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Lord Jesus, please speak to us from your Word, and from it teach us to live like you, and to live for you. Amen.

The summer is ending – even if it is going out with a blaze of hot sunny days that we seem to have been waiting for all summer long. A new school, college and uni year is beginning – and a new ministry year too, as together we serve Jesus and one another in the life of our church and beyond. And we need fresh power, energy and motivation for that, so it’s good this evening for us to look again at what Jesus himself teaches us about service. And to explore that, we’re going to look at Mark chapter 10.35-45. Some of us looked at this in our Summer Series meeting a couple of weeks ago, but I make no apologies for returning to it now. You can find that on page 846 in the Bibles. Please have that open in front of you.

Serving others can be fun, and it’s great when it is. But a steady devotion to untiring service is not a prospect that naturally appeals to most of us. We want to be served. And if we do something for others, then we don’t like it if someone else gets the credit. But those of us who call ourselves Christians follow a man more powerful than all the politicians and potentates the world has ever seen rolled into one. And yet this is the King who says of himself, at the end of this passage in Mark 10.45:

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

We shouldn’t be in any kind of doubt about the nature of the man whom we claim to follow. He serves. And it cost him his life. Nor should we be in any doubt about what kind of life it is that pleases him. What Jesus wants is people with hearts like his; servant hearts. What the disciples in this encounter want is quite different. Which brings me to my first heading:

1. What the disciples want

Take a look at Mark 10:35-37:

And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

What’s going on in this passage? James and John wanted to be at the top of the pile. For all their fine words, they were reluctant to serve. They’re not alone in that. We have the same tendency in us. Recognise that, and then something can be done about it. But what is it that gets in the way of our wanting to serve wholeheartedly? The context of this incident can help us to identify some of the weaknesses that Satan can exploit.

Shortly before this incident, Jesus had encountered a rich young man. Like many of us, this young man claimed to want eternal life. But he didn’t really mean what he said. Jesus saw into his heart. He saw that there was an obstacle holding him back from wholehearted service of God. What was this obstacle? It was his materialism. It was eating away at his heart like a cancer. So in went the surgeon’s knife. Mark 10.21:

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Don’t be under any illusions. Wholehearted service of Christ costs us money. If we measure our lifestyles by our spending on ourselves, then following Christ will damage our lifestyle. Are we ready for that? Or is our love of the good life that money buys like an icy wind that freezes our hearts and destroys our usefulness to Christ? When this particular prosperous young man heard Jesus, Mark says (in Mark 10.22):

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Packets of cigarettes come with health warnings. It amazes me when I see behind the supermarket counter those banks of cigarette packets emblazoned with their appealing advertising message: Smoking Kills. If we’re Disciples of Christ who are serious about living to please him, we could do with some warnings fixed in our minds. Here’s the first Spiritual Health Warning:

i). Materialism kills service.

But it’s not just materialism. It’s resentment as well; resentment of others who seem to get a better deal from God than we do. Just before Matthew’s account of this incident is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. When it came to pay time, those who’d worked all day grumbled and moaned. People who’d only just started were paid just as much as them. It seems so unfair. An unspoken calculation creeps into the dark corners of our minds: “What’s the point of years of slaving away doing thankless tasks and taking on responsibilities that no-one else wants? What’s in it for me? The truth is that when these people who’ve taken advantage of me year in year out decide in the end that they’ll turn to Christ, God’s going to open his arms to them anyway! They’ll get all of the benefit with none of the cost.” As the elder brother says to his father in another of Jesus’ parables (this is Luke 15.29-30):

Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!

“Why bother?” we say to ourselves. And we down tools. So another Spiritual Health Warning for the disciple is this:

ii). Resentment kills service.

A further obstacle to service that we need to face up to is giving in to wrong pressure from family or friends. If you look back to Mark 10.29-30 you’ll see that just before this incident, Jesus has said to the disciples:

Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

God is no man’s debtor, and his generosity is overwhelming. But the implication of that is clear. Following Christ might require us to leave behind our families. Not necessarily, but it might. In Matthew’s account it’s the mother of James and John who puts the request to Jesus that they be given pride of place among the apostles. Jesus nicknamed James and John the sons of thunder. To suggest that that was a reference to the character of their mother would be somewhat speculative! But it seems she had ambitions for her sons, and she makes them plain. Mothers often do. But this mother’s ambitions were out of line. The fact is that James and John needed to resist family pressure. We might need to do the same. It’s all too easy to abandon a course of action that Christ is asking us to follow, because it seems like a waste of time to some of those close to us. It might mean going to live somewhere far from them, so we won’t see much of them. It might simply mean taking on regular commitments that limit our availability for family activities. Either way, Jesus might require us to spend our energies in ways that don’t make sense to those who we love dearly, but who don’t share the values of the Kingdom of God. So another, even more stark spiritual health warning:

iii). Even families can kill service.

But there’s yet another obstacle to wholehearted service. It’s the desire for status. We want to raise ourselves in the pecking order. This desire shows itself in different ways. If we’re the pushy sort, we can start shoving our way to the front of the queue, as James and John attempted to do. If we’re more reticent, our own desire for status can show itself in efforts to pull others down as they try to climb over us. So (Mark 10.41) when the other ten apostles realised what was up they began to be indignant with James and John. They were furious with them! And a spirit of service gives way to backbiting, bickering and bitterness. Spiritual Health Warning:

iv). Status-seeking kills service.

If we’re to be wholehearted servants of Jesus, then we need to overcome these obstacles. Reluctance to abandon our materialism. Resentment of others who seem to have it easy. Giving in to pressure from those close to us who don’t understand what we’re about. Desire for status. All these things are the predators of a servant spirit. When we see them in our lives, we need to stamp on them and put them to death before they bite and inject their poison into our Christian lives. What the disciples want is status and power. They made all the right noises about being ready to serve. But in fact they were looking after number one. So how did Jesus respond? That brings me to my other main heading:

2. What Jesus did

It’s an amazing thing to see that Jesus doesn’t just crush their ambition. Instead, he redirects it. And he challenges them to face up to the price they must be willing to pay if they’re to be useful in his service. The truth is that a self-centred lifestyle has a great many attractions. If we don’t commit our time to the service of others, then we’re left free to do what we want when we want. We’re free from the demands of others. Free to look after number one. It is no good simply denying the magnetic pull of selfishness. If we don’t count the cost of uncompromising service, then we’ll balk at the cost when we’re asked to begin to pay it. The cost can be summed up simply enough. We have to be ready to give our lives. We may not be called upon literally to die for Christ (though that day may come for some of us), but if not, then we’re called on to die a little each day as we hammer on the head those obstacles to being servant-hearted. We mustn’t be glib about this. We mustn’t do what those first disciples did and jump in too soon saying “Yes I’m ready. I’ll do anything.” If we say that without reckoning up what it really means, then our words will just be so much hot air. The response that Jesus made to the request of James and John is in Mark 10.38-39:

“You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink…”

Jesus warns them that they don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for. The cup that Jesus was going to drink was the cup the prophets had spoken about - the cup of terrible suffering for a sinful world. Uncompromising service brings us close to Christ. And that is both cost and reward. From a worldly point of view it’s a deeply dangerous place to be, but from the perspective of eternity there’s nowhere more secure. Back in Mark 10.33-34 Jesus has just warned the disciples that he’s going to be betrayed and condemned and mocked and flogged and crucified. He’s not a safe man to be close to. But he also says that beyond death he will be raised to life. And that’s the promise for the servant of Jesus: the deep satisfaction now of a life that counts for his Kingdom is followed by the glory of a life spent close to Jesus for eternity. In John 13.38 Jesus challenges the overconfident Peter:

Will you lay down your life for me?

But after the challenge comes the reassurance about the future (John 14.2):

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

As the apostle Paul puts it (in Philippians 1.21) for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. God always out-gives us. He’s already given us everything in Christ, as we were thinking about last Sunday morning from Colossians. The more we give, the more we’ll discover his generosity. If we give our lives to Jesus for him to use as he wants, we need not fear losing out. So there’s a simple challenge to us all: Will we answer the call to serve Jesus, both inside and outside the life of the church, wherever we can useful to him? Jesus says to us: Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? What’s our answer? What are you doing with your life? For whose benefit are you living it? Can you count the cost and still say to Jesus, “I will drink it”? None of us has the strength in ourselves to do that. None of us can do without the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us. But the Lord doesn’t ask us to go alone. He is with us. Mark 10.42:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.”

In other words, reject worldly values that have no place in the church or in the heart of the Christian. Mark 10.43-45:

But 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 slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus doesn’t just out-give us, he out-serves us. The bottom line is not that we are servants of Christ. It’s that Jesus is our servant. He came to serve us. He gave his life in our service. We were spiritually bankrupt a thousand times over. But Jesus died to pay off our debts. We serve him just as a very, very, inadequate way of saying ‘Thank you, Lord’. So let’s make Jesus and his self-sacrifice the role model of our lives. Live for the sake of others. Live to the glory of God. Let the overall direction of your life be shaped by that aim. Let the pattern of your week be shaped by that aim. Let what goes into your diary be decided by that aim. Those who have the heart of a servant, God will use effectively in his service. There’s plenty of unemployment and there’s plenty of unproductive work in the world. But no servant of Jesus is unemployed or unproductive in the Kingdom of God.

In the eighteenth century, William Carey was one of the main inspirations of the world wide missionary movement that sprang from the evangelical revival. As a young pastor in Northamptonshire he published a pamphlet known as The Enquiry. He urged a massive revival of effort to preach the gospel around the world. In The Enquiry he answers possible objections against such missionary endeavour. Some feared the barbarous way of life they might meet. Carey’s answer:

It was no objection to the apostles and their successors, who went among the barbarous Germans and Gauls, and still more barbarous Britons!

Then there was the danger of being killed, and the language barrier, and the lack of supplies, and so on. Every objection he knocks over. He himself went as a pioneer missionary to India, where he spent the rest of his life. It can come as no surprise that this is the man whose motto was:

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

That is the bold, adventurous servant spirit that the Lord looks for in us. It’s possible we’ll be asked to go far away from home and serve. On the other hand we might be asked to stay put, but to serve just as wholeheartedly. Either way, we mustn’t let that adventurous spirit be cramped and crowded out of our lives.

How are you feeling about another year of service ahead? Maybe you’re not yet involved in service in the life of the church. Well, be an avid reader of our weekly email, to pick up where people are needed. Start trying things out until you find your niche. And then stick with it faithfully. Sometimes serving will be fun. At other times it’ll be hard going, thankless and unnoticed by others - but not unnoticed by Jesus. It was Dwight Moody who said:

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And that which I can do, by the grace of God, I will do.

With that simple commitment, God used him as an agent of spiritual revival in England and America. We are called to give ourselves in uncompromising service of Christ. Do that, and we’ll be able to look forward to the day when Christ says to us: Well done, good and faithful servant. Let’s pray:

Lord Jesus, thank you that you came to serve – forgiving us, and setting us free from our self-centredness. Help us to have hearts ready to serve, and hands available to serve wherever and however you call us. For your glory. Amen.