Dr. Rodney Plunket

Jesus was a humble servant.  All of the Gospels make that clear.  And in addition to living a live that modeled service, Jesus also explicitly taught His disciples that service is to characterize those who follow Him.

This morning I want us to look at several passages in Mark.  I want first to notice a couple of passages which show the kind of humble service that characterized Jesus’ life.  Then we will look at some other passages in Mark through which we can hear Jesus teaching His disciples to be humble servants.

In Mark (Mk) 1:32-34 Jesus serves by healing the sick and by casting out demons.  He could have used these healings and exorcisms as a way to acquire power and to amass a great following.  You see, the demons that Jesus was exorcising knew who Jesus was.  They knew Jesus was the Son of God; the demons knew that He was the Christ/the Messiah.  I think they wanted people to know that they were not being exorcised by just anyone.  They wanted to preserve some of their reputation, I think.  They wanted to hold onto some of their self-esteem.  So they tried to announce to everyone that the Son of God was the one driving them out.  Jesus did not allow them to do that.  He did not want that kind of acclaim.  Jesus wanted the people to know that He was the servant of the sick, the hurting, and the demon possessed; and He wanted them to know that before they knew He was divine.

The second passage that I want us to look at is Mk 10:13-16.  Please turn to that passage and follow along as I read:

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.  But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”  And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Children were not perceived in the world of Jesus’ day the way they are perceived in our culture.  Children were property.  They had absolutely no legal rights; in fact, they seem to have had no standing at all before the Law.  So children had to be humble; they had to be lowly; they had to submit and yield.  That view of children caused the disciples to assume that Jesus would give children no time.  Surely children were beneath their powerful rabbi.

Jesus surprised them.  He rebuked his disciples.  They did not understand the nature of the kingdom of God.  Jesus here clearly conveys the humble service that characterized His life of ministry.  He was a servant, a lowly servant that even served the children by blessing them as their mothers desired.

Mark 10:13-16 not only gives an example of Jesus behaving like a humble servant; it also reports some of Jesus’ instructions to His disciples concerning humility.  He tells His followers that only those who receive the kingdom like a child will ever enter it.  Those words make clear that humility is an attitude that is to be common to all of Jesus’ followers.

Now please look back at the previous chapter at a story that is strikingly similar to the one we just read.  Please follow along as I read Mk 9:35-37:

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”  But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.  He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

In the previous passage that we read (Mk 10:13-16), Jesus uses the presence of children to teach His disciples what kind of people they should be; they should be as humble as child.  This time Jesus takes up a child in His arms to convey the kind of people His disciples are to serve.  They are to serve people as lowly and powerless as a child, people who can give nothing back in return.  And Jesus gives His disciples that teaching in response to their argument about who was the greatest.  The greatest in Jesus’ kingdom is the person who serves all––especially the lowest of all, the most powerless of all.

And notice the powerful paradox that Jesus uses in v 35.  He says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  That statement teaches the dis­ciple of Jesus to take her or his eyes off of self and to fix them firmly on Jesus and His Good News.  Self-glorification is antithetical to the message of the Son of God who came as humble servant.

And this is not the only such paradox that Jesus employs in Mark’s Gospel to eradicate self-centeredness and pride among His followers.  In Mk 9:35 Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  In Mk 10:31 He says, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  In Mk 10:43 Jesus says, “ . . . whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”  First is last, and greatness is achieved by being a servant and by being a “slave of all.”  Humble, lowly service––that is the direction that Jesus points all of His fol­lowers in these passages.

And then we come to the line from Jesus that concluded our reading this morning––the line that reads, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).  The phrase “Son of Man” is Jesus favorite way of referring to Himself, and in a few months many of our adult classes will have a class on this very phrase.  Bill Starcher has been working on that class, and he has allowed me to read the results of his extensive research.  It will be a great lesson.  An awareness that will be presented is that one of the reasons Jesus uses this phrase, “Son of Man,” is to connect back to a glorious figure referred to in the Old Testament Book of Daniel.  In Daniel’s prophetic vision, God gives that “Son of Man” figure “dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 7:14).  Surely such a figure should be served.  Surely such a figure should reign.  Surely such a figure should have numberless slaves ready to obey His slightest whim.

But Jesus is clear.  In His life and in His death He laid aside all the glory and all the power, and He served.  And He gave His life as a ransom for many.  The context of this verse in Mk 10 makes crystal clear that Jesus expects us to do the same.  We also are to lay down our lives in service for others as Jesus did.

In William Barclay’s devotional  commentary on Matthew’s parallel to Mark 10:35-45 tells this wonderful story:

When that great modern saint Toyohiko Kagawa first came into contact with Christianity, he felt its fascination, until one day the cry burst from him:  “O God, make me like Christ.”  To be like Christ he went to live in the slums, and when he went he himself was suffering from tuberculosis.  He went to the last place on earth to which a man in his condition should have gone.  Cecil Northcott in Famous Life Decisions tells of what Kagawa did.  He went to live in a six foot by six hut in a Tokyo slum.  “On his first night he was asked to share his bed with a man suffering from contagious itch.  That was a test of his faith.  Would he go back on his point of no return?  No.  He welcomed his bed-fellow.  Then a beggar asked for his shirt and got it.  Next day he was back for Kagawa’s coat and trousers, and got them too.  Kagawa was left standing in a ragged old kimono.  The slum dwellers of Tokio laughed at him, but they came to respect him.  He stood in the driving rain to preach, coughing all the time.  ‘God is love,’ he shouted.  ‘God is love.  Where love is there is God.’  He often fell down exhausted, and the rough men of the slums carried him gently back to his hut.”

Kagawa himself wrote:  “God dwells among the lowliest of men.  He sits on the dust heap among the prison convicts.  He stands with the juvenile delinquents.  He is there with the beggars.  He is among the sick, He stands with the unemployed.  Therefore let him who would meet God visit the prison cell before going to the temple.  Before he goes to church let him visit the hospital.  Before he reads the Bible let him help the beggar.”

Therein is greatness.  The world may assess a man’s greatness by the number of people whom he controls and who are at his beck and call; or by his intellectual standing and his academic eminence; or by the number of committees of which he is a member; or by the size of his bank balance and the material possessions which he has amassed; but in the assessment of Jesus Christ these things are irrelevant.  His assessment is quite simply–
–how many people have you helped? (The Gospel of Matthew, 2:257-58).

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