Greatness In The Kingdom

Graham Gunden

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Introduction

Matt. 20:20-28 Pg. 825

Ought a Christian seek to be great?

Do you encourage your sons and grandsons to be great men?

Do you pray that your daughters would be great women?

Many would answer in the negative. Seeking greatness seems to presuppose a prideful spirit, conceit, vanity, selfishness

A desire to be well thought of by others and a desire to exercise power over others.

But this does not necessarily have to be the case

Christians can and should seek greatness

Aristotle

The ancient Greek philosophers thought that greatness was a virtue to be cultivated

The great man was the magnanimous man. (Great Spirit)

Magnanimity encapsulated all of the other virtues like courage, justice, prudence, and temperance

The great man sought honor.

He didn’t seek to be honored, he sought to be honorable

He was so great that he did not care if others thought him honorable unless they too were virtuous

The magnanimous man walked slowly and spoke softly

But the Greeks warned that the magnanimous man could fall off into a ditch on either side.

Pusillanimity (small spirit)

Vanity

What is greatness for the Christian?

Well, the Christian would do well to follow this wisdom from the past.

However, there are some vitally important elements missing from this theory of greatness that a Christian can simply not afford to ignore.

Some of the most vital elements of greatness are presented to us by the Great One Himself in our text this evening

Read Matt. 20:20-28

Jesus here does not condemn desire for greatness, rather, He commends the proper way to achieve the only kind of greatness that truly matters

That kind of greatness cannot be achieved without humility, service, sacrifice, and suffering

Narration

The Mother of James and John comes to Jesus to ask for positions of honor for her boys

She comes respectfully, kneeling

She wants what every mother should want for her sons.

She trusts Jesus, she knows that he is about to enter into his kingdom

But she misunderstands the nature of the kingdom

She does not understand that suffering comes before glory

How embarrassing?

Jesus responds directly to the Sons of Thunder

You do not know what you are asking

If you only knew what you desired you might not desire it

Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?

In commenting on this verse Sproul says that though there is much debate about whether or not there is such a thing as a stupid question, their response to Jesus leaves no doubt that there is such a thing as a stupid answer

This is the cup of His suffering and death

The other disciples are indignant with James and John

Sons of Thunder indeed. How dare they seek honors over their brothers?

So Jesus Calls his disciples together to give them a lesson on greatness.

The Great Ones of the World

Lording it Over

Matthew 20:25 “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.”

If you want to get insight into the way that the pagans rule over us, read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince.

They scheme and they threaten and they bribe and they instill fear in their constituents

They are concerned for their own power, their own security, their own reputations, and their own prosperity

They only give to others in order to keep themselves in power. First, they lavish gifts upon their immediate underlings and supporters in order to maintain their loyalty, then they give the people bread and games to keep them content

While all the while they take from those they are meant to lead in order to enrich themselves.

And then they pass $1.2 trillion spending bills at 2 in the morning

Newton’s Third Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

They push others down to make themselves rise

In the ancient Greco-Roman world, greatness was a zero sum game

If another prestigious person in town did something to win honor, that meant that you had less honor

If Gracus paid for the construction of a theatre in town, then he would receive accolades and praise from his beneficiaries

So of course, Publius down the road would build a much more magnificent colosseum right next door

Then no one would go to Gracus’ theatre and he would look like a stupid head, thus Publius would gain more honor while shaming his peers

No one could be exalted unless they first pushed down everyone else around them

The Paradigm of Greatness

It is into this world that the apostle Paul comes along and says,

Romans 12:10 “Outdo one another in showing honor.”

And it is into this world that Jesus says, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave

The Servant is Great in the Kingdom

This is the locus of honor and greatness amongst Christians

It is in service, humility, and sacrifice

It is in thinking of others as more significant than yourself and giving of yourself for their sakes

Prosperity Preachers

Men who enrich themselves by lying to and stealing from the people they are meant to lead and serve and give of themselves for

They take from others and display their gaudy wealth, thinking themselves worthy of honor

Jesus says, “It shall not be so among you.”

Share in the Glories of Christ

The sons of Zebedee asked Jesus for the greatest honor anyone could ever receive

And Jesus told them that that kind of greatness was impossible unless they drink of the cup that he drinks

The very cup that he asked His Father to take from Him because of the agonies it contained

This was the only way James and John could achieve ultimate greatness

Because greatness is derived

Psalm 8:1 “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.”

Psalm 8:4 “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

David here confess that God is supremely great, and man is so lowly when compared to Him.

Yet we are able to receive greatness from Him. He crowns us with glory and honor because we have none in and of ourselves

But our Lord does not give glory and honor to just anyone

In order to receive His glories, we must first drink His cup

We must bear our cross behind Him

We must drink His cup is a cup of suffering.

When it has been drunk to the last dregs, which are death, he will give us a cup of glory

He will make us truly great

Honor from God is unfading

Why seek honor from men?

What value does the praise and good opinion of fallen creatures hold for you?

Those views on instagram, those retweets on X, those likes on Facebook

They may give you a dopamine rush, but what is that when compared to the words “well done, good and faithful servant” ringing in your ears for eternity?

That dopamine rush you get from receiving the virtual approval of virtual friends leads to addiction to virtual things.

But the crown of honor and glory that God gives His great ones satisfies forever

And we will be able to, with the elders, cast those crowns at the feet of Him who receives all glory and honor

The Paradigm of Greatness

Jesus Himself shows us how to achieve greatness. He gives us the paradigm

He sets forth Himself as that paradigm

He did not seek the approval of men, He put no one down to raise Himself up. He did not bribe, steal, kill, and lie to make it to the top

He did not seek accolades and recognition

He sought do to all that His Father required of Him

He sought to serve His people

And He did so by giving His life as a ransom for us all

A Ransom

Lutron: A payment given to satisfy a demand The last time we came to the supper together, we briefly examined a few of the different theories of the atonement.

The question is, how does the death of Christ save us?

We looked at the Christus Victor theory, the moral example theory, and the moral influence theory

One that we did not talk about was the ransom theory of the atonement.

Ransom Theory of the Atonement

There were some Christians in the first few centuries of the church who believed that, when Jesus died, he gave himself as a ransom to Satan

They used this verse to prove that theory

In the middle ages, King Richard the Lionheart, of RobinHood fame, was on his way home from the Crusades when he was captured by Henry VI of the Holy Roman Empire.

Henry demanded an exorbitant sum as ransom for King Richard’s freedom

The idea is that Satan held us as prisoners the way that Henry VI held Richard

And the only price he would accept for our freedom was the blood of the Son of God Himself

And so Jesus gladly paid this sum to set us free.

I ask, then: to whom was the ransom given and why? If the ransom-price was given to the devil, how outrageous that would be! The thief would receive a ransom, not only from God, but a ransom whose very nature is God Himself. That evil bandit, then, would get a handsome payment for his cruel oppression of souls, a payment for whose sake he might well have left us alone! -Gregory of Nazianzus

Derived from the OT idea of a guilt offering

But Christ did not pay a ransom to Satan

Rather, He paid the Ransom to God because we had imprisoned ourselves under sin and we were held captive by it

Our lives were forfeit due to our transgressions.

Because , as the apostle Paul says, “the soul that sins shall die,” and “the wages of sin is death.”

But Jesus is the sacrificial lamb slain in the place of the sinner, tasting death that the sinner might not die.

1 Corinthians 6:20 “for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Justice and Mercy Displayed

And it is here that we see the awesome glories of our God

Here it is that His great justice is revealed.

He would not, and He could not merely forgive a fallen people. We had incurred a terrible debt, we had amassed an awful guilt

And He, being perfectly just, could not allow us to go free anymore than a just judge could allow a murderer to go free.

A payment was required for the forgiveness of our sins and Hebrews 9:22 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

And here is also where we see the great love of the One who is Love itself.

1 John 4:10 “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

We were sinners doomed to suffer His eternal wrath, yet He loved us with an eternal and unbreakable love

So God Himself paid our debt, by assuming our own nature and suffering as a man in our place.

This is greatness

This is leadership

This is the love of our savior for us

Our God gave Himself for us

The Creator became created, the almighty became weak, the king of glory became our servant, the immortal suffered death so that we might live and share in His glory

This table is a reminder to us of the Great One who has received all honor and glory and power

The One who died for us that we might live

And it is a perpetual reminder of the kind of greatness that He calls us to

A greatness of sacrifice, service, love, and humility

Not self-serving greatness, but self-giving greatness, not arrogance, but humility, not ease and luxury and then death, but suffering and death and then glory