[Note: This sermon expounds Mark 10:32–45 with Matthew 20:17–28. Delivered 11 January 1981, Montreal.]
We continue studying the Lord's teaching at Mark 10:32–45. "As they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them, they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.' And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward 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.' But Jesus said to them, '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; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.' And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, 'You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 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 the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'"
The first and last principle appears again immediately, and it is at the heart of everything the Lord has been teaching for weeks. To fail to understand it is to fail to understand everything else. And yet, as we see here, the disciples still do not grasp it. Notice the opening of this passage: "they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid." This reaction is directly connected to what had just preceded. The Lord had told the rich young man that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. Those words were still ringing in the disciples' ears as they walked toward Jerusalem. Verse 17 describes them setting out, and verse 32 finds them still on that same road, still under the impact of those words. They were afraid. That fear is very good: a sheep that feels no fear tends to wander from the shepherd and fall prey to predators. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Notice also that "those who followed" implies that not all followed — some found the teaching too hard and fell away. This was not unusual: at the end of John 6, we read that many disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Here too, the Lord's words about the difficulty of salvation caused some to decide it was not worth pursuing. But those who remained followed in fear. Then, before their fear could settle, the Lord intensifies it further: we are going up to Jerusalem, he says, and the Son of Man will be mocked, spat upon, scourged, and killed. This is the third time he has said it. And Luke 18:34 records that they understood none of it — not because the language was obscure, but because they could not understand why. Why must a righteous man suffer? Why must the good die while the wicked prosper? These are the deep questions they could not grasp.
James and John, apparently unable to bear the heaviness of the atmosphere, deflect to something brighter: "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." After all these weeks of teaching about the first becoming last, here they are angling to be first again. Their desire to follow the Lord is genuine, their faith in his ultimate triumph is real — but they still have not understood the way. The Lord's response is not a rebuke but a question: "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" They say: "We are able." They do not know what they are agreeing to.
The cup is an Old Testament image for the portion that God assigns — whether of blessing or of suffering. In Psalm 16:5 it refers to a blessed inheritance; in Psalm 75:8 it refers to God's judgment poured out on the wicked. Isaiah 51:17 and 22 and Jeremiah 25:15 and 17 speak of "the cup of God's wrath" against sin — a cup that the Lord Jesus was about to drink on our behalf in the garden of Gethsemane. "Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?" he says in John 18:11. It is the cup of God's righteous wrath against all human sin, which Christ drained to the last drop in our place. And baptism, as we know, is the symbol of dying, being buried, and rising to new life. Both images together speak of his death. James and John said they were able. And the Lord confirmed that they would indeed drink this cup — James was among the first disciples to be put to death, as Acts 12:2 records. They would learn what they had agreed to.
When the ten heard about the request of James and John, they began to be indignant. Not for a moment, but for a sustained period. And here is the pattern: whenever someone puts themselves first, there is immediate tension in the group. That is why the first-last principle is not merely a theological abstraction; it is the key to every human relationship. The ten were indignant because James and John were doing what all of them secretly wanted to do. That is the real reason for the tension. The Lord gathers them all and says: the Gentile rulers lord it over their subjects; the great men among them exercise authority. But that is not how it is to be among you. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant; whoever would be first must be the slave of all. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve — and to give his life as a ransom for many.
The choice before every disciple is therefore this: do you choose to be served, or to serve? To save your life, or to give it? Matthew 7:13 makes clear there are two roads: broad is the road that leads to destruction and many go that way; hard and narrow is the road that leads to life, and few find it. Our natural direction is the broad road — self-seeking, self-preserving, wanting to be served. To change direction requires a genuine and costly reversal of our whole way of living. This is why the disciples were amazed and afraid, and why some stopped following altogether. The preacher who tells you the way to eternal life is easy and costs nothing has not told you the truth.
[Continues in Part B]
# Whoever Would Be First Among You Must Be Your Slave — Matthew 20:17–28; Mark 10:32–45 (Part B) — Bondage to Self; Ransom; "I Can Do Nothing for Myself"
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Mark 10:32–45 with Matthew 20:17–28, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 11 January 1981, Montreal.]
The disciples, confronted with the full weight of the Lord's teaching, begin to think: perhaps it would have been safer just to stay with the law — offering sacrifices in the temple costs money, but that is nothing compared to changing one's entire inner attitude and lifestyle. That reaction is understandable, because this is indeed what is being demanded: not a surface adjustment but a reversal of the whole direction of life. The only two options are to keep one's life or to give it; to be served or to serve. And by default, without making any conscious choice at all, all of us have already chosen to keep our lives. That is our nature. The only choice that remains to be made is whether we will quit this default direction and become disciples.
When I study the life of the Lord Jesus himself, I am struck by one thing above all others: I cannot think of a single thing he ever did for himself. Everything he did was for others. His power he used only in their service — to heal, to strengthen, to save. Even the temptation in the wilderness had one goal: to get Jesus to do something for himself. Turn the stones into bread — you are hungry. He refused. He could have done it, but he would not. He lived his whole life without doing one thing for himself. That is the lifestyle he calls his disciples to. "He who comes after me must take up his cross and follow me." Not figuratively but literally: he was going to the cross, and disciples follow where the master goes.
The ransom of which the Lord speaks in the last verse of this passage — "to give his life as a ransom for many" — means a price paid for release. The word was familiar: it was what you paid for the release of hostages. Jesus came to pay the price of our release from bondage. But what is the bondage we are in? There is the bondage of sin, and the bondage of the world; but the deepest bondage is the bondage of self. We are enslaved to ourselves and think we are free. Have you ever seen someone approaching a nervous breakdown? I have tried many times to help such a person, and what always strikes me is the terrible power of that bondage: nothing external is holding them, and yet they are absolutely captive to their own fear, their own inner tension. Drugs can mask the symptoms but cannot touch the root. Electric shock therapy can dull the system temporarily, but when the effect wears off the person is back at square one. The root is a self-centred mentality — the compulsive need to come first, to win, to be in control — that turns inward upon the person and begins to destroy them.
The medical researcher Hans Selye, professor and director of experimental medicine at the University of Montreal, spent a lifetime studying stress and wrote many books on it, including the popular Stress Without Distress. After exhaustive research in both animals and human beings, he concluded that the root of stress lies in selfishness — in the ego-centred need to be first. His proposed solution is what he calls "egotistic altruism": doing kind things for others, but for ultimately self-centred reasons, so that they will like you, praise you, and form a buffer around you against the hardships of life. He frankly admits this is still selfishness, just deployed in a socially productive way. It is very close to Dale Carnegie's "how to win friends and influence people." And it does work, to a degree: it can reduce stress, build social goodwill, and make life more pleasant. If your only goal is to get along reasonably well in this present world, it may be all you need.
But we are not talking about getting along in this present world. We are talking about eternal life. And the Lord Jesus requires not an enlightened form of selfishness but genuine, radical self-giving — doing things for others without wanting any reward in this life, without wanting praise or repayment, looking only to God. The kind of giving where the reward comes, if at all, at the resurrection of the just. That requires faith — deep, ongoing, daily trust in the justice and faithfulness of God. Without it, this level of self-giving is simply not possible. Hans Selye is honest enough to acknowledge that he is dealing only with the present life. The Lord is dealing with eternal life. And the path to eternal life is the narrow road of genuine self-giving discipleship. No form of enlightened selfishness, however socially useful, will open the gate.
The Lord came into the world to set us free from the bondage to self that is at the root of all our conflicts, all our stress, all our competitive destructiveness. The way to that freedom is the way he himself walked: going from first to last, serving rather than being served, giving rather than keeping. This is the only path to life. Please understand it well.
Let us be quiet before God in prayer.