of just a handful of people who will stay with Jesus all the way through his crucifixion and death and burial. This is a woman who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

9:42And so when she approaches Jesus with a question, Jesus poses one of his own. And I want you to look at his question. Because in his question, he draws out the desire of her heart. And he doesn't say, what do you want? It's not said in that tone at all from the context. It's, what do you want? What do you want? And since we're talking about serving this morning, I think it would be helpful for us to pause and consider that question that Jesus is asking. What do you want?

10:27You see, our emotional responses. Are the best indicator of what we really want. And the most telling emotion, as we have talked about many times here on Sunday mornings, is anger. The things that we get angry about closely reflect the things that are most important to us. Another way of saying that is the things that we get angry about are often our idols. The things that we love and we want and we pursue more than God.

11:03Now, as a parent, I've seen this in my life over and over again. As a parent, you devote so much of your day to serving your children, clothing them, feeding them, changing them, clothing them again, disciplining them. And after all of that, you finally lay down to take a nap. You finally get a few minutes to yourself. You finally sit down to watch that movie you've been wanting to watch with your spouse. You finally get up early and you grab that cup of coffee and you grab your Bible and you're so excited for a few moments of quiet and then there's a child with a need.

11:50They never wake up at this time. Why are they up now? And you get angry and you feel That anger rising up in yourself, and then you speak angry words to your children. Why is this? Look at what Paul Tripp says in his new book, Parenting. We're often mad at our children, not because they've broken God's law, but because they have gotten in the way of the laws of our peace and comfort. And, friends, this is not just for parents. If you're a professional, you have these days where you just need to get some work done.

12:37And one of your colleagues keeps knocking on your door or peeking over your cubicle. In my first job, I had a double-wide cubicle. I had really made it right out of college. I had a double-wide. It was awesome. And it wasn't just a double-wide. It had a door. But no one cared. I would close the door for privacy in my cubicle. And my buddies would just walk up, and these things are like six feet tall, and they'd be like, hey, Alan, I have a question. And I'm like, the door is closed.

13:14No respecter of persons. If you're making disciples, you might have people texting you, calling you, coming over, needing advice, counsel, prayer, help at any time of the day or night. Even for those of you who are children, you know what this is like. You want some time to just play, to read, to throw the ball with friends, to build Legos, and there's mom and dad asking you to do something again. All of us know what this feels like, and in these situations, Jesus asks us, What do you want?

13:54What do you want? And if we will pause long enough to actually consider that question, we might be able to learn something about the idols that are driving us and that are driving our emotional responses when God presents a new opportunity for us to sacrificially serve someone else in our life. But we have to be willing to stop long enough to answer this question: What do you want? What do I want? What did Salom want? She wanted Jesus to promise that her boys, James and John, would sit at Jesus' right hand and left hand in his kingdom. She wanted to hear that her boys would be honored, that they would have a secure place in this new kingdom, that they would not be left behind or left out in any way.

14:48In other words, Salom wanted what every mother, what every parent wants for their children. Not Just a good future, but a clear, worry-free path to that good future. That's what she wanted. What did James and John want? I mean, they're the ones that instigated this request. That becomes especially clear if you read the other gospel accounts. They're the ones that put their mom up to this. What did James and John want? They wanted to be elevated above their peers, above the other ten disciples. It wasn't enough for James and John to simply be counted among the original 12 disciples. It wasn't enough for them to be in the inner circle of Jesus' disciples. They wanted to be elevated above their peers. That's what they wanted more than anything else. They wanted no more confusion, no more debates about who was the greatest in the kingdom. They wanted Jesus to settle this question once and for all by saying, James and John are above everyone else. They wanted that security.

16:10Now, notice, they asked to sit at Jesus' right and left hand in his new kingdom. This is not some satanic request to overthrow King Jesus and take his seat. They're not asking. Jesus to step down so that they can take his place. They're asking to sit at his right and left hand, but it's an ungodly attempt to use Jesus for their own glorification. That's the problem with their request. And friends, I think if we're honest, many of us want the exact same thing.

16:56We want Jesus to be glorified. But we're also hoping for a little of that reflected glory for ourselves. We want Jesus to be exalted. We just think it would be nice if we too could be exalted along with him. I think if we're honest, that's what we're really hoping for. I think deep down, we want Jesus to have the first seat. We're just hoping that we could sit down next to him and receive some of that reflected glory for ourselves.

17:39Well, how is Jesus going to respond to their request? Look at verse 22. Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? They said to him, We are. Able Jesus tells James and John, you don't know what you're asking. But we sure think we do, don't we? We sure think we do. When we're young in faith, or maybe just young, we think that we know what's best for our lives.

18:29We have these very specific ideas about what is best for us. This spouse, this career, this many kids born at these intervals in these very specific ways. We think we know what is best for ourselves. And what's more, we are totally certain that we're right. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? Yep, no problem. We're able. That's the degree of certainty that we have about these things. But friends, the longer that I've been a Christian, the less confident I am in my own requests, and the more confident I am growing in the God whom I know is listening to my requests.

19:27Look on the screen at Romans chapter 8. And hear these words. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. What great news that God Himself would remind us in His Word, you don't know what you're asking, you don't know how to pray as you ought to, but it's okay.

20:17Because if you are a son or daughter of God through faith in Christ, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will intercede for you. He will help you to pray for the things that you are supposed to pray for in the ways that you're supposed to pray for them. And so when we see Jesus saying, you don't know what you're asking, I'm more inclined than ever to actually believe him. That I really don't know what's best in many circumstances.

20:51James and John were asking for something very particular, weren't they? They were asking for the opportunity to sit and be served. And what they didn't realize is that they were asking Jesus for the impossible. They were asking Jesus for the opportunity to become great without having to walk the actual path of greatness. And this is a great word for our generation. Because I believe more than ever, our generation is filled to the brim with images and ideas that are gleaned from social media that are all telling us the exact same thing. You can become great without sacrifice.

21:43I don't even think that's true in this world. I mean, you listen to the men and women who have started great movements, great companies. A lot of you know, I listened to How I Built This, the podcast from NPR that interviews men and women who have founded some of the great companies that exist today. You listen to these stories from these men and women, and they all built their companies with blood, sweat, and tears. It involved great sacrifice. I don't even think it's true in this world that you can become great without sacrifice. But, friends, I know for certain that you cannot become great in God's kingdom apart from God. From sacrificial service. It is the only path to greatness.

22:37So Jesus responds to them, and look at what he says: You will drink my cup. In the Old Testament, the cup was a metaphor for suffering. You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father. In other words, Jesus says, You're going to suffer. As for rewards, I don't give those out. That's dad's job.

23:17Look with me now at verse 24. And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. The other disciples were indignant. They were very upset at James and John, not just because their request was immodest and arrogant, but because they all wanted the exact same thing. Look on the screen at Luke 22. This is taking place at the Last Supper. A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was. To be regarded as the greatest.

24:06So, this whole situation is a powder keg ready to blow. You've got 12 guys who all look great on the outside. All of them following Jesus, all of them praying, all of them serving, all of them sacrificing. I mean, at one point, Peter even says to Jesus, We have left everything to follow you. Our families, our businesses, we have left everything to follow you. These guys look fantastic on the outside, and yet on the inside, every single one of them is lusting after power, yearning for the opportunity to be elevated above their peers, desiring to sit and be served.

24:58Look on the screen at James chapter 3. He says, Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition Ambition exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice. He goes on in chapter 4. Look at the first verse. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

25:52Stop and think about social media for a second. Social media is a great tool, isn't it? We can stay connected to friends and to family, to Christians and non-Christians, not just in our neighborhoods, but all around the world. What a great tool that it is. It's done so much good in our society. But do you know what else it's done? It's turned life into one giant high school experience that never ends. When you graduated from high school, you probably thought to yourself, I'm so glad to be done with all of the comparisons, all of the posturing, all of the showing off, all the being worried about my social standing, about who's popular and who's not.

26:56But instead, the high school experience just lives on now forever. Through social media, who has the most followers? Who gets the most likes and shares and retweets? Who's having the best experiences, the best vacations, the best opportunities? Who looks the most put together? Whose family looks the most put together? Who's in? Who's out? And why is this? Well, James tells us the answer. It's because social media is filled with people who have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in their hearts.

27:42Our passions are at war within us. And so, friends, we need to ask ourselves some very hard questions with respect to our social media usage. Why do I post the things that I post? That picture of the open Bible with the coffee cup? The picture of the vacation or the experience that we had? The pictures of myself dressed up or of my family. Why do we follow or unfollow certain people? Why do we often feel so restless after scrolling through? Through our Instagram and Facebook feeds.

28:34Why are we forcing our children multiple times per day to become actors in front of our smartphones? Am I helping people to love God and love others more through my social media usage, or am I simply stirring up bitter jealousy and selfish ambition? And friends, I pose these questions to you as a fellow sinner, as one who has struggled with social media as much or more than you have, as one who has selfish ambition and bitter jealousy in my heart that has driven me to post and to share and to retweet and to like.

29:32But as a fellow Christian, as one of your pastors, I believe it is my responsibility to put these questions before all of us, these very uncomfortable questions, for the good of our souls and for the good of the souls who see what we post and share and like and retweet. Because at the end of the day, the critical question is: Am I loving God and Am I loving my neighbor? And am I helping others to love God and to love their neighbors?

30:09I just finished reading one of the most life-changing books I've ever read. It's called 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reynke. And those of you who have been a part of New Life for at least six or eight years will be delighted to know that in two weeks on August the 20th, the bookstall is being revived. Are there like two of you here? Like, I expected, like, the bookstall is coming back. Thank you. Golly. That was awful. Okay, a bookstall is a little corner where there's like great books for sale at cost.

30:55It's going to be amazing. And 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You is going to be there in two Sundays along with lots of other great books. And so let me just give you this quote from the book that I just found so convicting, so challenging. Look on the screen. He says, The urgency that you feel and that drives you online is caused by your fear of being unreplicated, unseen, unloved. Each day you feel as if you are losing your grip on your online status unless you deliver crowdplaces.

31:30Content. Stop trying to impress the online world with your body or your wit. And I might add as well, or your children, your house, your vacations, your workouts, all for the sake of a few likes of affirmation. Vain glory will not satisfy your heart. It will only intensify your craving for human praise. Someone say amen. That is what it's doing to us. And you know this because every time you or I get online and we post something, we get back online and we refresh that thing 247 times because we want affirmation.

32:22And all that does is stir up the hunger for more human affirmation. You cannot serve anybody that you need to affirm you. You can only serve people if you do not need their affirmation. That is so clear in the John 13 passage that we'll revisit a little bit later. So, friends, Renke's point in this book, and my point is not that social media, not that the internet, not that your smartphone. Is evil, but rather that we have to ask ourselves hard questions, namely, am I sacrificially serving other people by what I am posting?

33:11You see, the other ten disciples were so mad at James and John because James and John wanted to be elevated above them and they wanted the same thing. They were competing with one another, they all wanted to sit and be served, they all wanted to be great. And so, Jesus, just like he always does, will use this opportunity to correct them and to teach them. Look at verse 25. But Jesus called them to him and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

34:15Jesus tells the disciples, the world does what you guys are doing, elbowing each other out of the way, trying to get to the top. This is what the world does. They love having authority. And reminding each other who's in charge. But Jesus says, it shall not be so among you. Why? Because every believer in Jesus has been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. We've been transferred. We're in a new kingdom. And in God's kingdom, the first and the great are the last and the least in this world.

35:00The first and the great in God's kingdom are not those who elevate themselves, but those who humble themselves, those who sacrificially serve others. And so Jesus says here, if you want to be great in God's kingdom, you've got to become a servant. And a servant in this first century context was typically a paid man or woman who managed the affairs of a household. You want to be great in God's kingdom? You've got to become a servant. You've got to put yourself beneath someone else, and you've got to make it your object and aim to bless them.

35:41If you want to be great, become a servant. And then Jesus says, if you want to be first, you have to become a slave. See, I think when we read this passage, we see those as synonyms, servant and slave. They were not synonyms. In first century Israel. A servant was a paid man or woman who is running a household. A slave was just that. An unpaid man or woman who did the lowest, most menial jobs that no one else wanted to do, like washing the feet of people who had been walking through streets running with human and animal waste.

36:34If you want to be first, that's what we have to become. But we have trouble with this, don't we? We want to serve God, but we often fail to serve other people. And so I want you to look at what John says in 1 John 4:20. Look at this verse. If anyone says, I love God but hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Now I want you to consider these same words applied to serving. Let me be clear, this is the New Duty translation.

37:13This is not in the Bible. If anyone says, I serve God and won't serve his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not serve his brother whom he has seen cannot serve God whom he has not seen. Isn't the principle the same? Loving and serving? We say, I want to serve God. I want to give my life for him. And I think we always view that in terms of the vertical relationship between us and God when God is saying, if you want to serve me, I've put all these people in your life. Your spouse, your children, your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends.

37:57If you want to serve me, serve them. And the reality is, a lot of us don't have a hard time serving our elders. We don't have a hard time serving those people in our lives that we know are a rung above us. Parents, grandparents, maybe we don't have that hard of a time serving them. Our bosses, superiors at work, maybe people that seem to have a higher social standing than we do. That's not that hard. Where we really struggle is serving our peers or those whom we believe are below us.

38:31And that's why verse 28 is so important. Look again at verse 28. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. See, friends, Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came and he took on flesh. And he spent his brief 30-plus years on this earth, not being served or hoping. To be served, but actually serving. He came to lay down his rights every single day in order to teach and to heal and to declare the good news of the kingdom of God.

39:14And then, as we read here, he gave his life as a ransom for his people. That Greek word is Lutron. It means a price paid to set a captive free from slavery. And that's exactly what we were. Look at Romans 6 on the screen. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

40:11You see, Jesus came to serve people just like you and me. People who wanted to be great and who selfishly used others to pursue that greatness. And he served us by laying down his life in our place for our sins so that we could be set free from slavery to sin. And instead, become slaves of God, our heavenly Father, who loves us and cares for us. Friends, we live in a me-first culture, and Christians struggle with sacrificially serving others just like everyone else. A Christian is not a better person than a non-Christian. He or she is simply a person that has recognized that they have sinned against God and others and therefore are in need of a Savior, and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Savior that they need.

41:09And so, for those of you who aren't yet believers in Jesus, my hope for you this morning is that you would see your need for Jesus to serve you with his life and death and resurrection. You remember back to the passage we read at the start of the service, John 13? When Jesus first stooped down to wash Peter's feet, what did Peter say to him? You shall never wash my feet. And Jesus responded and he said, If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.

41:51And I think there are so many people in our world today, and you might be one of them, who says, I have made These mistakes. I committed these wrongs. I deserve to pay for them. I won't have anybody else pay for them. I can't have somebody else die for me. You need to hear the words of Jesus. Unless I wash you, you have no part with me. The only way for you to be washed, to be declared righteous, and one day made righteous before God is to turn from your sin, acknowledging that you have sinned against God and others, and to receive Jesus as Savior, to allow him to serve you with his life and death and resurrection.

42:45And for those of us who are already believers, my hope this morning is that we would consider our lives and see whether they're marked by sacrificial service to others. For some of you, your life is marked by sacrificial service, and praise God for that. But for me, and for probably many of you as well, when I look at my life, I don't see a life that is consistently marked by sacrificial service. And so God is calling us to repent and to reorient our priorities so that our lives are marked by sacrificial service. Because only those who sacrificially serve others will be great in God's sight. kingdom let's pray father we come before you confessing our sin we gather together to say that although you have set a perfect example for us And you have commanded us to serve you and others in our lives, we have not done that.

44:07Yes, we've done it at times. We've even done it wholeheartedly at times. But our lives as a whole are not marked by sacrificial service. And so we ask for forgiveness for our sins against you and against others. And I pray that this morning our lives would be reoriented around what you say makes someone truly great. For those who are not yet Christians, God, I pray that this morning they would submit themselves to Jesus and allow him to serve them with his life and death and resurrection.

45:00That if he doesn't wash them, they can't be clean. Father, we thank you for your word, for our Savior Jesus, and his teaching and his example. We pray that we as a church body would be marked by sacrificial service. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.