Speaker 1: Again, I'm sure you've heard it a lot, but good morning.
Speaker 1: It's my privilege to read from today's passage of scripture for this morning's sermon.
Speaker 1: Uh, so I'll be reading from Mark Chapter 10 verses 32 through 45 they were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished while those who followed were afraid again, he took the 12 aside and told them, what was it going to happen to him?
Speaker 1: We are going up to Jerusalem, he said, and the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.
Speaker 1: They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the gentiles who will mock him and spit on him, who will flog him and killed him.
Speaker 1: In three days later, he will rise.
Speaker 1: Then James and John, the son of Zebedee, came to him.
Speaker 1: Teacher.
Speaker 1: They said, we want you to do for us.
Speaker 1: Whatever we ask, what do you want me to do for you?
Speaker 1: He asked.
Speaker 1: They replied, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.
Speaker 1: You don't know what you are asking.
Speaker 1: Jesus said, can you drink the cup?
Speaker 1: I drink or be baptized with the baptism.
Speaker 1: I am baptized with.
Speaker 1: We can.
Speaker 1: They answered.
Speaker 1: Jesus said to them, you will drink the cup.
Speaker 1: I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with.
Speaker 1: But to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.
Speaker 1: These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.
Speaker 1: When the 10 heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.
Speaker 1: Jesus called them together and said, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the gentiles, Lord it over them and their high officials exercise authority over them, not so with you.
Speaker 1: Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.
Speaker 1: And whoever wants to be first must be slave of all for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Speaker 2: Thank you Brad.
Speaker 2: I don't know how clear you can see it on the screen.
Speaker 2: I saw this button on Etsy and uh, it made me laugh.
Speaker 2: You know, I made me laugh, I think because it applies in a lot of places, but it particularly made me laugh because, uh, it describes how people think about church leadership leaders in the church.
Speaker 2: You know, there's that first part of the phrase there, who's in charge here?
Speaker 2: That's what people are thinking.
Speaker 2: Even if they don't ask it.
Speaker 2: That's what people are thinking when they visit a church.
Speaker 2: You know, as they're checking it out and they're, they're seeing, do I fit here?
Speaker 2: That's the question that rolls around in their head.
Speaker 2: Well, who runs things here?
Speaker 2: Who's in charge?
Speaker 2: Who shapes the direction of the, of the church?
Speaker 2: But, but I love the second phrase on that button.
Speaker 2: Oh, right.
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha.
Speaker 2: I am, you know, a lot of us could say that, but there are many churches that I've been at where the pastor thinks he wears that button.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm in charge here.
Speaker 2: I'm the chief executive officer and I determine where we're going to go and, and uh, you know, I hear from God the vision and a, and you need to let me move ahead and determine the way things are going to go.
Speaker 2: Maybe you've been churches like that.
Speaker 2: Then there's other churches that I've been a part of that, that the board and board members believe that they were that button board members, whether they're elders or whether their deacons or by some other title, they think they were that button that they think they're in charge.
Speaker 2: You know, they operate like um, pastoral staff.
Speaker 2: You are employees and we control things here and we tell you what to do and you take our orders and you carry them out.
Speaker 2: And then at every church that I've been at, there's at least a few members, sometimes more than a few who think they were that button.
Speaker 2: You know, pastors, elders, deacons, whatever you exist to make me happy.
Speaker 2: You, we would never would say it that bluntly, but you exist to carry out the kind of programming and ministry and meet my needs in a way that I am satisfied with.
Speaker 2: And so I really run things here and if you don't keep me happy and you don't meet my needs, you know what I'm, I'm going to exercise leadership and influenced by withholding my giving or by, by withholding my attendance or going ultimately somewhere else.
Speaker 2: So some of you, I don't, I don't know, but some of you may think in some way, shape or fashion that, that you were that button.
Speaker 2: So, so that button really is very relevant in church leadership in general.
Speaker 2: I think when we think about the topic of leadership in the church, it's very relevant to where central churches right now, as you heard earlier, we are looking for our next lead teaching pastor.
Speaker 2: I think personally, I think we're close.
Speaker 2: And so the question becomes, well, what kind of model of leadership is that?
Speaker 2: How is he going to think about himself and his role and leading the church?
Speaker 2: Uh, but, but we're also at the same time that we're searching for Aleut lead teaching pastor.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle of another round of elder selection and we're seeking to add some more men, make them elders too to join our elder board and collaboratively lead the church forward with the pastoral staff.
Speaker 2: And so how are they going to think about themselves?
Speaker 2: How do men who get in those positions on our elder board, how they, how do they think about exercising that position that they have been entrusted with.
Speaker 2: You can see where models of church leadership is extremely relevant.
Speaker 2: And then some of you, some of you are, are, are maybe in the process of deciding will drive a future here at central.
Speaker 2: You know, and maybe some of you are thinking what really depends on who they get is the next lead teaching pastor or really depends on who gets on the elder board, who, who doesn't get on the elder board really depends on what opportunities that I'm offered.
Speaker 2: In the same way you are thinking through a model of leadership even when you think that way as a member of the congregation.
Speaker 2: So what irrelevant topic, and I don't choose this topic because we happen to be here in the pastoral search and the elder selection.
Speaker 2: I don't choose this topic because of any personal agenda.
Speaker 2: I really believe, I didn't, hadn't intended to speak on leadership today, but I really believe it is the focus of the interaction that Jesus has with his disciples that mark describes in our text today that Brad just read Mark 10 verses 32 through 45 and the context just if, if you're visiting or you're new to this series on mark, is we're at the point in the gospel of mark or Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he's on that journey and we know where that journey ends.
Speaker 2: That journey ends on Mount Calvary with him crucified on a cross and he knows that, but his disciples don't fully appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yet, even in spite of what he says in those first couple of verses there, it just seems to go right by them that he is going to suffer and die.
Speaker 2: And so Jesus uses all the opportunities he has on this last journey to Jerusalem to teach his disciples and he's teaching his disciples then those 12 but he's teaching any of us who claim to be followers of Jesus were disciples.
Speaker 2: He's teaching us as well.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I think he teaches us here in this episode is what is the model of leadership that God wants in his kingdom?
Speaker 2: We might say, what is the right model of church leadership?
Speaker 2: I think what he shows us here is the contrast between two models.
Speaker 2: There is, first of all there is the model of worldly leadership and there is the model of spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: And as you and I come to this topic today, you know we, we have to admit we come so influenced by the model of worldly leadership.
Speaker 2: That's what we see all around us.
Speaker 2: Spiritual leadership is foreign to us.
Speaker 2: Yet what we so desperately need and our next lead teaching pastor, what we so desperately need in our elders, what we so desperately need and anyone who has given a position of influence or have authority in our church is not worldly leadership, but spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: This passage opens with Jesus, again, leading his disciples to Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: And again, he knows where the journey ends and he has just told them where the journey ends at the cross, where he will suffer and die, but they don't get it.
Speaker 2: And they think it's a procession.
Speaker 2: They understand.
Speaker 2: And I give them credit that Jesus is really the Messiah, but they view that in terms of a political messiah.
Speaker 2: And so what do they think's gonna happen when they get to Jerusalem?
Speaker 2: Jesus is going to assume that messianic roll, Jesus is going to recover the lost throne of David.
Speaker 2: And somehow the, the Roman rule will be overthrown and, and Jesus will establish his earthly reign, his earthly kingdom and, and so that they're thinking as he does that we want to be in the right places.
Speaker 2: When, when he takes up his reign as King James and John, I've been thinking maybe about this even more than the rest of them.
Speaker 2: And somehow they get Jesus alone, uh, some part of this journey to Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: And they ask him in verse 37, Jesus, let one of us sit at your right hand and let another one of us sit at your, your left hand when you come into your glory, when you, in other words, as Messiah, when you take that throne in Jerusalem, and culturally, you know there's a king in that, that, that, that kind of culture a king, when he sat on his throne, anyone who sat on his right or on his left, those are the positions of greatest honor and greatest authority in that kingdom.
Speaker 2: So what's going on with these disciples?
Speaker 2: They don't understand.
Speaker 2: They don't understand the way God sent Jesus in the world to establish his kingdom.
Speaker 2: They assume it's its political power.
Speaker 2: They, they assume really it's its geopolitical.
Speaker 2: And so they assume that when Jesus begins his reign, because they've been loyal followers of him, hey, they get to become part of his new government.
Speaker 2: They get privileged places in his kingdom.
Speaker 2: I like how one commentator Garland puts it.
Speaker 2: They want to be crown princes coat raining on Thrones with Jesus, and the reason the other 10 and verse 41 become indignant.
Speaker 2: It's not because they really have the right answer and they know that's a totally off way of looking at Jesus and his messianic role.
Speaker 2: No, the reason they become indignant as they have the same desires in their heart, they want to have those places of honor and position and power and this all reveals the worldly mindset of leadership that these men had.
Speaker 2: They envision Christ's kingdom as if it is run like any political kingdom, any earthly kingdom, any, any government, any corporation, any business that we can think of today according to the norms of leadership that they know and we know in our cultures.
Speaker 3: Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's easy to criticize them, but we shouldn't look down on on them in any kind of judgment because that's where we would have been.
Speaker 2: That's how we would have been thinking.
Speaker 2: Maybe we would have asked it a little more tactfully of Jesus, but this is the air that we breathe as we grow up in this culture and so we think the same way as James and John.
Speaker 2: I like how John Stott put it, the world and even the church is full of James's and John's go getters and status seekers, hungry for honor and prestige, measuring life by achievement in everlastingly, dreaming of success.
Speaker 2: They are aggressively ambitious for themselves.
Speaker 2: This is the way the educational system raises you, raises us.
Speaker 2: It raises us up to think that this is the model for success.
Speaker 2: Many of us work and and professions and jobs and careers where aggressive ambition is not seen as something wrong.
Speaker 2: It is seen as a virtue.
Speaker 2: You're seen as weak if you are not an grow aggressively ambitious.
Speaker 2: And think of the media we consume, the movies that we watch, the commercials that, that, that, that we see all around us, the other media that reinforces day in and day out, that this is the path to success.
Speaker 2: This is the path to getting ahead and ultimately becoming happy.
Speaker 2: So without even consciously thinking about it, we carry you and I, we carry this model of worldly leadership not just in our jobs and not just in our homes.
Speaker 2: We carried into the church.
Speaker 2: We think that when a man or woman is born again and Jesus Christ and begins to follow him and filled with the Holy Spirit, that as they come in and they become part of the, the, the car congregation, a local church that that changed, that is begun in their heart, works its way out so easily and everybody should get along.
Speaker 2: And we've, where do we find, we find that no sanctification is lifelong and it's overcoming those worldly models takes a lifelong process.
Speaker 2: And so even godly men and women's struggle when they're given positions of leadership, when they aspire to positions of leadership, they struggle with this worldly model of leadership because again, that's the air that we breathe in our culture.
Speaker 2: Well, Jesus describes this model of worldly leadership really is a warning to his disciples and Ntu and to me and the first dynamic that he describes of worldly leadership has seen in verse 42 the rulers of the gentiles.
Speaker 2: Gentiles, just think of anybody out there who's an unbeliever, so people in places of authority and power in the world.
Speaker 2: What do they do?
Speaker 2: They Lord that authority, they lord that power over the people that they are in positions of power over the rulers of the gentiles, Lord it over them that that term, that Greek term Lord it over.
Speaker 2: So interesting.
Speaker 2: Alexander Strauch says, Lord, it over really conveys or describes an authoritarian attitude Freiburg.
Speaker 2: A Greek scholar says that Lord had over means you exercise dominion for your own advantage.
Speaker 2: In other words, what Jesus is warning us here about this model of worldly leadership that we so easily bring into the church is that leaders are tempted to focus on self.
Speaker 2: That's the temptation to Lord their position to Lord their authority over to use it for their own benefit.
Speaker 2: That's what Jesus, his disciples saw in the Roman rulers, in their culture.
Speaker 2: Men like Herod, they use their position in order to enrich themselves in order to indulge themselves at the expense of the people that they ruled over, and we know that's true of too many politicians today.
Speaker 2: They, they use their position of authority.
Speaker 2: They Lord it over for their own advantage.
Speaker 2: When a leader, even a leader in the church, Lloyd's their authority over you, they let you know one way or another, they let you know their boss.
Speaker 2: They let you know they're in control.
Speaker 2: When a leader Lloyd's their authority over you, they insist that because they have that position of authority, you should respect them and you should honor them simply because they've been given that position of authority.
Speaker 2: It was my privilege to serve in the United States air force for five years is active on active duty and in those five years I served under a number of air force commanders and of course in the military there is rank and you have a rank and authority is given on the basis of rank and I served under commanders who just because they had that rank, they expected you to get in line.
Speaker 2: They expected you to honor them and respect them and you know what?
Speaker 2: It was very hard to do that if all that they relied upon was the position they had.
Speaker 2: Thankfully I serve for a few commanders who never really needed to use their rank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had that position of authority, but the way they lead and the very obvious way that they cared for the people who served under them like me, made me want to respect them, made me want to honor them.
Speaker 2: They didn't Lord over Lord their position or their rank over the people that they were in authority over.
Speaker 2: When a leader, even a church leader, Lourdes their authority over you, they often expect that there are privileges, that there are perks with coming up with being in that position of of authority.
Speaker 2: They believe they should be treated in some way as special and how many political leaders, how many corporate leaders have we seen get caught up in this, that somehow they, they think that they are above the law.
Speaker 2: They are above standards because they are in that position and sadly, how many even spiritual leaders, church leaders have we seen get caught up in the same kind of mindset and attitude.
Speaker 2: Aubrey Malphurs who writes on church leadership says that the ever present temptation for leaders and he's talking about church leaders here, is to allow their leadership to become an ego thing, an exercise of ego to subtly and sometimes not so subtly dominate their followers and Jesus is warning his disciples, his disciples and his disciples.
Speaker 2: Now about this model of leadership.
Speaker 2: It's the world's model of leadership that that that desire for dominance and control and privileges.
Speaker 2: He said, he warns us because he says what it does is it focuses a leader, uh, upon himself or upon herself, and how can we live out the great commandment and the Great Commission?
Speaker 2: Love your neighbor as yourself and go into all the world with the Gospel if we're focused upon ourself, it's antithetical to to really all that Jesus calls us to whether there's another dynamic of worldly leadership that Jesus describes in verse 42 their high officials exercise authority over them.
Speaker 2: Now be clear here.
Speaker 2: Jesus is not saying there's, you know, all authority is bad.
Speaker 2: He's not saying are teaching here.
Speaker 2: That really the answer is to remove all positions of authority in the world and even in the church.
Speaker 2: We live in an increasingly anti authoritarian culture where we're many people advocate.
Speaker 2: There should be no positions of authority, but God is established spheres of authority in his creative order.
Speaker 2: He's established a sphere of authority in the home.
Speaker 2: Collagen's three children obey your parents in everything he's as he's established that authority of parents over their children.
Speaker 2: He's established authority in civil society.
Speaker 2: Romans 13 let everyone be subject to governing authorities.
Speaker 2: He does that so that there will be order in in civil society.
Speaker 2: He's established even authority in the church in Christ church.
Speaker 2: Hebrews 1317 have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority.
Speaker 2: So Jesus is not saying the problem is with authority in itself.
Speaker 2: He's saying the problem is the way authority is often exercise.
Speaker 2: See, the problem is how authority is often misused.
Speaker 2: Alexander Strauch, a writer on church.
Speaker 2: Eldership says, the way authority is frequently misused in the church is by autocratic leadership.
Speaker 2: What is autocratic means that I have all the control.
Speaker 2: I have all the power.
Speaker 2: I don't really need to listen to you or your opinion.
Speaker 2: I don't really need to take into account your wishes or your needs.
Speaker 2: Strauch says that audit, Socratic leadership has long been a temptation to church leaders.
Speaker 2: He reaches back into the Old Testament and Zeke, you'll 34 criticized[inaudible] is condemning the spiritual leaders in Israel.
Speaker 2: They're there.
Speaker 2: He says, they're like shepherds who rather than caring for their sheep, they're butchering their sheep.
Speaker 2: They are feeding off their sheep rather than feeding their sheep and caring for their sheep.
Speaker 2: Strauch says, you see it in the early church and in third John there is this church leader who, who is just briefly mentioned[inaudible] fees and the phrase that John uses about him as a church leader is he loves to be first.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He wants that position of prominence.
Speaker 2: He wants that position of control and power and he puts down others and keeps down others in order to keep himself first.
Speaker 2: Leaders are tempted to misuse their authority.
Speaker 2: The problem is not with authority.
Speaker 2: The problem is with the misuse of authority.
Speaker 2: Jesus says that this worldly model of leadership, even though it's all that we know as we come into the church, it has no place in the church.
Speaker 2: Verse 42 it must not be like that among you.
Speaker 2: And instead, Jesus gives us an entirely different model, a counterintuitive model, a model that we are not capable of and our own human abilities of, of, of carrying out and living out without the work of the Holy Spirit transforming us.
Speaker 2: It is the model of spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: There's much we could say about spiritual leadership, but just sticking with the text this morning, I think there's a couple of principles in what Jesus teaches and the text about spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: The first principle of spiritual leadership is seen in verse 40 these places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.
Speaker 2: Remember the setting, James and John are saying, Jesus, we know you're going to rain.
Speaker 2: Can we have a number two and the number three spot of authority and your kingdom?
Speaker 2: And what is Jesus saying here?
Speaker 2: Those positions, those positions of spiritual authority and God's kingdom are not something that Ge, even Jesus could grant at that point.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Because God, the father has already sovereignly determined who would fill those roles.
Speaker 2: And so here's the principle.
Speaker 2: In the words of Oswald Sanders, it is the sovereignty principle of spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: God assigns places of Spiritual Authority and leadership in his sovereign will.
Speaker 2: You know, we may think that the process that we use to select our next lead teaching pastor or the process that we use to select our next elders really determines the outcome.
Speaker 2: And by the way, we need a good process.
Speaker 2: We are continually seeking to be prudent and wise and how we do that process.
Speaker 2: We want it to be open and transparent.
Speaker 2: We want it to be thorough what we wanted to address, people's questions.
Speaker 2: We work hard to have a really good process, but you know what?
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, as good a process as we have, the process does not determine who will be our next lead teaching pastor.
Speaker 2: The process does not determine who will raise up to become our next elders.
Speaker 2: The process does not determine the positions any of you may be given in God's kingdom, whether it's here at central or somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, our spiritual leaders are chosen not by an individual, not by a group of people, not even buy an entire congregation, but by the sovereign appointment of God.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't pretend to understand how God works through our human processes.
Speaker 2: I don't pretend to understand why sometimes leaders in the church like[inaudible] fees somehow get chosen, selected, raised up.
Speaker 2: What I do know is even with through my human side, if, if I look and say there must have been a mistake there somewhere, God has been in control of the process and he is still working through even the selection of that leader that I may question.
Speaker 2: He is working to accomplish his sovereign purposes in this church and in his kingdom.
Speaker 2: So God is the one who raises up who he chooses to lead and until we understand that, until we embrace that we're going to struggle with spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: We're going to struggle when we're passed over and were not selected.
Speaker 2: We're going to struggle when somebody is chosen or selected that we wouldn't have chosen or selected, but we when when we recognize God is in control of the process and we yield to his sovereign will, that begins to change the way we look at spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: The second principle of spiritual leadership is seen in verse 38 or he challenges James and John, can you drink the cup that I drink?
Speaker 2: Can you be baptized with the baptism I baptized with?
Speaker 2: Now there's biblical images here.
Speaker 2: The Cup is an image seen throughout the old testament.
Speaker 2: It's a biblical metaphor for an experience that God is determined you're going to go through.
Speaker 2: He has a pointed or a lotted this experience, these circumstances that he asks you to walk through, that he offers you, that cop that he wants you to drink down fully.
Speaker 2: Baptism is an image of something that you are fully immersed in, something that engulfs you so that no part of you remains untouched.
Speaker 2: So for Jesus, it's easy to see his cup and his baptism, his cup that he would drink was the cup of God's wrath.
Speaker 2: It is him taking all the punishment for your sin and my sin upon himself.
Speaker 2: Drinking that down so that you and I could be forgiven by his perfect work at the cross is baptism, is him being totally engulfed with the suffering and the death.
Speaker 2: That was all part of that, but, but that's not the cup in the baptism of the disciples.
Speaker 2: It's not your cup.
Speaker 2: It's not my cup or baptism.
Speaker 2: Is that, what is the cup that we're called?
Speaker 2: The drink?
Speaker 2: What is the baptism we're called to be baptized with?
Speaker 2: If God is calling us into spiritual leadership, his baptism was his suffering.
Speaker 2: There is a like suffering not and a redemptive way, but there is a like suffering that he calls his followers, especially those who follow him in positions of leadership into and so the principle here is as Oswald Chambers calls it the suffering principle of spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: Jesus knew that John and James with suffer hardship and persecution as a consequence of faithfully following him.
Speaker 2: James is the first martyr and John was exiled on Patmos and probably died as a martyr and here's the principle.
Speaker 2: Men and women who are raised up to positions of spiritual leadership, they need to have their eyes wide open that that it is not about privilege and power.
Speaker 2: It is often about suffering.
Speaker 2: It is often about taking the cup and saying, Yup, if it, this is what it means to faithfully follow you, Jesus, I will drink that cup.
Speaker 2: I will take that suffering.
Speaker 2: Some of that suffering sometimes for some spiritual leaders is the suffering even like the suffering of James leading to martyrdom.
Speaker 2: Most often it's the daily suffering.
Speaker 2: It's the daily suffering of saying, you know, I have my preferences, I have my desires, I want what I want, but I'm going to lay those down.
Speaker 2: I'm going to sacrifice those because it's not my interest I'm supposed to have at heart.
Speaker 2: It's, it's the needs of the, it's what God wants us to do in and through his people that are part of the church.
Speaker 2: So part of the cost of spiritual leadership is that daily self sacrifice that a leader agrees to pay to faithfully follow Jesus.
Speaker 2: The last principle in this text is seen in verse 43 whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.
Speaker 2: A servant is someone who willingly chooses to meet someone else's need.
Speaker 2: I mean, we live to meet our own needs, but what does a servant do?
Speaker 2: A servant says, I see needs and you maybe not the needs that you think you have his needs, but I see needs, God has shown me needs.
Speaker 2: God has called me to be part of meeting your needs.
Speaker 2: I'm going to choose willingly to become part of meeting your needs.
Speaker 2: And here are Jesus turns the model of worldly leadership completely upside down.
Speaker 2: He says, it's not to be sir, are to be served.
Speaker 2: It's not that privilege and power.
Speaker 2: It is if you follow the great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, it is to seek to meet the needs of your leg, your neighbor.
Speaker 2: It is to seek to love your neighbor intangible ways, taking into account their needs.
Speaker 2: Jesus goes on in verse 44 whoever wants to be first must be a slave of all.
Speaker 2: A slave was even lower in that culture than a servant because a slave is somebody who forfeits his rights.
Speaker 2: A slave was someone who gave up her preferences, who had to put the death, her desires in order to serve as he or she was called to serve.
Speaker 2: A slave gives to meet the needs of others without expecting anything in return.
Speaker 2: And you see these two models of being able to willingly serve and meet the needs of others and being willingly give up preferences to give up desires and already to do that.
Speaker 2: You see those coming together in that model that Jesus teaches, that spiritual leadership, it is not based upon position or power or control or our privilege.
Speaker 2: It is based upon loving people practically through service and self sacrifice.
Speaker 2: Darryl Dell House, the president of Phoenix seminary puts it like this much better than I could.
Speaker 2: Servant leadership begins with an understanding that people have been given to us, to steward people are to be stewarded, not used, not taken advantage of.
Speaker 2: When people feel used by you, they don't feel served, but when people feel valued, trusted, supported, respected, advised, challenged, rewarded, and appreciated, they feel served.
Speaker 2: In other words, when people feel loved, they feel served.
Speaker 2: He goes on.
Speaker 2: Servant leadership comes down to understanding authority.
Speaker 2: Remember, the problem is not that there are positions of authority.
Speaker 2: The problem is how we exercise authority.
Speaker 2: The essence of authority is to make is the right to make decisions that affect the lives of others with formal authority.
Speaker 2: People respond to you to what you say because of your position.
Speaker 2: Remember the many commanders that I served under in the United States air force.
Speaker 2: You respect me because of my rank, but this is not the goal of the servant leader.
Speaker 2: The goal is to have people respond to what is said because of who he or she is a servant.
Speaker 2: I so wanted to follow those commanders who didn't use their rank, who I knew had my needs in mind and had the greater needs of the unit and the organization.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to be compelled to follow those kinds of leaders.
Speaker 2: Finally, Jesus reveals the supreme example of spiritual leadership in verse 45 the son of man, that's Jesus.
Speaker 2: The son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Speaker 2: Jesus isn't just teaching lofty principles.
Speaker 2: Jesus is not just setting this out there and saying try to live up to that.
Speaker 2: Jesus is modeling this.
Speaker 2: This is really the pattern of Jesus's life that we're going to see culminating and what he did when he went to Jerusalem and died on calvary for your sin and my sin, and again, it's completely different.
Speaker 2: Upside down from the world's model as the, as the son of God, as the second person of the trinity who is more deserving of all authority and all glory and all privilege and all power than God the son.
Speaker 2: But as Paul says in Philippians two even though we had all that he laid it aside, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.
Speaker 2: He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross modeling to us spiritual leadership.
Speaker 2: He gave up his rights, he gave up his privilege, he gave up his power in order to accomplish this, not just the supreme act of service, but the Supreme Act of love dying in our place to pay for our sins.
Speaker 2: Incidentally, I don't assume that just because you're here in church on a Sunday morning that you have responded personally to that, and I love personally the powerful image of him paying a ransom and here this morning.
Speaker 2: So maybe you're here this morning and and Christ is not become yet your personal savior.
Speaker 2: And Lord, let me use this image that he gives to just give you one little 32nd glimpse of the Gospel.
Speaker 2: You and I, apart from Christ, our slaves, we are slaves to our sin.
Speaker 2: We are slaves under the debt of sin and a slave cannot free themself.
Speaker 2: A sleigh cannot pay, cannot contribute in any way to getting themselves out of that condition of enslavement.
Speaker 2: A ransom has to be paid.
Speaker 2: Someone else has to come and pay to remove that person from their enslavement.
Speaker 2: That is what Jesus did for you.
Speaker 2: That is what Jesus did for me.
Speaker 2: He paid the ransom with his own blood so that we would be freed from our sin, and if you have not responded to that, you can.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 2: You can freely respond to that today because that ransom is freely paid for you.
Speaker 2: There are people up front after the service, there are people in the back.
Speaker 2: I'm happy to talk with you, but that is our greatest desires.
Speaker 2: You come in this morning that you would know the freedom from that and slave meant to send through the ransom that was paid by the ultimate servant leader, the son of God.
Speaker 2: What kind of lead teaching pastor are we looking for as we close?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what you're thinking.
Speaker 2: Are you thinking of that big personality?
Speaker 2: Are you thinking of that charismatic individual?
Speaker 2: Are you thinking of the one who's going to have all the answers?
Speaker 2: Is that a model of really leadership or spiritual leadership?
Speaker 2: What kind of elders are we seeking both now in this current selection and in the years to come?
Speaker 2: What kind of elders are we looking for?
Speaker 2: Are we looking for rulers?
Speaker 2: Are we're looking for micro managers or we're looking for employers?
Speaker 2: What kind of model is that?
Speaker 2: Is that a worldly models of leadership?
Speaker 2: What's the spiritual model of leadership?
Speaker 2: What kind of members do you want to be as you commit to be part of this next exciting season of ministry at Central Church?
Speaker 2: Do you want to use your membership in ways that you know?
Speaker 2: It's the way some people treat a country club membership.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll pay my dues and I'll come.
Speaker 2: As long as the programs are good and as long as you meet my my desires, as long as you do what I want, but things turned another way, you choose a pastor.
Speaker 2: I don't like you.
Speaker 2: You choose elders.
Speaker 2: I don't like you.
Speaker 2: Don't do the program that I want.
Speaker 2: I'm Outta here.
Speaker 2: Or at the very least, I'm withholding my giving.
Speaker 2: What kind of model of leadership is that?
Speaker 2: Is that worldly leadership?
Speaker 2: We'll kind of member really do we want to be?
Speaker 2: If we embrace spiritual leadership, I spray.
Speaker 2: We thank you Lord Jesus.
Speaker 4: MMM.
Speaker 2: Not only are you the source of our truth, not only does your teaching truth, but you lived truth.
Speaker 2: Then you model truth.
Speaker 2: Lord, we come to you confessing.
Speaker 2: You know, we, we, we don't naturally get this.
Speaker 2: We, we naturally get worldly leadership and we naturally desire worldly leadership and we confess, we carry those concepts right into your kingdom, right into the church with us.
Speaker 2: We need your ongoing transforming work.
Speaker 2: We need you to work in the life of whoever's going to be our next lead teaching.
Speaker 2: Pastor, we need you to work in the life of our elders and future elders.
Speaker 2: We need you to work in the lives of our all our other leaders and influencers here.
Speaker 2: We need you to war work in each one of our lives to transform us from this mindset, this a worldly leadership to spiritual leadership, to the mindset and attitude of a servant of a slave.
Speaker 2: Only you can do this, Lord Jesus.
Speaker 2: We want this for your glory.
Speaker 2: We pray this all in your name.
Speaker 2: Amen.