Matthew chapter twenty this morning I'm going to read our scripture for us. Then we'll get into God's Word together. Matthew twenty, verse twenty four. We're picking up in the middle of the story that Ryan preached on last week. Of course, it's the mother, that of James and John, that asked for them to be seated better at a better seat in the kingdom of heaven. And since it was a Mother's Day request, and by God's providence, it fell on Mother's Day, I thought it'd be a great passage for Ryan to preach, but we'll pick it up in the middle of it here. Verse twenty four, when the ten heard of it. Meeting their request, they were indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus called to them and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. Whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. This is the Word of God. I pray he would seal it on your hearts. Last week, I was not just dodging preaching that text of Mother's Day, but I was in Los Angeles for the graduation ceremony of the Master's Seminary. Three of our own students from Emmanuel Bible Church graduated from the Master's Seminary this week, and I'm excited for them. And to see what the Lord is going to do with their lives on Saturday night. We had a banquet for those students. It was at the Ritz Carlton in Los Angeles. That's a great place for seminary banquet, because many of those students are going to go and be pastors of small, rural churches around the country. They'll never be allowed into the same zip code as the Ritz Carlton ever again. It was the fortieth graduating class from the master's seminary. And as I was thinking back on it, I believe that I have been to twenty six of those banquets now, and I enjoy them. This particular banquet, I was seated at table twelve since you were curious. Um, there's about forty tables there. Table twelve was like the second row in the middle, but they assigned everybody there their seats by little nametags. And so I was assigned at the bottom of the table. So my back was to the stage. Do you know that that seat, it's kind of an awkward seat to have. I just turn it around for the the talk. I kind of wish I had a better seat a little bit. If I was further back, like the back row, I could misbehave. If I was more like the front row of tables, I'd feel more important. Instead, I had like that middle row with my back to the stage. Anyway, I've made it a goal now. My goal over the next year is to earn myself a better seat assignment next year. I'm open to any strategies, any suggestions, how to work my way up, sit in the front row, maybe even sit next to the speaker. That would be nice. Imagine. I bet they get served their food first up there. Is this a weird conversation? Is it feeling awkward? It is a very odd thing to talk about, isn't it? Most Americans don't think that way. Like we don't think, oh, the seating assignment is really that important or reflects how good of a person you are or your status in society. We don't really think like that. Honestly, I don't know if you can think of exceptions. I know you might think of a person that really cares about that, but most of you, when you go to a wedding and you see the seating assignments, you look at the seating assignments and you're not wondering, how close am I to the front? You're probably wondering who did I get seated next to? I hope I don't get seated next to somebody boring for the next hour of my life. That would be lame. Oh, look, it's cool people. And that's about the extent of what we think about. Not true in the Jewish world and the Jewish world. It's a very much a honor culture. And that honor is seen at these kind of banquets, at these kind of weddings. The Jewish world revolves around these Shabbat dinners. Friday night, the families get together and the seating is very orchestrated, choreographed. Not every Friday night do you do a big, massive thing inviting lots of families, but many Friday nights you do. Even to this day. And in Israel, some families will rent hotel rooms on Friday night and the banquet hall at hotels on Friday night. And they'll bring a bunch of people over because whoever you have Shabbat dinner with, you'll spend that Friday night and Saturday, most of Saturday with. And the seating is very important. How close you sit to the host is a huge deal. Sometimes there's multiple tables and there's debates about which you'd rather sit at the foot of the table one or the head of table two. Like, which is actually more honoring. It seems like an abstract or weird conversation to us to have. Not so in the Jewish world. That is a huge deal. In our mind, it sounds childish or funny. Hopefully you knew I was joking when I said it's my goal to get a better seating assignment next year. I was joking, if that was my goal, that would be sad and pathetic. Not true. In the Jewish world. That would be a very noble goal. I loved Ryan's message for last week for a lot of reasons. If you didn't hear it, I would encourage you to listen to it. But he brought out some good elements of that request and some dangerous elements of that request. But I do feel that sometimes our American ears miss what is actually being asked for when the mom comes to Jesus and says, I want my kids seated next to you. She's talking about them being honored in the Kingdom of heaven in a way that the Jews would have ears to hear and understand. I mean, it is important where you are seated, how many times in John's writing, in John's Gospel does he let you know? By the way, I was the one who got to sit next to Jesus at the at the table. It's his way of telling you it's important to them. The disciples understood the hierarchy. There's twelve disciples. They're always described in more or less the same order in groups. And inside of those groups the order may vary, but there was no doubt of the hierarchy in the disciples mind. They knew who sat where, and it was important to them. Now, this has been going on for a while in Matthew's Gospel, going back to chapter eighteen, the disciples are asking Jesus, who's going to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Again, from an American perspective, it's an odd question. Not in the Jewish world. And Jesus answers in a very odd way, by taking children to himself and saying, these children are going to be the most important in the kingdom of heaven. They'll be the greatest. They're speaking of the childlike nature of their faith. This goes on to produce a debate and a dispute. They're arguing on the roads about where they're going to get to sit in the kingdom. Jesus brings more children to him self in chapter nineteen and says, I'm telling you, to such belong the kingdom of heaven. These are the greatest that are there. So James and John have changed approaches. Now Peter has been trying to muscle the kids out of the way. James and John push their mom forward. Well, when the ten hear about this, they are indignant as the word that's used in the ESV. It's a word that means angry, furious, like the cat pet backwards to the point of anger getting bit. That's this word. The other ten cannot believe that those two guys who they know would stoop so low to have their mom angle to get them promoted. And the one seating chart that is eternal. You've got to be kidding me. That's their attitude. Well, Jesus doesn't rebuke the question. Instead, he actually answers it in a way that describes how to climb the ladder of greatness. And that'll be our outline this morning. Climbing the ladder. You want to navigate to a better table assignment in heaven. Here you go. Jesus will tell you how. Now, as I mentioned, the question aggravated the disciples. That's what verse twenty four says. But hopefully Jesus's answer aggravates us. His main point in Christ's kingdom, greatness is not seized through power, but through humble service. He gets at this in verse twenty five. Jesus called them to himself. Team meeting. Remember, they're on the road towards Jericho here. Team meeting, he says, pulls them all together, pulls the the camel over, so to speak. Says, listen, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. It is an interpretive issue here, whether Gentiles means literally ethnically Gentiles or all of those outside the kingdom of heaven, because what he describes matches the Jewish culture of feasts and Shabbat dinners very well. But it's also true of the Roman world, although slightly differently. And the Roman world, when people would go to banquets, they would be dressed according to their rank. Political leaders would have sashes on them that would identify them. You could tell somebody importance by how many servants they had with them. This person comes with an entourage of people. He must be more important than me. I only have one or two servants. They had that hierarchy even in the Roman world. And so Jesus is talking about that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. You already saw in the sermon on the Mount, when some great and wealthy people were giving things, they would have trumpets. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. I mean, what good is it to be an honorable and powerful person if the people you're crossing on the street don't know how honorable and powerful you are? Like, why even bother being the greatest in your neighborhood if your neighbors don't know how great you are? You should at least have a bumper sticker. Greatest in the two. Two. Three. One. Three. Look out! The Romans would have sashes. The Jews might have trumpets. The point was, they were lording over other people their greatness. And this goes all the way to how they understood authority in verse twenty five. The great ones exercise authority over them. Jesus is not even critiquing this. He's just saying it almost axiomatically like he's just saying it's obviously true. Their greatest leaders are the ones that exercise authority. If you were to ask a Roman who is the greatest of your leaders, he would obviously say the one with the most authority who is the greatest political leader. He's the one that wins the elections. Who is the greatest in the the military, the highest ranking guy who's the greatest in this squadron or at this base, the one with the highest rank? The one was the most authority. That seems so obvious to us. And Jesus isn't even critiquing it. He's just saying it like a fact. The guy who's in charge is the one with the most authority. But then he says. What's going to be shocking to the disciples? Verse twenty six, it shall not be so among you. It's not going to be that way in the church. What is greatness going to be like in the church? Well, the greatest person the church is going to be first a deacon. He says in verse twenty six, whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And the ESV says, servant. There you'll see a little footnote. It's the Greek word diakonos. It's the word that comes in English. As servants, of course, we use it as the word deacon. We just transliterate it diakonos to deacon. We have deacons in the church. We recognize our deacons every year. A deacon is a servant. Because of that, we lose. How shocking it is what Jesus says here. We've cleaned up the word diakonos. Christianese is the language that Christians speak, and words have different meanings than they do in the rest of the world. Christianese the word diakonos has been obfuscated by Christianese it's become a positive term. It's good to be recognized as a deacon, but this. When Jesus says it is a secular word. There was no church when Jesus was teaching here. The church hadn't started yet. There were no deacons. This is a secular word, and it is the word for the lowest of the servants. Some commentaries say there's up to forty different words Jesus could have chosen from here. The Roman world was very hierarchical. There were all kinds of different servants, and they had different words for the servants that worked in the fields, the servants who were day laborers, the servants who worked for seasonal time, the servants who worked in the house, the servants who did the laundry. Servants who did the food. The cooks in the house. The. The body man. They had a word for the body man. The one who would follow you around and carry your your bags. They had words for all kinds of different servants. All kinds of different slaves had word slaves that had been kidnapped, slaves that had been purchased, slaves that had been redeemed. They all had different words for them. Something like forty words Jesus chooses here. The lowest word, a diacono, is the one who does the most menial tasks. A diacono is the one who changes the chamber pot, the one who buses the table. The one who is cleaning out the trash. That's a diacono. That's the word Jesus uses. The greatest among you is going to be the diacono, the deacon, the slave, the the lowly, lowly servant. Gentile leaders lorded over by their authority. Christian leaders are marked by being great, by how they serve one another. Leadership in the church will be marked by service. Jesus says, your greatness in the kingdom is not marked by your authority. It is not marked by your status or your persuasion. Greatness in the kingdom is marked by your service. How low you're willing to serve. That's why when we use the word deacon, we mean it as a compliment. It was meant as an insult in Jesus's lifetime. But the effect of Jesus is teaching here, and you should appreciate this. The effect of Jesus's teaching is such that now the word deacon is a compliment. If you get a letter in the mail from the church saying, hey, we're going to recognize you as a deacon, you probably don't go, how dare they? I'm insulted. It's not meant as an insult. It's meant as a compliment, and the very fact that our deacons receive it as a compliment shows you how thoroughly Jesus is teaching here has infiltrated the church. Deacon now is a compliment. It's a measure of greatness. And listen, churches prized teaching. Of course they do. They prize preaching. Paul describes in the book of Romans the difference between speaking gifts and serving gifts. And obviously he tells the Corinthians the speaking gifts are the more prominent gifts because speaking gifts happen in front of everybody. I'm speaking right now. I'm preaching right now. I have the gift of teaching, and all of you are looking at me. And that itself is kind of awkward. I'm learning to navigate it over the years. That's the nature of a speaking gift. A speaking gift is not the measure of greatness, and we sometimes conflate the two. You think of famous Christians or Christians you think are going to be great in heaven, and you might think of pastors or preachers or evangelists or missionaries. Well, they might have good speaking gifts. That does not equate to greatness in heaven. Greatness in heaven is marked by serving by service in this life. Even greatness is seen in service. Now this is true. Jesus is not only talking about the church. This is true in every area of life. By God's standard, he measures greatness through service. Think of marriage. In marriage, those with the greatest marriages are those that serve each other the most. Greatness in marriage is seen in service. Is there a concept of authority in marriage? Of course there is. A husband has authority, but a husband with authority who exercises that authority or who lords over that authority is not a great husband. A husband who serves his family is a great husband. Leadership in the secular level is marked by service. Effective leadership is marked by service. A manager or a boss, of course, has to clearly communicate to his employees. You have to give them expectations and parameters, and you have to be a steward of the money and the authority that's been given to you. Of course you do. You have to tell your employees what you want them to do and what your measures of success are. And a good boss clearly communicates those things, but that does not make a great boss. A great boss is marked by service, how he serves his employees. And you can see this. So obviously in the military where, say somebody who has command, he has authority over those under his command. Every person with command, with the same kind of numbers of people and responsibilities underneath them had the same level of authority. And yes, they have to give command this. They have to tell people what to do and maintain order and discipline in their units. Of course they do. But that is not the measure of greatness. Everybody with commands, in a sense, has the same level of authority. If you're all the same rank and with the same responsibility, you have the same level of authority. What makes somebody great in God's estimation, and that is how well that person serves those who are underneath them. It's just so countercultural. Our DC world even has the expression you're networking upward, but Scripture describes serving downward. Honestly, leadership in God's eyes is better represented by a towel than it is by a ladder. By washing people's feet. It's one hundred examples of this. I've talked about marriage and leadership and military and the Washington, DC culture. And just another side note here. You see this in churches. Leadership in the church should be marked by service, not by authority, not by dogmatic sayings. And I have seen so many churches, even churches that I have loved that start to go off the rails when leadership becomes marked by authority, by bossing people, by saying things like, I'm an elder or I'm a pastor, I'm in charge. So this is what you have to do when you hear that kind of line. That doesn't mean the church is dying, but it means the organs are failing, that's for sure. And the Christian world leaders lead by service. Yes, pastors and elders guard the flock with their voice. Of course they do. But they shepherd their flock by serving them. Position of Pastor Elder doesn't bestow greatness. It's service that bestows greatness. Commanding people to agree with you because you're in charge reveals weakness, not greatness. I used to work at a car dealership in Albuquerque, a BMW and Range Rover dealership. It was uh. I actually liked it. I had a I had a deacon style job for sure. I was washing cars and picking up trash was my job. It was owned by a guy who was very, very wealthy. This is how wealthy he was. One day he drove a lotus, which is a fancy sports car, and decided to buy a Lotus dealership to add to the mix. That was the kind of money he had, super expensive suits. He had a rule at our car dealership. Any trash that was visible had to be picked up immediately, and by visible he meant even a trash can like a trash can in the showroom. If you could see trash in it, whatever employee saw the trash has to take it out right away. And when I when I first learned that rule, I thought, man, I don't think this guy understands what a trash can is for what it's for. No, you cannot see trash anywhere. They're kind of bugged me for a while. Me as my minimum wage job, until one day I see him this owner and is like ten thousand dollars suit. Walking through the parking lot and a piece of trash had blown through the parking lot and went underneath the car, and he got down on his knees and pulled the trash out under the car and took it to the trash can. And I realized, okay, I guess if he can do that in his nice suit, I and my minimum wage job can do that. It's this poor picture of what Jesus is talking about, but I hope it resonates with you. Greatness, in God's estimation through leadership is seen through service, not through commands. In Christ's kingdom, greatness is seized not through power, but is received through humble service, through being a deacon. Secondly, through being a doulos, a deacon, and secondly, a doulos. That's the Greek word for slave. And you see it here in verse twenty seven, whoever would be first among you must be your doulos, must be your slave. Again, there's so many different words Jesus could have used the word he uses here do lost. That is the word for a slave. It's sometimes not always was translated slave. I'm glad the ESV did it here, because it's not American slavery. It's not somebody who was kidnapped from Africa and shipped somewhere else into to Europe to be a slave or whatever. That's not what a doulos is. A doulos is someone who was sold into slavery, probably by his family, to pay a debt. He's owned by the person who bought him until he's around age thirty, and then he's released, and he kind of has the status in society as the one who owned him. It's in a sense more noble, you could say, than American slavery, but in a sense, it's just as degrading because a slave does not have their own individual rights. A doulos does not have his own rights. He does not have his own identity. He is in the eyes of the law property. He has rights, but they're the rights of his owner, not of himself. If you assault a slave in the Roman world, you are treated by the law as if you had insulted or assaulted his owner. So in a sense, that affords protection. But in a sense it's degrading because it's not protection because of who you are, but because of who your owner is. There's all kinds of writings in the Roman world from people who said they'd rather be day laborers than slaves, because day laborers could choose when to work and when not to work. They work. They get paid. They provide for their family. Not so with the slave. A slave doesn't get to call in sick. He gets to call in sick. A slave doesn't get paid once at the start, pays off a debt, and now he works as property for years. It's somebody who's owned, who has no sense of personal identity. That is so against our Western world, our Western world. Prizes, autonomy prizes, personal freedom prizes, individual volition. But Jesus does not speak of greatness in terms of autonomy and individual volition. He speaks of greatness in terms of slavery. This is the third of a pair of couplets in Greek. If you read these verses, it has a rhyme to it. They're written in couplets. Gentiles lord it by bossing, by exercising authority, not you. You are serving. The first among you is slaving. So you get this kind of repetition in the Greek lording, serving, slaving. That's the idea. You're brought low. Slaves are not helpful like a deacon was. Slaves are owned and Jesus is taking not the best parts of Deacon and Doulos, but he's taking the lowest parts of Deacon and Doulos to define slavery. You will be great if you're being a deacon doing the lowest of the tasks, and you will be great if you are a slave with no sense of personal identity but belonging to the whole. Now Jesus is not commanding something that he himself doesn't do. It'd be one thing for a boss to say, hey, greatness here is defined by how well you serve me, everybody. So let's go. But no, Jesus says greatness is defined by being a slave, and then he himself becomes a slave. He serves us. Philippians two says, Christ, though having equality with God, did not consider equality with God something to be held on to. But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave. That's the word doulos becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Only Christ. When he became a slave, he became a slave to the Word of God in his deity. He's the author of the Word of God. In his humanity he becomes a slave to the Word of God. He becomes under the Word of God, only able to do what the Word of God commands him to do. His will was so submissive to the Word of God that it is as if he was a slave to what he was commanded, and he kept the word of God perfectly. This is very different than our slavery. We are born into this world, slaves to sin because we're in the likeness of Adam. Sin owns us, not the Word of God. We prize human volition and free will and all of that. But the truth is, outside of Christ, you have no real free will. You are a slave to sin. People say, do non Christians have free will? Sure, they can choose any kind of sin they want to do, but they are still a slave to sin. And then the gospel comes and frees you from that and you become a slave of Christ. Would it surprise you to know that the most common New Testament word to describe a Christian is not Christian? That's only used once or twice in the New Testament? The second most common word is disciple a student, a learner. But the most common word in the New Testament to describe a Christian is doulos, a slave of Christ, someone who is owned by Christ. You were a slave of sin. You are purchased by Jesus and now you belong to him. But if you look carefully at verse twenty seven, you'll notice that Jesus here is not talking about being his slave. Whoever is going to be great among you must be your slave. That's an odd expression. It's kind of alone in the New Testament. It means that greatness in the church is marked by belonging to the church. Greatness in the church is marked by being part of the church in a very true way, where you are, in a sense, owned by the body of Christ. Our lives are not our own. We've been bought with a cost. The scripture says, your body is not your own body. Paul tells the Corinthians, you've been bought. You belong to the body of Christ. Now Paul backs you into that analogy, starting in first Corinthians five, first Corinthians seven, where he says, a husband's body does not belong to himself, but to his wife, and a wife's body does not belong to herself, but to her husband. Now, there's implications and applications of that in marriage that are unique to marriage that Paul goes into the details of in first Corinthians seven, of course, but later he goes back to that same analogy to say that in a different sense, it is true of believers. You do not belong to yourself. You are part of the body of Christ. First Corinthians twelve twenty seven. You are all of the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it. That's the truth. We belong to each other, and greatness in the church is seen in recognizing that. I have often had people ask me, what is the point of becoming a member of the church? Why can't I be a Christian without being a member of the church? And I don't want to go into how much of the New Testament you need to believe in order to be a Christian? You know, believe whatever you're presented with, whatever's in front of you. Believe it. Okay. But I will tell you this you cannot pursue greatness in the kingdom apart from being joined to the body of Christ. At least not according to Matthew twenty, verse twenty seven. If you want greatness in the kingdom, you have to be part of the body of Christ. You must be a member of the church. The members belong to each other. That's the analogy used in First Corinthians twelve that, you know, hey, how are you doing? I'm doing great. My appendix is doing terrible, but I'm doing great. That doesn't make any sense. The body is one. If your thumb hurts, you hurt. How are you doing? Great. You know, my thumb got crushed this week by a forklift, but I'm doing fine. No. The whole body hurts together. Slaves are owned. Christians are owned and are part of the body of Christ. Well, this is the greatness seen by being a deacon. Greatness seen by being a doulos. Third, greatness seen in the diadem and the crown. Verse twenty eight even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. Son of man is the messianic title from the Book of Daniel. This is a human being who knows the mind of God. That's the Son of Man, a human being who knows God's redemptive plan, who comes to earth to fulfill the sixty nine weeks described in the book of Daniel? That's the Son of Man, the Son of Man, who is ushered in to Jerusalem to restore all things, the Son of Man who will die and be cut off by his own people. Speaking of the cross of Christ, speaking of his burial and his descent into the grave, the Son of Man who will be resurrected and who will ultimately restore all things to Israel. That's the Son of Man. Here Jesus is describing himself as the Son of Man as a title that speaks of his deity, that he knows the mind of God and His humanity, that he is very literally a son of man. It is two natures in one person. And Jesus says, this is him, and he did not come to be served. If anybody in world history could have said they came to be served, it would be Jesus. But he says, I did not come to be served. I mean, who doted on Jesus in his lifetime? Anyone? Maybe the woman at the banquet or the seating arrangements became an issue. Remember, Jesus was towards the front because he was the guest. This woman comes in and muscles her way to the head table is weeping all over Jesus's feet. Breaks an alabaster jar and anoints him with perfume. The host is upset and Jesus rebukes the host and says, man, you had so many chances to wash my hands or wash my feet. I don't see a towel around here. She is anointing me and then Jesus says she's anointing me for my burial. That's a downer thing to say at a banquet, isn't it? Leave her alone because I'm going to die and she's at least getting my body ready for it. She doted on Jesus, and Jesus made it about his death. He did not come to be served, but to serve by going to the cross. He didn't come to be adored. He came honestly to be listened to. He came as a mouthpiece of God, the Word of God incarnate. He came as the Word of God to speak the Word of God, to be listened to by the people of God. But he came to his own. His own people did not receive him. Instead rejected him, slandered him. I mean, he is the one who made the universe by speech. He is the author of speech. He's the giver of speech. Speech is a gift from him. He came to speak. His people closed their ears and used their own speech to lie about him and slander him and lie about him, to turn him over, to die and be murdered because of their gossip. That's what they did with their speech. And Jesus, when he went to the cross, closed his mouth and did not say a word. The Lord of the Lord of speech zipped his lips. So when he says he didn't come to be served but to serve and give his life, that's what he's talking about. He's the one who made the universe, and he had no place to lay his head. That's how the slavery of Jesus is seen. He's the one that made angels and in his hour of need, did not call on angels to help him. That's what he means when he says he didn't come to be served. He's the one who closed the lilies in beauty. He gives nature its beauty, and he is stripped naked and humiliated. He has a crown of thorns and a purple sash to mock him. That's what he means when he says he didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life. Did he come to be served? No. Although he deserved it. He came as a servant. He came as a slave. And not just any kind of deacon, but the one doing the lowest task, going all the way to the cross. And that leads to the last phrase here. To give his life as a ransom for many. That word ransom. It's the same word for. Redemption, which is another word that was a secular word when Jesus is using it. This is not a Christian word. It's become a Christian word over the years. It is not a Christian word. When Jesus says it here, it is a word for buying a slave out of the marketplace. They had a word for that, and that's the word Jesus uses here. He came to give his life to redeem people or ransom people. I'll tell you this slaves do not ransom other slaves. A person could be bought out of slavery. I mean, everything's for sale. They were sold into slavery. They could be bought out of slavery. Maybe the slave gets enough money. Maybe his family buys him out. That happened. It was unusual, but it happened. Let me tell you what never happened. A slave never bought out another slave from slavery. I mean, think back to when you were, like, in middle school history, and they're teaching you about the debtor's prison concept that England used to have. You owe one hundred bucks. They throw you in jail until you get one hundred bucks. But guess what? You don't get in jail one hundred bucks. You're there forever unless a friend or family member buys you out. Nobody would buy out somebody else. A slave in prison would not buy out another slave. But that's exactly what Jesus does. He comes as a slave to the Word of God. Truly, man. And he purchases us from our slavery to sin. How do you buy someone out of slavery to sin? What currency can buy somebody away from sin? Well, the wages of sin is death. What you need to be purchased out of that is life. It can't be any life. It has to be a sinless, spotless, holy life, a righteous life, a perfectly righteous life. That's the currency that's required to buy you out of sin, to ransom you out of the clutches of sin. That is exactly the currency that zero of us have. Sometimes people will teach this concept that there are people who led really good lives that have excess righteousness, and they can lend it to you to shorten your time in purgatory or whatnot. Not a biblical concept. There's nobody with excess righteousness to shop to you or your friends. Righteousness is a gift of God that was accumulated by Christ alone through his perfectly obedient life. So when he purchases us from the marketplace of sin, he's purchasing us with the righteousness of his life, that he obeyed every command of the Bible. Everything God gives, he did. He fulfilled the Word of God from the inside out and yet was still betrayed, still lied about, still goes to the cross where he takes our sin on himself and gives his righteousness to spring us free from the power of sin and death. That's what it means that he ransomed many people. He buys us from the marketplace of sin at the cost of his own life. This is one of the texts in the Bible that teach what people sometimes call limited atonement. Not my favorite phrase limited atonement, but it is taught in passages like this. The concept that Jesus did not pay the ransom for every human being in the world. He didn't pay a potential ransom for lots of people that aren't going to take it. He paid a real actual ransom for his children, and it is an effective ransom that actually springs them from the clutches of sin. He didn't pay the ransom for Goliath, for example, to choose one name from the Old Testament. Somebody who's already in hell. He didn't spring him from sin, from the power of the grave. He pays the ransom for his children. Now you're born into this world, a slave to sin. Thousands of years after Jesus paid your ransom. You don't know about it. You're walking in the clutches of sin, serving as a slave to sin. But then you encounter the news that Jesus paid your ransom. You believe it, and the chains are broken. That's why it says Jesus paid the ransom for many people. Not most people. Most people die and go to hell, but many people receive the ransom that Christ paid. This is the zenith. The capstone of Jesus is teaching. It doesn't get higher than this. The Son of Man, who is the Son of God, came to earth and led a sinless life and was rejected by his own people. But through that, rejection offers you eternal life, if you would believe it. And the disciples are arguing about who gets to sit where in heaven. This answer is so far outside of what they're concerned about. It's almost like they don't have the vocabulary to receive it. They want to sit here and there and they'll get hurt to ask and not him and not that person. And Jesus is saying, I did not come to be served, but to serve you by dying so you can go to the cross. The disciples wanted the Son of Man to be glorified without the suffering. But that's not what Daniel prophesied. Daniel said the Son of Man would be cut off. The disciples wanted the glory with the the exaltation without the grave. They wanted the cross to be empty. They wanted the crown to be a crown with jewels, not a crown of thorns. They wanted the Ascension, I'm sure, but not without. Not with the empty grave that made it necessary. They didn't understand what Jesus was talking about. They wanted the reigning without the serving. The crown without the cross. But Jesus presents them a model of greatness, fundamentally different. The slave became a ransom, and now the King calls us to follow him. The diadem of greatness rests upon the brow that wore the thorns. And that becomes the instruction for our greatness. You want to be great in the kingdom of heaven. You want the diadem of greatness. It comes through serving and slaving, darkening and dusting through going low. Lord, we're grateful that in your kingdom, greatness isn't attained by power or privilege or prominence. Prestige. Greatness comes through serving through being low. You are a God, the servant king. You gave your life as a ransom for us. Pray for anyone here today that has never trusted you with their heart, that has never believed the good news of eternal life. I pray today you would work in their heart, soften their heart, and help them believe the truth. I know we have many family and friends in town for this weekend. I do pray this message would resonate with their hearts. Be encouraging to them and show them the way to eternal life. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc dot church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ dot edu. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now, may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly. Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly.