14 What Do You Want Me to Do for You? (Mark 10:32-45)

Speaker 1: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. This is the fourteenth lesson in the series titled Questions Jesus Asked. The theme of our passage today is What do you want me to do for you? We will consider topics of love, loyalty, and service to others. Mark chapter 10, verses 32 through 45. Krisan Marotta: How many of you have seen the movie The End of the Spear? It's a pretty good movie. Oh, only two or three? That surprises me. I thought more. It's a great movie. It tells the story of the Christian missionaries that went to Ecuador to reach the Wadani tribe, and uh it's I'm blanking on the woman's name. She wrote a book about it. Elizabeth, thank you. Elizabeth Elliott. I kept thinking Elizabeth. Okay. Yeah, Elizabeth Elliott. Anyway, the tribe was um marked by revenge killing. And uh after the original missionaries um go there, they are they are speared to death, and after that event, their widows and children move in to the tribe that had killed their uh husbands and fathers to teach them about God. And there's a scene near the end of the movie where one of those sons, a boy named Steve, who's now grown up, he is um with a man named Minkayani, who was one of his father's killers, and they end up together at the scene of the massacre, and Steve is given a chance to take revenge by um basically spearing Minkayani. And there's this tense moments, I'm sure they kind of Hollywoodized a little bit. After some soul searching, he throws down his spear and he says, No one took my father's life, he gave it. And that's the theme of our passage today, that laying down your life. We're gonna look at Mark chapter 10. Um, and the question, what we've been going, we've been going through the Gospel of Mark looking at the places where Jesus asked a question, and today the question is, what do you want me to do for you? Jesus speaking, what do you want me to do for you? So, and the question is, do you want him to make you great? And the answer, surprisingly enough, is he will make you great, but greatness is not what we expect. Greatness is the way of the cross. Greatness is not how many people serve you, but how many people you serve. And so greatness is not demanding love and loyalty and service, it is giving and serving and caring for others to the point of giving your life. So we're coming to the end, just to put this back in the context of the whole book. The section from Mark chapter 8, 27 to the end of chapter 10 has sometimes been called the way section by scholars because Jesus spends a lot of time teaching them the way of the cross. And you'll recall that the Gospel of Mark is divided roughly in two sections. The first eight chapters deal with the miracles and the teachings of Jesus, which point to who he is. And it culminates in chapter eight with Peter's confession, Who are you? You are the Christ. And that's the theme, who is Jesus? From the end of chapter eight on, the theme shifts a little bit to what he came to do. And this re-education of the way of the Messiah or what he came to do is the major theme from the second half of the book. And this is kind of, if you so we're in the second half, this is kind of the end of the first major division in the second half. So in the first eight chapters, they learn who Jesus is, and now they're learning what he came to do. And it struck me as I was thinking about that, that's often how you can divide the Christian life. We it's we have these almost two phases where we come to Christ and we first have to learn who he is, and uh that we are we are sinful creatures in need of a savior, and that he is that savior, and then we spend the rest of our lives after conversion learning what it means to follow him or what the way of the Messiah is. And I think for many of us that's a surprise because you know you expect you make a decision to follow Jesus, and that's the last decision you'll ever have to make, right? Because from now on it's smooth sailing. And instead we find that's not the path. The path involves suffering and service. So this section opens with a healing of a blind man and it closes with the healing of a blind man. And I wanted to point that out to you because I think it's significant that he brackets this with two miracles of sight. The first miracle was in 822-26, which you'll recall was the healing of the blind man in two stages, where Jesus touches him and he says, Oh, I see men, but they look like trees walking. And then Jesus touches him again and he has full clarity of sight. And we talked about how that was symbolic of the fact that the disciples now understood who Jesus was, but they needed to be to be taught further to see what he came to do. So the man was healed in stages, so their understanding was uh coming in stages. Now we're gonna end today's section in Mark 10.46 with the healing of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, which is another healing of a blind man, and I wanna we'll talk about that at the end. But just so you see this how this Mark put this section together. Okay, so turn to Mark chapter 10. We're gonna start in verse 32. So we're gonna I'm gonna do this in sections, we'll go 10 32 to 34 at first. And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them, and 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, See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles, and they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him, and after three days he will rise again. Let me stop there and give you some of the background so you know where we are. This is near the end of Jesus' life. He is headed into Jerusalem. Jerusalem, of course, was the city of God. It was the city where the Messiah was to claim David's throne, and Jesus has been there many times before. But this is the first time on the journey that he's entered as a king leading his subjects. And as royal processions go, this one's kind of strange. There's no army following him. There's uh his followers are few, and they're not wealthy, and they're mostly unimportant. Most of the people following him at this point are probably made up of pilgrims who are on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. So it was about that time. If you wanted to celebrate Passover, you were supposed to go to Jerusalem, and they're likely caught up in the thrill of this coming feast, and yet those closest to him know something's up. This is not going to be a good time. He's been predicting his death, and even if he hadn't been, they probably can look back through their history and see that prophets were not usually very warmly received in Jerusalem. And verse 32 tells us they're afraid. And so understanding their fear, Jesus draws them aside, and this is the third and final time we see in Mark's gospel where he tells them explicitly what's going to happen when they get to Jerusalem. So he's saying, I think he doesn't want there to be any surprises for them. So he opens with this, behold, we are going to Jerusalem. And it's interesting, he says, we, and then he shifts into the third person. And I've I wondered why the pronoun shifts in this section. He says, We're going to Jerusalem, I think, to emphasize they're coming too. This is their destiny, and they're going to share in his suffering. And then he switches to the Son of Man, to the third person, to emphasize this is who he is, this is the role he's playing. That the suffering that's about to take place is not a personal strike against Jesus of Nazareth. This is the job of the suffering servant. This is what he came to do. So as Isaiah predicted long ago, he he came to give his life as a ransom for people, for God's people. Now notice three things about this prediction. As I said, this is the third one we've got we've been given in Mark. The first one was in 831, the second one was in 930, and then now here in 10. And um I think it's interesting every time he tells them, they don't quite seem to get it. They don't want to understand or they can't understand, but he is patient with them and persistent and determined to teach them until they fully understand. And notice in each one of the predictions, he takes the title Son of Man for himself very easily and unashamedly. He claims that title. The term Son of Man is used 14 times in the Gospel of Mark, and it comes from Daniel 7, where Daniel is describing a vision he saw of an Israelite who will come and do battle with all the pagan kings of the world, and they're depicted as ferocious animals who this man will vanquish, and then having won the battle, it says he is depicted as one like a son of man coming on clouds to be enthroned in heaven at Yahweh's right hand and establish an everlasting kingdom. And Daniel had that vision while the Jews were in exile, and that was the theme they picked, they pinned their hopes on while they were in exile, that one was going to come and liberate them from all the different empires that oppressed them. And they they begin to use that title, the Son of Man, as the one they look for, the Messiah who would come and liberate them. And Jesus deliberately takes that title to himself in his predictions and says, This is me, this is being fulfilled in your hearing. Which would have been blasphemous, except it's true. But the most surprising thing about his prediction, I think, is he says, This is me, but then he describes himself not as conquering his enemies, but as being conquered. He says in each of his predictions, he will be beaten, he will be scourged, he will be remocked, he will be killed. And notice all the verbs are passive. The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes. They will condemn him and deliver him, and then we finally get an active verb at the end. After three days, he will rise. So he will be handed over to the Sanhedrin, he will be contempt to death. He allows that to happen, but it will culminate in the resurrection. And he never predicts his death without also predicting the resurrection. In each one of these instances, when he tells them what's coming to him, he also tells them, after three days, I will rise again. So he's basically what he's telling them is, I am destined for glory, but the way to glory is suffering and death. Now, the other thing is each time he predicts this, his disciples seem to miss the point. After the first telling, Peter rebukes him. That's the scene we looked at where Peter says, No, no, but it's not going to be that way, and Jesus says, No, get behind me, Satan. And in the second telling in Mark 9.32, the disciple Mark tells us specifically the disciples didn't understand and they were afraid to ask. And then they argue about who's the greatest among them. And now we get the third prediction, and after this prediction, two disciples come along and they make a request for personal honor, which is kind of a strange request. And this is where we find our question today. Okay, so going back to Mark 10, we're going to pick up in verse 35. 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. 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. And Jesus said to them, You do not know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or 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 on my right hand or my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. Okay, so we'll stop there. James and John had been disciples of John the Baptist, and Jesus had nicknamed them the Sons of Thunder because of their impulsive and forceful ways. And I think they're living up to their nicknames here. Because it just struck me they sound like, you know, a teenager when Dad says he's going out of town, and the teenager says, Can I have your credit card first? You know, before you leave. Can I have that? It's it's like we want you to do whatever we ask. And Jesus is not going to be manipulated into that. He says, What do you want me to do for you? And um they say, Grant that we may sit one in sit in glory, one on your right and one on your left. Now, we didn't look at chapter 9, but what happens in chapter 9 that we skipped is the transfiguration. So they had just seen Jesus, well, John did, James has probably been told, they had seen Jesus glorified. And he's been predicting what's going to happen on in Jerusalem, and he's been predicting the cross and his resurrection. So I think their mindset is, okay, we've got this window of opportunity now to ask. Let's ask while the asking's good, you know, before the stock goes public or something, you know. Matthew tells us that their mother made the request on their behalf, but Jesus in both Matthew and Mark, he responds directly to the disciples. So it's clear he's aware they're the ones that put her up to it. And then the fact that they sent their mother and that they asked first arouses jealousy in the other ten. Um, and we'll we'll get to that in a minute. But I have to wonder if this was not a painful request for Jesus, because he's just said he's going to be killed and vlogged and spit on and mocked, and they say, Oh, well, can we um can we sit on your right and your left? I mean, it's kind of like your best friend saying, you know, oh, I have cancer, and you say, Oh, can I have your pearl necklace? You know. It's like, it's not quite the thing to ask. Now, it's interesting given that situation that Jesus doesn't condemn them. He doesn't, his response shows no hint of rebuke. And I think I was trying to figure out why, and I think it's because their motives are mixed. They they I think they truly love Jesus. But like most of us, we love Jesus, but we have these mixed motives. We're we're not quite through the selfishness yet. So, shortly before this incident, this is recorded in Matthew 19, Jesus tells them, I this is in Matthew 19, 28, I tell you the truth. At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. So he's promised them that they're gonna sit on twelve thrones in glory, and they believe him, and that's a good thing. They have faith. He said he's gonna be risen in three days, and he's going to be given the kingdom, and he's the messiah, and they believe him. And in that I think he their motives are good. This is evidence of their faith. Because why would this poor Galilean who's a carpenter and of no noble birth, and um why would why would this be the Messiah? Um and they he's promised them glory, and they're just saying, okay, well, as long as we're going to sit on these stones anyway, can we have the right and the left? You know, I mean, I think their request is based both on faith and a little bit of self-centeredness. So at least part of their desire is God-given. They want to be great in the kingdom of God, and that is a good thing. And essentially they're saying to him, we want to share in your victory, we want to be with you in glory, um, we want, we believe you're the Messiah, we trust you, we believe the prophecies about you are going to come true, and we want to be there with you, and that's a good thing. Paul writes in Romans 2, 6, He will render to each one according to His work to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are seeking or who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. One of the interesting things about that statement is Paul assumes all of us are seeking for glory, honor, and immortality. That that's what we were built for. That's part of the human quest. The question is, how do we seek it? Do we seek it with patience and righteousness, or do we seek it self-servingly with unrighteousness and immorality? And he's saying that i he doesn't condemn, Paul doesn't in Romans, and neither does Jesus in this passage. He doesn't condemn us for wanting to be great. The question is, how do you get there? On what do you define greatness? Do you seek it through patience and service and righteousness, or do you seek it through selfishness and immorality? So that's really the question we're looking at today. What do you want Jesus to do for you? Do you want him to make you great? That's an okay desire. The question is, what is greatness? And that's what we need to learn. How do you achieve greatness? Because it's not what we expect. So he basically tells them that. He says, You have no idea what you're asking for. And he says, Are you able to drink the cup that I'm drinking or be baptized with my baptism? The cup, most often in Hebrew scriptures, is a symbol of God's wrath. And there are there are pictures in the Old Testament of God's enemies drinking from the cup, and they drink just a few uh sips, and they're staggered. They're just knocked out by drinking just a few sips of his wrath. In Psalm 75, 8 it says, In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine with mixed with spices. He pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to the very dregs. And when drained, then this cup becomes, it consumes them and utterly. And I think that's the image Jesus is using. Are you willing to drink the cup of God's wrath, which is what he does for us by laying down his life? And the thought agonizes him. It crushes him, as we're going to look at when we look at his struggle in the garden. Not next week, it's in a couple weeks. So he's asking, are you able to drink that cup? Are you able to follow me in this way of suffering and tasting God's wrath? And then similarly, the other image he uses, can you undergo my baptism? To us, baptism is a religious word, but at the time Jesus used it, it was not a religious word. It was just an ordinary word. And it meant to place one thing in another. It was used most often of shipbuilders when they took a ship out of dry dock and they placed it in the water, they baptized it. And that's it's that's where the term comes from. Or when you took something and you put it underneath the water, you baptized it. So it was almost had the meaning of submerge. And that's the image I think he's giving them. Are you prepared to do be basically drowned with the sorrows he's going to be drowned with? Or that humiliation. And they respond probably naively, but also somewhat courageously, oh yes, we can do that. And he says, you can, and in fact they do. They both eventually found it. We're told that James was among the one of the first Christian martyrs, that's in Acts 12. And John, according to tradition, lived out his final years as a prisoner in exile on an island, the island of Patmos. So they both ended up suffering for their beliefs and for Jesus' sake. So they will drink his cup of suffering. And Jesus goes on to say, no, but sitting at my right and left, that's not mine to give. Now, part of what that implies, I think, for us is that sufferings have a purpose. And it's easy to lose sight of that. The sorrows of this life, I think, have eternal significance in the age to come. Um, and I think what he's implying here is glory is not a commodity that's a prize to be run, but it's something we we gain from this long process of purifying our soul. Do you do you view your sorrows in that light? And do you look at them and think, you know, every blow to the heart or every false accusation or every painful memory or trial or failure, that that's part of what God's using to shape you for glory? I think that's what this text implies. Paul confirms it in 2 Corinthians 4, this is 4.17, he says, for momentary our momentary light affliction, wait, I can do this. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. And his point in that section is your sufferings now are preparing you for glory. This is the way of the Messiah. He came to suffer and die for us, and that's the path we follow in. So Jesus is basically saying to them, I intend for you to be great. You will be greater than you even long to be, but what you don't understand is that greatness is the cross. Greatness is suffering. Okay, let's look at the final section then, in verse 41. And when the ten heard it, they begin to be indignant at James and John, I think, because they were upset that they didn't think of this first. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them, and their great ones 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 even the Son of Man came not to serve, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. So the ten get indignant, they I think are upset that they didn't think of asking Jesus first for this. Um there's a point back in chapter nine where they're arguing about who among them is the greatest, and so I think there's a sense of which each of them wanted to be on Jesus' right and left hand. Somehow James and John managed to get there first. But Jesus doesn't condemn them for that. Instead, he corrects their understanding. He says, You don't know what you're asking, but I'm going to tell you. The way to be great, the way to attain what you desire is through serving. So he tells them, he contrasts the Gentiles, which in this context I think he means basically unbelievers, people who don't follow God, they measure their greatness by the distance between them and their subordinates. You know, how many people can you command? Or how many people can you control or dominate? Or when you make a decision, how many people jump to follow it and carry it out? And that's what we think of greatness. And the disciples would have been familiar with that because when the Roman emperor spoke, you know, armies moved throughout the world. And when they enacted a law in the capital of Rome, then they levied a tax in Galilee. He had tremendous power of this the few over the many. And that that's what the idea of greatness was. And he says, you don't understand. Greatness in the kingdom of God is not measured by how many people serve you. Greatness in the kingdom of God is measured by how much you voluntarily serve. So he's contrasting this ruling over versus serving under. And that's what his point is, that we think greatness is ruling over, but greatness in God's kingdom is serving under. Unless we miss the point, he adds in verse 45 the word slave of all. This was the most despicable, this was like the lowest social caste you could get. So he's saying, if you want to be great, you have to take the bottom of the barrel. This is the slave of all, the lowest social caste you could get. And to follow it up, then he says, even the Son of Man. So the person we would think, the person at the top of the pyramid, the Messiah, the one who's going to sit on the throne and rule over God's kingdom forever, even he is the one who came to serve and not to be served. So he's giving them an example. I was thinking about this, and it's interesting to note how many slaves came to Christianity in the early days of the church. And they were very influential in spreading the gospel because many of them were pressed into service in these wealthy Roman households where they were given the task of educating the children. So what did they teach them? They taught them Christianity and righteousness. And numerous slaves took advantage of that. And notice in Acts when the disciples, they're not the religious authorities of the day. They don't have any religious power. They don't have, you know, seminary degrees. They didn't study with the biggest rabbis. And yet they spread the gospel sometimes, often from prison. And that's where they do some of their best work. And then you get this contrast where 300 years later Constantine the Emperor pronounces Christianity the official religion of the empire, and that's kind of the beginning of the end. It's a death blow to it. But God chose to spread through the lowest. So he says the kind of leadership that should happen in the church is not the kind of leadership we see everywhere else in the world. That we shouldn't measure ourselves by how many people we can order around or threaten, or how many people that are on our committees or underneath us, or how many letters are after our names, or that kind of thing. That greatness is the people who are willing to serve. Now, I think this is ought to be a very encouraging lecture to most women in general, mothers in particular, because for the most part, women take the less glamorous jobs. You know, they're the ones who are behind the scenes and not necessarily up front. And uh we think, well, we're, you know, we're just doing the second class work, and I think from God's perspective, this is this is the way to greatness. Okay. How are we doing on time? Oh, gotta hurry. Okay. So let me just wrap this up with the against this background then of what do you want Jesus to do for you, and the way of greatness being suffering, not ruling. Um, Mark gives us this one final incidence before they depart for Jerusalem. So look at Mark 10, 46. This is the the healing of the second blind person. And they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples, a great and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him. And they called the blind man, saying to him, Take heart, get up, he's calling you. And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, What do you want me to do for you? Notice the same question he had just asked James and John. And the blind man said to him, Rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way, your faith has made you well. And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way. Now in the New Testament time there were two Jerichos. There was the old one of the Old Testament and there was a new one. The old one was largely abandoned, but the new one was this big attractive city where uh Herod the Great had his uh winter palace, and it had been built by him. So I think what's going on is he's leaving the old one and he's approaching the new one. And a blind beggar hears that he's coming, he's got these pilgrims who are on their way to Passover, and he starts crying out for healing, and the crowd says, you know, shh, be quiet, you're embarrassing us. And he just calls all the more, and then to everyone's amazement, Jesus stops and calls for him. And then I think it's funny because this crowd who was trying to shush him, they're like, Oh, make way, here he goes, they're calling you, you know, they part for him and let him go to Jesus. And Jesus says, What do you want me to do for you? And he says, I want my sight. And with a word, Jesus is fully healed. And notice it starts with him being alongside the way, and it ends up with him following the way of Jesus, which I wonder if wasn't poetic on Mark's part, that he's sitting beside the road but doesn't know the way yet, and at the end we see him healed and on the way, uh, following Jesus. So the question is why we have this healing of the of the blind man in chapter 8, and now we have another healing of the blind man. Why would Mark see fit to include this here? And I think this mirror is designed by God to, or this healing is designed by God to be a mirror to help the disciples understand their own blindness and to fan their faith. So let me tell you what I mean by that. I think there's three ways this healing reflects what's going on with the disciples. The first is Barnamaeus being blind is a mirror to their own blindness. He is alongside the way, but he is not yet in the way. He confesses that Jesus is the Son of David, but he's still blind. He's still groping in the dark. And I think so too are the disciples. They have confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, but their sight is only partial. They don't yet understand the way to greatness. They don't yet understand what it means to gr to follow Jesus. So in that sense, he's mirroring their blindness. The second thing, though, he mirrors is the faith which breaks through that blindness. And Mark gives us three characteristics of that faith. First, it's desperate. He cries out for mercy repeatedly and frequently, and the more they try to shush him, the more he says no and cries out. So he is, he knows he's helpless and he cries out to the one who can help him repeatedly. Son of David, have mercy on me. So he has this desperate face, he has a relentless faith. He doesn't give up when the crowd tries to shush him and rebuke him. He won't be deterred. He's not, doesn't care about protocol or embarrassment. He says he knows he's got this need, this is the opportunity, Jesus is there, it's time to act. So he has this desperate and relentless faith. And then third, it's reckless. When he hears that Jesus is calling him, he throws aside his cloak. Now, the outer cloak was probably his sole possession. He, because we're told he's a beggar and he's blind, he would have used this as his blanket at night, and then he would roll it up and sit on it as a cushion to beg on during the day, and he's so overcome with that he just throws it away, his only possession. Now think about the rich young ruler that we looked at a couple of weeks ago, where Jesus says, uh, sell all you have and give it to the poor, and the the man leaves grieved because he's rich and wealthy and he can't, he's not ready to give up that and put Jesus first in his life. Here you see the beggar throwing off his only possession without regard. He's blind. If Jesus doesn't heal him, how's he going to find it again? I mean, he's he's throwing everything away to follow Jesus. So you have this relentless, desperate, and reckless faith. And I think that's something that Jesus wants the disciples to see. That's what it takes to follow him, and he will respond to that, which is the third image. So he sees their blindness, Bartimaeus shows them their blindness, shows them what faith can do to that blindness, and then the response of Jesus' mercy is the last one. Because Jesus stops what he's doing, he calls the man to him, and he heals them. First he prompts Bartimaeus with the question, what do you want me to do for you? And I have to wonder if James and John weren't listening to that, going, hmm. You know, if that wasn't some kind of like stinging echo of their own request. The other thing I wonder about them is when they saw him on the cross with one man on his right and his left, did they remember this and wonder? You know, I just I just wonder if that wasn't an image to them of that's what greatness is. But it anyway, uh I think the difference is James and John were asking for glory, but they didn't yet understand the way to glory. The beggar is basically saying, Give me my sight, teach me, uh, let me see. And Jesus grants him what he asks. He says, uh, your faith has made you well, which is literally your faith has saved you. And the interpretive question is, is he talking about physical healing only, or is he talking about physical and spiritual healing? And I think, because Barnabas then follows him, that this was both physical and spiritual, that he's saying something more profound, that your faith has not only given you sight, but saved you. And I have to wonder, there's a one of the prophecies of the suffering servant, this is Isaiah 35, he says, Say to those who say to those with anxious heart, take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, the recompense of God will come, that he will save you, and then the eyes of the blind will be opened. I wonder if that wasn't in Jesus' mind that that this is the day, the eyes of the blind will be opened, that they will be given sight, that God is coming to uh to save them. So then with his new vision, Barnamaeus recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, and now he's following him in the way. So you have this kind of wonderful picture, I think, that God orchestrated from the twelve to see their own blindness to what Jesus was doing, to see the saving faith that can overcome that blindness, and then the mercy of Jesus, that how he responds, that everyone, every cry, everyone who cries to him for mercy is granted access, is granted that. So the question then is what do you want Jesus to do for you? Do you want him to make you great? That's okay. I think that's part of our God given desires is to be great. But the problem is greatness is not beauty or wealth or romance or the perfect life or uh degrees after your name or dollars in the bank. Uh great that's how we measure greatness. But Jesus says, no, greatness is not the material wards, it's the curing the blindness of your soul. So those who are seeking to be great asking what's in it for me, how do I enhance my name or my reputation, they're not going to find it. But those who want to be great by serving the kingdom of God, by doing whatever God asks them to do, by uh being willing to help encourage and lend a hand or follow the way of the cross, even if it means uh laying down your life, those are the ones who are who are great, the ones who are learning how to serve others. There's another powerful scene in the movie, The End of the Spear. Uh I want to close with that. The widows of the American missionaries are among the Wadani tribe, and they're telling them about Jesus, and one of the tribesmen starts to leave, and then he turns back and he asks, Why didn't the men shoot us? So he's referring back to the original missionaries and asking, they had guns. When we came with our spears, why why didn't they shoot us? And the one of the women answers them, answers, she said, They came to tell you about God, but she uses the word, their word for God, which I can't pronounce. It's like Waynangani or something. But she says, They came to tell you that God has a son. He was speared, but he didn't spear back, so that the people spearing him would one day live well. I thought that's about as good a summary of the gospel as you can get. He was speared, but he didn't spear back, so that the people spearing him would one day live well. That's what he's saying in this passage. Greatness is in the kingdom of God is not spearing back. It's laying down your life. And because Jesus did that for us, we will one day be in glory. We will have the greatness we desire, but it's not the greatness that you measure by how high you reach on the career ladder or how many dollars you have in the bank, or how many people jump when you say jump, or or rush to carry out your agenda when you lay out your agenda. Greatness is measured by how willing we are to serve. Now we may not be called to lay down our lives as the apostles did, and many missionaries still do today, but we are humbly called, I think, to just serve and love others in whatever place God's put us. So do you want to be great? You should, I think, because you were made for greatness. But the way to greatness is the is the way of the cross. Let me pray and then give you time to respond. Father, we just come before you confessing that we are not the people that we should be, that just like the apostles, we have mixed motives. We want to serve you and we want our own personal glory. We want to be great and we want to be famous, and that's not always in the cards. And we pray that we could lay all that at your feet, as Bartimaeus did, calling out for mercy, asking you to give us sight to teach us what's truly valuable and what's truly good, and to be content with whatever lot you put in our lives, to know that nothing good is lost, that acts of service and acts of love and compassion and kindness are greatly valued in your kingdom, and that if no one ever knows our name, we can be great by serving you and humbly calling what you have us to do. In Jesus' name. Amen. Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us at Wednesday in the Word with Krisan Marotta. We hope you have enjoyed our study together and grown closer to the Lord. Please let us know if you have any questions about this study. We are on the internet at wednesdayintheword.com where you will find this and other Bible studies. We hope you'll join us again soon.