True Greatness

We are going to be in Mark chapter 9 today. So like I said, we started this series last week halfway through the gospel of Mark because Mark is kind of set up in two sections. Section A is basically Jesus shows up on the scene after his baptism. Everybody's trying to figure out who he is. In fact, he goes around, he heals, he teaches, he causes controversy time and again. And all these crowds, his own disciples go, who is this? Who is he? What? Who is this who forgives sins? Who is this who causes the wind and waves? And they even obey him. Who is this who casts out demons? And they don't figure it. And then in chapter 8, as we looked at last week, everything kind of turns when Jesus takes his disciples up to Caesarea Philippi, as far north as you can go, as far away from Jerusalem as you can be, to talk about the kingdom. And he says, who am I? And Peter says, you are the Messiah, you are the Christ, you're the anointed one, you are the king. And then Jesus, the second half of this gospel is defining what his kingdom looks like, who he is as king, how his kingdom comes and how he will establish his kingdom. And it turns out to be upside down, inside out, backwards from every other organization, every other institution, every other scheme anybody has ever come up. And today we're looking at the upside down nature of greatness. So we're going to be reading in Mark chapter 9, verses 30 to 37. They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days, he will rise. But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him. And when they came to Capernaum and when he was in the house, he asked them, what were you discussing on the way? But they kept silent for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms. He said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. All right. So today we're going to learn from this. Three different points. Okay. What true greatness is, what it looks like and how to get it. Okay. So this is the question and I think it has cultural relevance today. I think it was Stephen Covey who said about success and I think you could say that about greatness. What happens if you are climbing that ladder of success and you find out when you get to the top that it's leaning against the wrong wall? I think there are a lot of people who have looked for greatness in this world and they finally get it and they realize it's not what they thought it was. And maybe I was chasing the wrong thing all along. The disciples are asking that question today. So we're going to look at what true greatness is. They were talking and they knew Jesus had been talking about a kingdom, right? The kingdom of God. They're used to that. And they know that every organization, every kingdom has kind of a hierarchy, an org chart, if you will. If you work anywhere of any size, you know, there's kind of an org chart. If you're in a family, you probably have a pecking order among the kids. Who was at the bottom of the pecking order in their family? Anybody? Yeah, I was the middle kid. And the middle kid got picked on in my family from the bottom and the top. But we are the best adjusted in society, by the way. We know how to work that. But I was the middle kid. And the older looked out for the younger and the younger played the victim. Yeah. Now, my brother, if he's watching out in California, he's probably saying, no, I wasn't. I know. But every organization has a pecking order. Everybody has an org chart. And you know, somebody's on top, somebody's in the middle, somebody's on the bottom. And the disciples were saying, so who's going to be on top in the kingdom? And they weren't. If you noticed in the text in Mark 9, it wasn't just a hypothetical situation. They were actually arguing about it. They were fighting over who was going to be on top. They were wondering who's in the middle, which one of us is the greatest. You kind of know what those kind of discussions are like. Have you ever been around a group that's kind of talking that way? Now, this is very telling because basically the disciples are showing what greatness looks like in the world. It's always a competition. Do you realize that? It's always a competition. You're always trying to achieve it. It's something that you have to gain. It's something you fight for. It's something you fight over. It's something you push other people out of the way. I can only be great if other people are not. You're in competition for it. And if they're arguing on the outside, I thi...