SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: Let me invite you to open your Bible as we now turn to the Word of God together, to the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: Our text for this morning is the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: If you're using one of the Bibles and the seatback in front of you, this can be found on page 825, 825.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew and chapter 20, and we'll be looking at verses 20 to 23.
SPEAKER_00: The passage that we're looking at this morning is an amazing passage.
SPEAKER_00: And whether by divine providence or pastoral plots, at the heart of this passage is a very famous mother, suitable for Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: So I would like to join with Bill in wishing all of you a very happy Mother's Day and trust that the Word of God will minister to you as we look at this text together.
SPEAKER_00: It is a really amazing passage, and so what I would like to do is to jump straight into it.
SPEAKER_00: It is a passage that takes the natural human orientation, turns it on its head, and reorients it around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a passage that is appropriate for Mother's Day, but it is appropriate every Sunday because it is for every Christian to hear this text.
SPEAKER_00: So let's begin by looking at the Word of God together.
SPEAKER_00: Our text for this morning is Matthew chapter 20, beginning in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll follow with me as I read the Word of God, Matthew chapter 20, beginning in verse 20, God's word says this.
SPEAKER_00: Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked him for something.
SPEAKER_00: And he, that's Jesus, said to her, What do you want?
SPEAKER_00: And she said to him, Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, You do not know what you are asking.
SPEAKER_00: Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?
SPEAKER_00: They said to him, We are able.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, You will drink my cup.
SPEAKER_00: But to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we just saw some beautiful babies and her parents, and some beautiful pictures of yet more babies with their parents, and those parents will all discover very soon, many of them already have, that among the very first phrases their children will learn and will own as their own phrase is me first.
SPEAKER_00: It is one of the very first things that human beings express and emerges naturally in the heart of every individual is this self-orientation, me first.
SPEAKER_00: And then it doesn't just arise naturally internally within the human heart, but it's reinforced externally in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: We in the United States experience it through our consumer culture that tells us you deserve it your way, and our social media platforms that promote visibility and self-advertisement, and we tell it to ourselves again and again in our political and cultural narratives that advocate for self-advocacy and self-advancement.
SPEAKER_00: It is the basic human disposition to put oneself first, me first.
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly the attitude that is on display in the disciples in the text that we just read.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that Jesus responds is that he takes the basic human disposition of putting oneself first, turns it on its head, and reorients it around himself.
SPEAKER_00: It is a radical text that speaks not just to the disciples but to us.
SPEAKER_00: And it begins in verse 20 with a stunning request.
SPEAKER_00: We saw this in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down at your copy of God's word again in verse 20, that says that the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes up to Jesus with her sons, kneeling before him, she asked him for something.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus asked, What do you want?
SPEAKER_00: She said, Say that these two sons of mine are to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Let my sons be first.
SPEAKER_00: We want our family to be first.
SPEAKER_00: It's a stunning request.
SPEAKER_00: It's an audacious ask.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that we should notice as we're beginning to look at this text of scripture together is that this story is recounted multiple times in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will have maybe a footnote in your Bible that alerts you to a parallel passage.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark chapter 10, Mark narrates the same incident.
SPEAKER_00: But in Mark chapter 10, Mark says that it's the disciples themselves, James and John, that's who the sons of Zebedee are, who come themselves to Jesus and say, Jesus, we want to sit at your right hand and your left hand in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So it's worth asking the question at the outset.
SPEAKER_00: So which is it?
SPEAKER_00: Do the disciples ask it themselves, or does the mother ask on their behalf?
SPEAKER_00: The best natural explanation to this is it's probably yes.
SPEAKER_00: If you look, for example, just a passage earlier in Matthew chapter 18, verse 1, we read at that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
SPEAKER_00: And this is a theme that runs throughout the gospel narratives.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the Gospels, you become very familiar with this.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples are always vying for power and preeminence and place in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is an ongoing conversation.
SPEAKER_00: So it's probably the case that they both asked.
SPEAKER_00: But we should ask, as Matthew is depicting the mother coming and asking on the son's behalf, why is it that the sons would put their mother up to this task?
SPEAKER_00: Go ask Jesus that we can be first.
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the natural answers to that question would be that it's probably the case that in a kind of political setting, they're recognizing that Jesus is the king, he's going to bring the kingdom of God, that he might be more favorably disposed to answering positively to their mother instead of to the sons grabbing for power themselves.
SPEAKER_00: There's also political precedent for this, even in the scriptures themselves.
SPEAKER_00: A very famous passage in the scriptures of Israel is in 1 Kings 1.
SPEAKER_00: This is when the King David is about to die, and he has several sons.
SPEAKER_00: God has promised that Solomon is going to be the king that takes the throne in his place, but several of the sons are vying for power and to take David's throne when he dies.
SPEAKER_00: Now Nathan the prophet knows that it's supposed to be Solomon who takes the seat, but Nathan doesn't go to David himself.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he goes to Bathsheba, David's wife and Solomon's mother, and says, Bathsheba, you need to go to David and ask on Solomon's behalf.
SPEAKER_00: And if you go and ask on Solomon's behalf, David will grant your request and Solomon will be king.
SPEAKER_00: And that's indeed what happens.
SPEAKER_00: So it might be that the disciples are just being, they're being rather clever, and they're recognizing that in a political negotiation it would be propitious for them to send their mother to ask in their stead.
SPEAKER_00: You know, notice also that Bathsheba is David's wife, and so there's a family dynamic there as well, and it's probably the case that there's a family dynamic at play in our text as well, and that is because it is most likely the case that the mother of the sons of Zebedee is Jesus' aunt.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you are already familiar with this, but if we take several of the parallel passages in the Gospels and put them together, we see that this woman is referred to with three different names.
SPEAKER_00: When you put them together, you recognize it is altogether likely that she is indeed Jesus' aunt.
SPEAKER_00: And because we have whizbang technology, I can show them to you right on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: The end of Matthew's Gospel, this is the scene where Jesus is being crucified, and it says at the foot of the cross, among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and Mary, mother of the son, excuse me, the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
SPEAKER_00: But in Mark's account of the same incident, he names them differently.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Among the many women that were at the foot of the cross were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joseph, and Salome.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems most likely that what is happening is that he's referring to the mother of the sons of Zebedee by her first name, Salome.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, in John's Gospel, John records the same women, but in a different order, because he's got to do everything a little bit different.
SPEAKER_00: But he adds one more.
SPEAKER_00: The mother of Jesus herself is standing at the foot of the cross, and with her is Mary's sister.
SPEAKER_00: And who is that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's altogether likely that it is Salome, who is the mother of the sons of Zebedee, the mother of James and John.
SPEAKER_00: That is, this woman who is asking that her sons be first in Jesus' kingdom is Jesus' aunt, asking that Jesus' cousins would get to rule with him with first priority.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here are court politics and family politics colliding in a colossal grab for power.
SPEAKER_00: And naturally, I think many of us see that, and we have a sense of kind of recoiling, like, is this nepotism?
SPEAKER_00: This just doesn't seem very good.
SPEAKER_00: But before we get to the negative element, and there certainly is a negative component to the ask here, I want us to take a moment to recognize that there is a very real sense in which it's a commendable ask.
SPEAKER_00: That is, every mother wants for their children to be successful.
SPEAKER_00: No mother wants for their kids to just have a terrible life and to be failures.
SPEAKER_00: They want their children to be successful.
SPEAKER_00: And what she is asking in this incident is she's asking for what she perceives to be, and there's very real reason to agree with her, is the best kind of success.
SPEAKER_00: She wants her kids to be successful in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: She wants their life and their identity and their success and their greatness to be in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: There are 10,000 lesser things that she could wish for for her children, but what she sets her sights on is that my kids would attain greatness in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what she wants for them.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll see this heightened perhaps even more if we take a moment to pause and reflect on when she asks, as she does in verse 21, that my son sit at the right and left in your kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: What does she mean by the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: And what she means is the culmination of all of God's promises through Israel to the world that the Messiah is going to bring in his earthly reign from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: This begins in the Old Testament with the story of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: And God makes a promise to Abraham that all that has been lost in humanity's rebellion against God and the plunging of the human race into death and destruction is going to be reversed through the seed of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: That is, God promises Abraham that from you is going to come a nation in a land who will give a blessing to all the rest of the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And indeed, that begins to be fulfilled because Abraham's descendants do indeed become a nation, the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And God speaks again to the nation of Israel through a prophet named Moses, and he gives them a covenant by which the people of Israel can know God.
SPEAKER_00: And they see God and they see God's work among them, and they're beginning to taste something of God bringing his kingdom, but it's not full yet.
SPEAKER_00: And then they're established in the land, and God raises up a king, his name is David, and God gives to David a promise that I am going to establish your kingdom, and it will never pass away.
SPEAKER_00: And one of your sons will fulfill my promise through Israel to the world, to reign in this land over the nations, bringing the kingdom of God to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And Israel begins to taste some of that in God working through them and tasting some of the blessings of God and the life of their land and their people, and then it's all taken away.
SPEAKER_00: Because of their rebellion against God and their breaking of the covenant, a foreign nation, Babylon, comes and destroys the nation of Israel, burns the temple to the ground, and violently takes them into exile.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, even in their exile, God then raises up prophets like Isaiah and Ezekiel and speaks to the prophets, a promise that the kingdom is still going to come.
SPEAKER_00: But the way it's going to come is through a new covenant that God will sovereignly act in the people of Israel and the peoples of the nations, to take out their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh and write his law upon their hearts and wash them clean of their sin.
SPEAKER_00: There's spiritual requirements for entering the kingdom that's going to come, and God is going to enable the people to meet the spiritual requirements.
SPEAKER_00: And then the kingdom of David will be established because he promises that the Son of David will come, will reign in Jerusalem over the nations, and all the nations will be converted to worshiping the Messiah, the promised son of David, who will bring God's kingdom to earth, a restoration of edenic blessings on this earth for this people forever.
SPEAKER_00: And now, Salome, the mother of James and John, and her sons, James and John, have seen Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And they've seen his miracles and they've heard his teachings and they know that he is the one God promised.
SPEAKER_00: And in his miracle power to take away disease and death and sin, they see a taste of what God is going to bring to this earth.
SPEAKER_00: They know that it is coming and they want to be part of it.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they want to be, have the greatest share in it.
SPEAKER_00: There is a real sense in which this mother, who understands that the culmination of all of her peoples and all of humanity's longing for God to make everything new and to restore all things through his Messiah is going to come to pass.
SPEAKER_00: And the greatest thing that she can want for her children is that they would attain that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what she's asking Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how there is a real sense in which, of course, this is what you would want for your kids?
SPEAKER_00: And yet, there's still something wrong in her request, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: Which is why Jesus responds to her.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is wrong with her request?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the question is not do you want greatness in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: She does want greatness in the kingdom, but we're going to see the problem is that she doesn't understand how greatness in the kingdom is achieved.
SPEAKER_00: Greatness in the kingdom is not going to be achieved by family negotiations and by political vying.
SPEAKER_00: Greatness in the kingdom is going to be achieved in a very different way.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll jot your eyes up in your Bibles to chapter 19, where this whole scenario gets kicked off, Jesus has just taught the disciples in Matthew chapter 19, verse 28, that in the new world, the regenerated world, when the kingdom of heaven takes over and becomes a kingdom of earth, the Son of Man is going to sit on a glorious throne on this earth, and you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They know that Jesus is going to bring that kingdom to earth.
SPEAKER_00: And then in the conversation that just preceded the mother's request in chapter 20 in verse 19, after Jesus says he's going to die in Jerusalem, be crucified, he then says his last word before Salome comes up to ask him is that he's going to be resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: And so what she and her son seem to have clearly in their mind is that Jesus is going to resurrect triumphantly and establish the kingdom of God on earth, and that's what we want.
SPEAKER_00: However, they skipped everything in between, didn't they?
SPEAKER_00: Because just after Jesus in chapter 19 says that he's going to sit on his glorious throne, and his twelve will sit on thrones with him, he says, Everyone who is first will be last, and the last will be first.
SPEAKER_00: Then he tells a parable to illustrate this point and concludes in chapter 20, verse 16, that the first will be last and the last will be first.
SPEAKER_00: And then he tells them that the nature of the kingdom is going to be upside down.
SPEAKER_00: What is greatness in the kingdom is going to be nearness to the king, so that even the least in the kingdom of God will be the greatest, because they will be near the king.
SPEAKER_00: The great reward of the kingdom of heaven is not personal prominence, but it's going to be nearness to Christ, to God Himself, and all of his people will have it.
SPEAKER_00: And then he tells them in verse 18 that the reason you are going to be able to enter the kingdom is that I am going to Jerusalem and will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn me to death and deliver me over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.
SPEAKER_00: That is, this kingdom, whose chief prize is to be near to Christ, is a kingdom of grace.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot enter it because of your accomplishments.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot enter it because of your ambitions.
SPEAKER_00: The only way that you can enter it is because the king is going to die as a sacrifice for your sins.
SPEAKER_00: The king is going to die under the judgment that you deserve for your sins and graciously enable you to have your sins forgiven so that you can enter into that kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It is a kingdom fully and entirely of grace.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus has just taught the disciples that the kingdom of God is going to be one in which worldly values will be inverted.
SPEAKER_00: It is a kingdom of grace that you can receive as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: And it's as though they have heard all of this teaching and they said, Yeah, yeah, cool story, bro.
SPEAKER_00: But you said something about thrones.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that a second ago?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to that.
SPEAKER_00: I actually, Jesus would like to have a word with you about the thrones.
SPEAKER_00: Can we get back to that, please?
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus does with them, you notice the way he responds to Salome when she comes to him is he says, What do you want?
SPEAKER_00: And I don't perceive that as a kind of grumpy, uh, what do you want?
SPEAKER_00: But more of a tenderly drawing out what is the desire of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And there is something good here.
SPEAKER_00: There is something of that residual, me first, natural, sinful human disposition that needs to be reoriented.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God is fundamentally and forever a kingdom of grace.
SPEAKER_00: The way that you can enter into this kingdom is because the king is going to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: And you can receive the merits of his death as a gift through repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: What it means then to enter into this kingdom is not just to receive the grace of entrance, but to receive the grace of conformity.
SPEAKER_00: The same grace that pays the price so that you can enter the kingdom is the same grace that is going to conform you to the crucified king.
SPEAKER_00: The grace that brings you into the kingdom is the grace that is going to be make you like the king.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of the kingdom that Jesus is going to teach, and he begins to do that in the next part of the text that we'll call a stern reply.
SPEAKER_00: That's in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down at your Bibles in verse 22, Jesus answered and said, You do not know what you are asking.
SPEAKER_00: There is a firmness in his reply, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: You want to be great in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the greatest in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It is the king.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sense in which they recognize this.
SPEAKER_00: They know that Jesus is the king, that's why they're asking him the question.
SPEAKER_00: But how is it that Jesus attains greatness in his kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: And he just told them it's because he's condemned to death, delivered over to the Gentiles, mocked, flogged, and crucified.
SPEAKER_00: The reason that he is the greatest in the kingdom is that he has suffered to open the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he goes on to explain this in the next question that he asks in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?
SPEAKER_00: And they would have been able to very clearly understand what this means.
SPEAKER_00: The cup is a metaphor in Hebrew literature that's frequently used for one's destiny.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus just told them what his destiny is.
SPEAKER_00: He is going to Jerusalem in order to be crucified.
SPEAKER_00: That is the cup that he's going to drink.
SPEAKER_00: But if we continue reading the Gospel of Matthew, the text even gets more specific about what is in the cup.
SPEAKER_00: The next time Jesus brings up the metaphor of the cup in relationship to his death is the night before he's crucified as he's praying to God in Gethsemane, and he says, If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the metaphor of the cup in the Old Testament, you can see that, as I said, it is a metaphor for one's destiny, sometimes of blessing, as in Psalm 23, My cup runneth over, but often the reverse of that.
SPEAKER_00: It is a cup of judgment for sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example in Jeremiah chapter 25.
SPEAKER_00: We read, Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, he says to me the prophet, Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath.
SPEAKER_00: Or in Psalm 75, verse 8, in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.
SPEAKER_00: What is the cup that Jesus is going to drink?
SPEAKER_00: It is God's judgment against sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to the cross, not to be judged for his sins because he doesn't have any, but to die as a singular and perpetual sacrifice for all of the people who would ever believe.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in his death suffers uniquely.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus and his resurrection is glorified uniquely.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the greatest in the kingdom because he suffered more than any.
SPEAKER_00: And as he asked them the question, Are you able to drink the cup that I am going to drink?
SPEAKER_00: You would think the answer would be categorically, Of course you can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: But look at what the disciples say.
SPEAKER_00: They said to him, We are able.
SPEAKER_00: Now there is a sense in which they probably have a notion of what Jesus is getting at.
SPEAKER_00: They have heard Jesus say in Matthew chapter 16, if anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: They understand that the cross is not yet a kind of cultural symbol, it's not a piece of jewelry, it's a horrifying instrument of execution, death, and torture.
SPEAKER_00: They know that to enter the kingdom of God means to trade my desires for his desires, to trade my life for his life, to trade my goals for his goals.
SPEAKER_00: It is the end of my life and following Jesus entirely.
SPEAKER_00: It's Jesus' Lord, Jesus is in charge, Jesus is in control, I belong to him, and he's my master.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever he says, I do.
SPEAKER_00: They understand the cost of following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a sense in which they are resolved.
SPEAKER_00: They are going to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they also prove that they're not entirely resolved, are they?
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus finishes his prayer in Matthew 26 in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the soldiers arrive to take him, the text says that all of the disciples, including James and John, are scattered.
SPEAKER_00: So as they make this stunning request that they be first in the kingdom, and then confidently assert we're able to do what it takes to achieve that, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: It seems transparent that what's happening is that they have fundamentally lost sight of the reality that the nature of the kingdom is grace.
SPEAKER_00: The only reason that you can even dream of entering the kingdom is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of being Being so confident that they can drink the cup and merit the kingdom, a better attitude certainly would have been awe and wonder that they will not have to drink the cup of God's judgment against their sin because their sinless savior is going to drain it for them.
SPEAKER_00: It's grace that brings you into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's grace by which you stand.
SPEAKER_00: And when you lose sight of that, you lose sight of what it means to be great.
SPEAKER_00: Well, their stunning arrogance is responded to by Jesus graciously with what we'll call a saving promise.
SPEAKER_00: And that's in verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: If you look down at your Bible at verse 23, Jesus said to them, again, a shocking answer, you will drink my cup.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if I have understood the nature of the cup that Jesus is going to drink rightly, that he is making atonement for sin.
SPEAKER_00: When he asked the disciples, Can you drink the cup I'm going to drink?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the obvious answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: Categorically, no human being can drain the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So they can't drink his cup.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus says, Indeed, you will drink my cup.
SPEAKER_00: What is he getting at?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the best way to understand what Jesus is getting at is that they are not going to drink the same cup in terms of value.
SPEAKER_00: There's no atoning value, there's no saving value in the disciples' suffering.
SPEAKER_00: As they suffer, they're not earning salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, they're going to drink the same cup in terms of form, experience.
SPEAKER_00: They are going to suffer like Jesus suffered.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they are going to die like Jesus died.
SPEAKER_00: And the text of Scripture tells us that's indeed what happened.
SPEAKER_00: After the disciples scatter, Jesus gathers them back and graciously restores them, and they do indeed take their cross and follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 12 and verse 2 tells us that James becomes the first apostle to be martyred.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that John also died in his exile.
SPEAKER_00: There is a sense in which Jesus telling them, You will drink my cup.
SPEAKER_00: That is, I know that though you will stumble, you will not finally fall, but you will persevere to the end and you will be faithful and enter the kingdom of God, even at the expense of a cup.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense in which that is a saving and confidence-giving promise.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to ensure that those the Father has given him, none will snatch them out of his hand.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul writes this very clearly in Philippians in chapter three, where he says, For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
SPEAKER_00: See what Paul is saying is that the way that I can enter the kingdom of God is surely of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Through faith, God unites the believer to Jesus so truly, so really, that all of Jesus' perfect righteousness truly counts as yours because you are genuinely joined to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is yours, you are his.
SPEAKER_00: His righteousness belongs to you.
SPEAKER_00: So when you stand before God in judgment, God can confidently bring you into his kingdom because he sees you as righteous as Jesus is righteous, and truly you are because you're in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: All of Christ's righteousness given to me as a gift through faith, I stand in the kingdom by grace.
SPEAKER_00: But then Paul says in the very next breath that the same grace that brings me into the kingdom also conforms me to the king, and that's exactly what I want.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: When you get Jesus, you get all of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You get all of his righteousness counted for you.
SPEAKER_00: All of his death forgives all of your sins, but that means that all of his life lived in selfless obedience to the will of God becomes yours too.
SPEAKER_00: The same grace that grants you entrance into the kingdom also will conform you to the image of the King by making your dispositions not me first, but Christ first.
SPEAKER_00: Not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: So that it can be said, as Paul says, every believer has a cup to drink.
SPEAKER_00: What it means to be a Christian is it means that you could look at Jesus in the eye, and as he says, Are you able to drink the cup that I am going to drink?
SPEAKER_00: It means that you are willing to say, I am willing, I am able, I will drink the cup, knowing that the cup of whatever suffering you must endure in order to be obedient to Jesus Christ, is held in the hand of a loving Savior who will never let you be snatched away from him.
SPEAKER_00: And all that you drink in the cup of sufferings, whatever that is, in every cup that a believer drinks will look different.
SPEAKER_00: Some will lose jobs, some will have unfulfilled desires, some will have expectations dashed, some will have relationships snatched away, whatever the particular sufferings, be they great or be they relatively small, there will be a cup to drink.
SPEAKER_00: And it is in drinking the cup that the grace of God will transform you into the image of your king, that you may know him and share in his sufferings and attain the resurrection of the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says, You will indeed drink my cup, and indeed every believer will.
SPEAKER_00: But then he says one final thing in the text that we should look at.
SPEAKER_00: The end of verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You will indeed drink this cup, but to sit at my right hand and my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a qu a kind of confusing sentence, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Because it sounds, in a sense, like Jesus is saying that the Father's doing something, God's doing something, and I'm doing something different, as though we're completely different people, and I don't have the same authority that God has, and certainly you could misunderstand it that way, and I would understand why, and yet you're supposed to read the gospel as a synthetic whole.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it is.
SPEAKER_00: It tells one portrait of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has already been depicted for us in the Gospel of Matthew as he is through the rest of the New Testament as truly and entirely divine.
SPEAKER_00: He is the eternal Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: For example, in Matthew chapter 11, Jesus, in speaking to the disciples in the crowds, has said, No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says, I have comprehensive, exhaustive knowledge of the infinite God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean about his person?
SPEAKER_00: It means that he is an infinite person himself.
SPEAKER_00: And this is who Jesus is he's the inexhaustible, infinite, self-existent God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the eternal Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: But what he has done in his messianic mission is that God has condescended to take upon human nature.
SPEAKER_00: And so now Jesus is truly God and truly man.
SPEAKER_00: And in taking on human nature, he has a mission to save humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that he's going to save humanity is by offering himself, as Hebrews 10 says, as a once-for-all single sacrifice for sins.
SPEAKER_00: So as the disciples come to him and say, Jesus, we'd like to play some family politics here.
SPEAKER_00: We're your cousins, here's your aunt, don't you love us?
SPEAKER_00: Haven't we been found faithful?
SPEAKER_00: Please, can you do us a solid, and we'd like to be first and second in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus responds by saying, I am not here to play politics.
SPEAKER_00: I am here to save you from your sins.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, that has already been determined beforehand.
SPEAKER_00: The ancient Christian preacher John Chrysostom illustrated the text by saying, Imagine a race in which two of the contestants came to the judge of the race and said, We would like for you to decree us to be first and second place.
SPEAKER_00: And the judge said to them, That's an interesting request, but you know, it's really not in my hands, because it's already been decreed how the winner is going to be decided.
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't say that that judge is powerless, you would say that that judge is just.
SPEAKER_00: And so Chrysostom says, the way we should read this is not that Jesus is in any way saying that he is less than God.
SPEAKER_00: He's already told us that he's truly God.
SPEAKER_00: But what Jesus is saying is, I am not here to barter with you, I am here to save you.
SPEAKER_00: And besides, it has already been determined before the foundations of the world who would be great in the kingdom, and I am trying to communicate you how you can attain true greatness.
SPEAKER_00: It is not through me first, it is through not my will, but your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: Will you drink the cup?
SPEAKER_00: I think it would be appropriate for us to ask ourselves a question.
SPEAKER_00: It's Mother's Day, and so I'm reflective on the things that I want for my children, and I want a lot of things for my children.
SPEAKER_00: And it's probably the case that most, maybe all the things that I want from my kids are the things that I really want from myself.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the case that kids become kind of vicarious vessels for our own desires?
SPEAKER_00: The mother of James and John, in a sense, wants the greatest thing for her children.
SPEAKER_00: Greatness in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: But what Jesus reveals is that greatness in the kingdom of God is not attained by me first.
SPEAKER_00: Greatness in the kingdom of God is attained by maximal conformity to the crucified Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that you receive that is through drinking the cup that Jesus graciously gives you and sustains you and enables you to drink.
SPEAKER_00: Will you drink the cup of conformity to Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you that you have promised that you have begun a good work in us and you will complete it at the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We do pray that you would work on our hearts in such a way to give us conforming and persevering grace that we would look not to ourselves, but to Christ, our shepherd, our high priest, our king, our intercessor.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, give us grace, strengthen our hands this week, to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel, worthy of Jesus Christ, who was crucified, resurrected for us, and one day will make us participants in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: We want greatness in the kingdom of God, so God help us not to put ourselves first, to put but to put your will first.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: 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.church.
SPEAKER_01: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_01: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_01: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.