Not So With You
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It’s a little strange being here this morning. Okay, it’s a lot strange, honestly. Since June 9th, I’ve only preached once, and that was at Bobby Smith’s funeral. I’ve not preached on a Sunday morning in 11 weeks.
I’m going to assume preaching is a lot like riding a bike, but I might be a little wobbly. If so, forgive me, please.
As I have opportunity, I’ll share with you about my sabbatical. I learned some stuff—from my family, and some friends in ministry, and from some good books. I relaxed and rested all I could, and then some.
My family attended four different churches, a few times each, over the course of this summer. We worshipped together, heard good, Biblical preaching, and enjoyed being with one another.
More than anything, I learned that my walk with Jesus has to be my primary focus. Second to that, my wife and my kids are what’s most important to me (in that order). Ministry and everything else are in a distant third place, and I make no apology—now or ever—for that.
Sabbatical was a prioritizing time. A sanctifying time for me. I’m grateful for that gift.
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I spent a lot of time in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry during the last 12 weeks. It’s all very familiar, but just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it can’t teach us. Where God’s Word is concerned, it’s always teaching us and working on us.
I want to share with you this morning the biggest lesson I learned over the course of my sabbatical. It’s only four words, but it’s still gonna take 30 minutes. :)
If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Matthew 20. If you’re able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word:
20 Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.
21 “What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
22 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”
“We can,” they answered.
23 Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”
24 When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. 25 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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Their request, made through their mother, is as bold as it is foolish. James, John, and their mother approach Jesus and ask for a favor.
In the Gospel of Mark, James and John come and tell Jesus outright, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
(Can you imagine?)
Jesus asks the trio, “What is it you [all] want?”
They let Jesus know that, in Jesus’ kingdom, they would like for James and John to be seated on either side of Jesus.
“I want my sons to have the best seats in the house. I want them to be your collective number two, your right (and left) hand men. They deserve to be honored alongside you, Jesus. We’re calling dibs on the proverbial front seats in your kingdom. Shotgun!”
Jesus’ reply?
“You don’t know what you are asking.”
James and John, convinced that they should have whatever they want from Jesus, convince their mother of the same thing.
They, in turn, approach Jesus. They approach Jesus—Jesus, the One who spoke the world into existence, the One in whom all things hold together, the One and only Son of God—they approach Jesus and presume to know better than He does.
“Jesus, I know you have something planned for my two boys, but you really should have consulted me about this first. I’m their mother, after all.”
“Jesus, we know that we are your disciples, but you should really let us teach you a thing or two.”
“Lord, I know you’ve put me here in this place at this time, but I really think I ought to be..., I ought to do..., I ought to have…”
The danger in asking the Lord for something like this lies in assuming we know better than the LORD Himself what we need. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
The brothers’ request, made through their mother, is selfish and foolish and arrogant—and a whole host of other adjectives.
More than anything though, it seems to ignore what Jesus has just said about His own destiny.
Look back at the verses right before our text here (Matthew 20:17-19): Jesus is heading to Jerusalem. There He will be betrayed, condemned, handed over, mocked, flogged, and crucified.
17 Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, 18 “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death 19 and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
This is Jesus’ third prediction of His death. This is the third time He has foretold what’s going to happen to Him. And what do His disciples do?
Well, they miss the point.
We could easily sub Barrett in for Bartholomew and it’d be the same story. In fact, I’d quickly replace Peter as the one who can’t keep his foolish mouth shut.
Any one of us would be as gifted at missing the point as the Twelve were.
Each time Jesus’ speaks about His death, His disciples do something incredible (and not ‘incredible’ in a good way).
Turn with me back to Matthew 17, Jesus’ second prediction of His coming death.
22 When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. 23 They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.
What “incredible” thing do Jesus’ disciples ask Him after this?
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
Turn back with me to the first time Jesus’ predicts/foretells His death.
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
To this first prediction of His death, look at what our buddy, Peter pulls:
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Peter takes Jesus aside, leading him by the arm. “Okay, Jesus, let’s get you to bed. You’re obviously tired.”
Peter summons all his audacity and tells Jesus, “You’re wrong!”
Peter speaks to Jesus saying, “God forbid, man! This shall NEVER happen to you!”
Jesus corrects Peter firmly. And Jesus lets him have it:
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Then Jesus reorients Peter and the rest of His disciples:
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
It’s incredible to me how these men, these disciples, these students and apprentices of Jesus miss what Jesus is all about.
At the moment Jesus is speaking to them in Matthew 20 (our text for the day), they’ve been with Jesus for nearly three years.
They miss the point by a mile.
They fail to understand what Jesus’ mission is.
They’re so easily distracted, like a dog seeing a squirrel.
Jesus just reminded them—again—about His upcoming and brutal death, but the Zebedees are fixated on what’s in it for them:
“Hey, there Jesus, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal. I heard you mention something about the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne. Remember that? Well, yeah, we’d like to sit on your right and your left when the time comes. Make that happen, would ya? Mommy thinks you should do this for us. Thanks.”
Missing the point, failing to understand, distracted by lesser things. Sound familiar?
The disciples are experts in missing the point Jesus is trying to make. They are even better at picking out parts of what Jesus says—just the parts they want to hear, of course.
James and John know that Jesus is the Messiah—He has told them so. Jesus calls Himself the “Son of Man” which is an OT title of victory. They are heading to the royal city of Jerusalem where the victorious, Messiah-King would reign. It’s all making sense in their minds:
“Jesus will somehow, at some time, be King and we will reign with Him. We, James and John, need to establish our place in His Kingdom. One of us should sit on His right and one of us on His left.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them.
We’re all Jameses and Johns. We ask what we shouldn’t. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re asking even as we’re asking it, not really.
To sit at Jesus’ side wasn’t Jesus’ to grant.
What’s more, James and John didn’t realize they were asking to drink the cup Jesus was going to drink.
That is, they want all the power and prestige without any of the dying or the death, without any of the suffering and the shame. They wanted to follow Jesus, insofar as they got only good things.
They claimed they could drink Jesus’ cup. A quick and assertive “we can” in verse 22. But they weren’t ready for that then; they asked for what they didn’t understand and asserted what they couldn’t begin to know.
Of course, like Jesus says, they will drink from [His] cup. James will die for Jesus. He’s put to death by the sword fairly early in the life of the church (Acts 12). John would suffer exile for the name of Jesus and spend the balance of his life persecuted to one degree or another (Rev 1:9).
After Jesus’ statement in verse 23, it seems like James and John stop talking, stop asserting themselves, stop presuming to know better than Jesus how things should go.
That’s a start!
Enter stage left: the other 10 disciples. And they are ticked. Verse 24: “When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers.”
“I can’t believe they had their mommy ask a favor for them.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?”
“What makes them think they deserve to sit next to Jesus more than I do?”
Jesus gathers all His disciples together. To correct their misunderstanding. To remind them, yet again, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Here’s the issue at hand. James and John are at the forefront here; they’re the ones who are asking for this. But the other disciples could easily take their place.
So could we. Our ambition, our selfish desires, our sinful hearts, our chronic missing-of-the-point. We’re all Jameses and Johns.
James and John missed the point and the privilege of being a disciple of Jesus. Instead, they went on a power-grab, jockeying for position, vying for prestige.
Jesus has them consider the rulers and high officials of the Gentiles. Jesus wants His disciples to think about how non-disciples operate. Jesus wants His disciples to think about how the pagans do things, and how, in this moment they are indistinguishable from the pagans. They’re just the same.
Power and authority characterized the Roman empire.
Frederick Dale Bruner writes: “Worldly leadership does tend to be domineering and authoritarian. Jesus isn’t attacking or even trying to correct secular leadership; He is simply stating observable fact.”
Jesus isn’t saying we should be bothered by how the world operates.
What Jesus is saying is this: we should be bothered when the people of God start to behave just like the world.
“The church is to be counterculture within culture, not a poor imitation of culture.” -F.D. Bruner
In verse 26 (in the NIV), Jesus offers a corrective in 4 words:
“Not so with you.”
“Not so with you.”
Jesus offers this corrective to James and John, to the other 10 disciples. He offers this corrective—Not so with you—to all the Jameses and Johns in this room, to all of His disciples here this morning.
Jesus corrects the power-grab. He stops their jockeying for position. He says to those vying for prestige: “Not so with you.”
One of the books I read during sabbatical is entitled, “Faithful Leaders and the Things that Matter Most” by a guy named Rico Tice.
The author drew my attention to these four words—“Not so with you.”
He writes: “The way of the world, Jesus says, is to use power and position to ‘lord it over’ others—to ‘exercise authority over’ others for the sake of the one who has authority. And then come four words that must change us and shape us is we would be Christ-like leaders: ‘Not so with you.’”
Those words make it crystal clear that the Christian community is to operate on an entirely different principle than the secular community around us.
Then, like in any good book, the reader gets called-out by the author:
“Christian leaders are called to be servants, not bosses. We could do worse than to have these four words written on our study desks, in our calendars, and on our pulpits: “Not so with you.””
I’ve done just that.
These four words have been printed out and taped to the wall in front of my desk.
I have another copy sitting on my book stand, and one in my bible.
I used my label-maker and put these four words right here on the edge of the pulpit.
I want these words staring me right in the face.
“Not so with you.”
These are the words of Jesus to me, to you, to us. I believe these four words have broad application. As disciples of Jesus, we should look more and more like Him and less and less like those who don’t belong to Jesus.
You realize we have an entire generation being discipled by social media? I should say entire generations being discipled by those influencers.
Large swaths of our churches look more like political pundits on Fox News and CNN than they do disciples of Jesus. Grown men and women being discipled by their chosen news source.
Feel free to disagree, but what are most Christians posting about on Facebook?
Jesus’ words to His disciples—Not so with you—should make us stop and think.
Am I grasping for power? Earthly power? Power within the church? Am I looking for position and the place of honor, or am I seeking to serve?
There shouldn’t be any level of James and John power-grab among us who claim to be Christ’s people. Whenever we’re tempted to grab hold of power or position, we need to hear Jesus speak these words, kindly and firmly: “Not so with you.”
Sadly, what marks the church more often than not is gossip/slander.
We LOVE to share that tasty bit of information, don’t we? We might embellish it a little, or add to what we heard; twist it a bit to make it more juicy.
But, boy howdy, we’ve got to talk about it. “They need to know and, oh, I better call them because they need to know.”
Sometimes, I’m not even sure where we come up with some of the stuff we spread around. It’s like we woke up bored one morning and decided to start something.
“The grapevine’s been a little slow in producing any fruit, so I’m gonna make my own.”
You see, this is expected in the world.
I’ve got a friend who’s starting a new job. She limited the people she told on purpose until it was closer to time for her to leave. Well, one of her coworkers overheard her telling a friend, and BOOM! Now everyone knows, and not because my friend wanted everyone to know.
It happens in the world. It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it is.
Inside the church, on the other hand…well, it shouldn’t be that way with us.
I sit on the board of Show-Me Christian Youth Home. One of my fellow board members is a two-time widower. He’s currently engaged to a lady friend from his church, and they’ve been engaged for about a year. He asked us to pray for him and his fiancee because she’s tired of all the gossip and rumors going around their church about them (it’s a large church in Columbia). She’s been so hurt by the gossip about them, he says, “She’s not sure she wants to be part this church or any church ever again.”
It’s despicable what we do to one another. What we say about our brothers and sisters in Christ to other brothers and sisters in Christ is so unbecoming. It’s wrong. It’s fruit of the sinful flesh, not of the Spirit.
I’ve got two words for us, and Jesus has four.
My two words: “Please stop.”
Stop gossiping. Stop speaking about other people, period. If the only thing you have to say is something about someone else, you really need to get a hobby. Pick up a book. Pick up the Bible; that would be an excellent use of your time.
To quote a friend: “Stop spreading gossip. Start spreading the gospel.”
Do you realize what gossip among this gathering has done to our witness?
When we gossip, slandering one another, we need to hear Jesus say these four words: Not so with you.
It shouldn’t be something we do.
“It shall not be so among you.”
These words from Jesus—Not so with you—would, I pray, echo in our ears as we go about our days.
Our lives are to look different from people who don’t know Jesus.
Jesus wants His disciples, His people, His church to stop behaving like the world.
Stop gathering here to spectate. That’s not what we’re meant to do.
Stop being distracted by lesser things, by tradition, by the way things have always been. That’s not where our attention is supposed to lie.
If we aren’t following Jesus as His disciples, as His students, as His apprentices; if we aren’t striving to look more like Him and make disciples who look like Him, we’re missing the entire point.
If we’re not walking as Jesus’ disciples, doing what Jesus wants us to do, I don’t want any part of it. And neither should you.
If we treat others like the world, or worse than the world; if we attack our own, slander one another, gossip about each other and peddle rumors like it’s an Olympic event, what are people outside of the church going to think about us? About our God? About the Good News we’re supposed to be sharing?
If we’re not living as Jesus’ disciples, walking in His steps, what in the world are we doing here?!?
Hear Jesus say to us, to you and to me, whenever we’re living for ourselves, for worldly acclaim, for popularity and power and position:
“NOT SO WITH YOU.”
We are meant to behave like Jesus. And that means we are to serve, just like Jesus.
26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
The way of the disciple is the way of Jesus. It’s crazy this even has to be said, but it does.
Jesus has to remind the 12 disciples who were with Him of this. He has to gether them together and say, “Listen, guys.”
The way forward is self-sacrificial service.
The way up is down.
The tools of our trade are a basin of water and a towel wrapped around our waists.
Jesus’ entire life was one of service. He came to serve. His disciples should be all about service. Greatness among Jesus’ disciples is based on service. In other words, being great means looking like Jesus.
Of course, what we need here is to die to ourselves, to repent, to turn from our sins, and surrender our lives to Him.
Jesus has given His life as a ransom for many. He made atonement for sinners; for power-grabbers like me, for gossips like us.
He laid down His life, paid the price, and calls us to enjoy Him, to live for Him and with Him forever and ever.
You might need to hear this morning Jesus say that He came to give His life as a ransom for you.
Maybe you’ve not given your life to Him. Let today be the day.
It’s possible you call yourself a Christian without actually having put your faith solely in Christ and in what He’s done for you. Let today be the day you truly become Jesus’ disciple.
Repentance is a daily practice we all need to adopt. When we fail, when we fall short, we confess our sinfulness and rehearse the gospel that saved us. Jesus came to serve, to give His life, to purchase our pardon.
And He’ll empower us to live for Him and to look more and more like Him.
If we are His people, His followers, disciples of Jesus, we will forsake the ways of the world, the power structures of this temporary kingdom, and live for His glory.
Whenever we’re tempted to live for lesser things, I pray we hear our Savior say, “No so with you.”
