10/28/12 Sermon: “If You Want To Be The Greatest You Have To Be The Least!”
(Texts: Acts 18:23-28 & 20:17-18a, 28-31; Philippians 2:1-11; Luke 9:46-50)
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Last Sunday we learned how Jesus – who is God is human
flesh! – refused to save Himself from suffering, death and
damnation.
Why?
Not because He didn’t have the power to save
Himself. Instead, He didn’t save Himself because His plan was to
save us from sin, death and eternal damnation by taking our sins
upon Himself and suffering the punishment we deserve.
Think about it. Even though Jesus is God and therefore is
the greatest of all, He willingly chose to serve us by becoming
the least of all: suffering, dying and being damned in the place
of all sinners.
Those of us who agree with God that our many sins deserve
His eternal wrath but who nevertheless trust in Jesus whom God
sent to be our Savior – we are forgiven and have the hope of
eternal life in God’s love. Of course, this means we have been
set free to live as God’s children NOW – and one of the things
that this means is that we get to be the greatest, just like
Jesus!
Of course, being the greatest like Jesus means something
totally different than what most people in this world think it
means to be the greatest.
You see, we live in a world where we are constantly
competing with others to get ahead, to succeed and to come out on
top.
Because of this we strive to be the greatest and best at
what we do.
Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying it is wrong to
be the greatest at something. Nor am I saying that competition
is wrong.
What I am saying that it is very easy for us to
compete for sinful reasons; it is very easy for us to have
malevolent motives for being the greatest at something.
Sadly, especially in our culture, it is so easy for us to
become self-centered people who think it is all about us.
Our
sinful nature leads us to think of ourselves first and others
second or last or not at all.
In fact, our sinful nature can
even lead us to use other people and hurt other people on our
self-centered journey to be the greatest.
In today’s Gospel reading we see that Jesus’ own disciples
were struggling with this problem.
Luke writes:
“An argument
started among the disciples as to which of them would be the
greatest.”
Now, I’m sure the twelve apostles already felt pretty
special because they had been hand-picked by Jesus. But now they
are wondering which one of their small group will end up being
the greatest of the twelve apostles.
Of course, Jesus knows their sinful thoughts, and so He
stands next to a little child who is nearby and says: “Whoever
welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever
welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
For he who is least
among you all – he is the greatest.”
In Jesus’ day children were to be seen and not heard.
In
fact, most men ignored children because they thought it was the
job of women to take care of children.
Most men assumed they
were greater than women and even greater still than little
children who couldn’t even take care of themselves much less do
something great.
But then Jesus speaks to these twelve men – His disciples –
and tells them that they should be ready and willing to serve a
little child.
Only then would they truly be serving Jesus and
the Father who sent Him.
In other words, Jesus is telling these men that if they
really want to be great then they must become servants of all.
In fact, when Jesus says “For he who is least among you all – he
is the greatest” He is actually referring to Himself.
Think about it.
Even though the disciples thought very
highly of themselves, they all agreed that Jesus was the greatest
of all because He is God.
However, even though Jesus is the “greatest of all” He
willingly became the “least of all” when He humbled Himself and
became our servant – even to the point of dying on a cross in our
place of shame and damnation.
After His suffering and death Jesus conquered death itself
by His physical resurrection and He now lives and reigns over all
creation with the Father and the Holy Spirit – and yet Jesus
continues to be our servant by providing for our physical needs;
by washing away our many sins in Holy Baptism; by giving us His
wisdom through the preaching and teaching of His Word; by
interceding to the Father for us; by giving us His Body and Blood
in Holy Communion.
Jesus is teaching His apostles and US that if we want to be
the greatest in God’s Kingdom then we have to become the least.
In other words, as God’s forgiven children we should strive to be
like Jesus and become the greatest of servants.
Of course, this is hard to put into practice in a world
where the greatest are on top. This is hard to put into practice
in a world where we’re constantly being tempted to put ourselves
first and ignore others or even use them to get ahead.
Even Jesus disciples didn’t figure it out right away. After
Jesus told them they needed to be servants like Him, they said to
Him: “Master, we saw a man driving out demons in your name and
we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” Then Jesus
responded: “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is
for you.” Now, what is Jesus teaching us here?
First of all, Jesus is NOT teaching us that just because
someone claims to be teaching or doing things in the Name of
Jesus that we must affirm them without question. No!
For example, in our reading from the Book of Acts we see
that there was a man named Apollos who was preaching and teaching
correctly about Jesus and His work – but he was in error on some
other points of doctrine, such as Baptism.
When a man and woman named Aquila and Priscilla learned this
about Apollos, did they say: “Well, Apollos is teaching in the
Name of Jesus and so we can’t question anything he does or says.”
No!
Instead, they affirmed Apollos where his teaching was in
line with God’s Word, but they also lovingly corrected Apollos in
those areas of teaching where he was in error.
In addition, later on in our reading from the Book of Acts
we see that the apostle Paul warns some fellow pastors that some
will rise up within the church who claim to speak for Jesus but
who are false teachers and must be resisted.
Therefore, when Jesus says “whoever is not against you is
for you” He does NOT mean we should affirm all people without
discernment just because they claim to teach and work in Jesus’
Name.
Instead, when Jesus says “whoever is not against you is
for you” He is pointing out to His apostles that the man they saw
driving out demons was being faithful to Jesus’ teaching and so
they should not rebuke him. But that leads to a question: Why
were the twelve apostles rebuking this man if he was faithful to
Jesus’ teaching?
What we need to understand is that the twelve apostles were
not concerned about this other man who was driving out demons in
Jesus’ Name because this other man was guilty of false teaching.
If this other man had been guilty of false teaching, then the
twelve apostles would have had a legitimate reason to be
concerned – and Jesus would have agreed with them!
Instead, they were concerned about this man because he was
not one of them.
The twelve were already competing with each
other about which one of them was the greatest – and so the last
thing they wanted was another guy to compete for the tile of “the
greatest disciple.” In other words, the apostles were guilty of
petty jealously!
Well, Jesus reminds them that this man is not against them.
He’s on the same team.
In fact, this man understood that God
wanted him to serve others in Jesus’ Name.
The apostles had
forgotten that because they had been distracted by how they could
make themselves great.
Now, how does all this apply to us? Simply put, just like
the apostles, we can get caught up with the sinful rat race of
trying to make ourselves great – and thereby ignoring or even
hurting other people in the process.
This is why so many human relationships are dysfunctional.
In our efforts to exalt ourselves and become the greatest we end
up ignoring others or even using and abusing them. This can even
happen within a Christian congregation when we are tempted to do
things for our own glory rather than thinking about how we can
honor God and serve others.
The good news is that we can come to God in humble
repentance and confess our sin of self-centeredness, and He will
forgive us because the greatest of all became the least of all
for us.
God’s Son came into this world to serve us sinners – and He
did that by taking your sin and my sin to the cross where He was
damned in our place.
Because of that divine sacrifice we are
forgiven and we are now free to be like Jesus.
Just think of it! We have been exalted with Jesus. We
God’s forgiven and dearly loved children. We are citizens of
Kingdom. In Christ, we ARE the greatest. But this means we
to be the least of all. This means we get to be like Jesus,
be a servant.
Now please understand!
I’m not saying it’s
selfish for you to meet your own legitimate needs.
times when we all need help and service from others.
are
His
get
and
sinful or
There are
We all need to earn money so we can provide for ourselves
and our families as well as helping the truly needy who can’t
support themselves.
We all need adequate nourishment, rest,
relaxation and refreshment or we will not be healthy and we won’t
be any good to anyone.
So, it’s not sinful or selfish to take
care of your own legitimate needs.
Instead, what Jesus is teaching us is that we need to repent
of the times we focus only on ourselves while we ignore the needs
of others or use them for our own advantage. We need to repent
of the times that we strive to succeed or be the greatest at
something only so we might glorify ourselves.
In contrast, as Christians, when we do strive to be great at
something or to be successful at something, we do this with the
goal of glorifying God and blessing others.
In other words, God’s forgiveness and love moves us to ask
this question: “How can I honor God and be a blessing to others
by what I am doing or am about to do?”
If we all asked this
question before we made any decisions, what a different world
this would be.
In closing, let me acknowledge that no matter how hard we
try we will always struggle with selfishness and selfcenteredness, just like Jesus’ apostles.
But just like Jesus’ apostles, we can come to Him with our
selfishness and self-centeredness every day and know that we are
forgiven and holy in God’s sight because the greatest of all
became the least of all when He became our servant and died on
the cross for us.
Because of Jesus’ loving sacrifice, you are forgiven – and
that means you are free to be the greatest of all by being the
least of all.
Amen!