Rather than seeking to be known as impressive or indispensable, Christians are called to be known as servants of Jesus. Every person is made in the image of God, and the only credential that truly matters on our “resume” before Him is knowing Him.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The Disciples’ Misplaced Priorities: After Jesus tells the disciples He will die in Jerusalem to fulfill prophecy, they immediately argue about who among them is the greatest. Why do you think they responded this way at that particular moment? What does this reveal about how we respond to challenging spiritual truths, and where do you see similar “who is the greatest” thinking in your own life, workplace, or church today?
The Humility Paradox: The pastor notes that “humility is not a natural virtue” and describes Benjamin Franklin’s failed attempt to cultivate it through his own effort—ultimately becoming proud of appearing humble. What does this reveal about the nature of authentic humility? How can we distinguish between genuine humility and the performance of humility in our own lives, and what does Jesus’ example as a servant offer that Franklin’s self-powered approach could not?
Leadership as Service: Jesus says that anyone who wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. The pastor also notes that all of us—at home, work, school, or church—have opportunities to lead and influence others. What specific temptations arise when we are in positions of influence, and how should Jesus’ model of servant leadership change the way we approach those roles?
Receiving the Overlooked: Jesus takes a child in His arms and says that whoever receives one such child in His name receives Him. Who are the “children”—the overlooked or undervalued people—in your context today? What would it look like to genuinely receive and value them as Jesus did, rather than gravitating toward those who can advance our status or build our reputation?
The Resume Problem: The pastor contrasts what we typically put on a resume (accomplishments, credentials, associations with important people) with what truly matters in God’s kingdom—knowing Jesus as Lord. Reflecting on his own story of carefully cleaning up a photo with Lou Brock while ignoring a blurry photo of an unnamed seminary classmate, how does recognizing that every person is equally made in God’s image challenge the way you assign value to yourself and others? What might need to change in how you measure worth—your own and others’?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So, here we are on Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to our ladies here at Little Hills. What a joy it is to be celebrating with you on this beautiful day. It’s looking a little cloudy now, but we’ll still say it’s beautiful. It’s been a beautiful day. It’s been a beautiful weekend. And we are coming to God’s Word, which is always beautiful as well.
And tonight, as we do, we’re going to turn to the age-old question: Who is the greatest? Who is truly the greatest? And the disciples want to figure that out because they’re sure that one of them is going to be the greatest because Jesus has selected the 12 of them. And surely there must be a greatest amongst the 12.
And so they’re going to get to the bottom of this because they want to know. And, of course, I’m sure each and every one of them that’s arguing over this believes that he is the one that’s going to be the greatest. Sometimes we do that and we think, we even say that’s not what we’re doing, right? Well, aw, shucks. I’m not really that great. But what we really mean is, I’m going to now verbalize how not great I am so you can tell me how great I really am. Because if I said I was great, you wouldn’t have the opportunity. I want you to have the opportunity to tell me how great I am.
I’m not going to give a great sermon tonight. Yes, you will. Aw, thank you, thank you. Okay, yeah, okay. I’m feeling better already. Ah. You know, it’s sort of funny. Today, I had everything all nice and arranged. I was feeling ahead, and then it’s those last minute things that the service comes together that are very humbling because it’s sort of like, I thought I had everything together. I had everything together. I don’t have everything together.
You know, and so, one of the dangers of preaching is that God often wants us to experience what it is that we’re preaching on that week. And it has, at times this week, felt like that. Sometimes, though, our need to be humble doesn’t happen right away.
But all of us need to be reminded that this isn’t what the Christian calling is. Our Christian calling isn’t to be known as the greatest. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes millennia. I was reading around Easter time about the story around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. And if you’re familiar with that church, that particular ancient church, it’s built on the site that it was said that Jesus was buried. And so, over the years, as the Christian church has fractured into different groups, that church has been divided up.
And there are six different Christian groups that lay claim to a portion of that church. I’ve read some really interesting stories around it. For example, there is a ladder in a disputed portion of this church that has been there for over a century because they can’t come to agreement on who should or shouldn’t remove the ladder. It just sits there. Just to give you an idea of what has happened in this church.
So, 1757, the Greek Orthodox tried to set things right by attacking the Franciscans who were in the church. Let’s fast forward to more recent times. This has happened over and over and over again. 2002, there was a series of hospitalizations as different monks resorted to fistfights over who was the rightful controller of different parts of this church.
Can’t you just see them in their habits sitting there just, you know… Speaking of the greatest, right? They’re all trying their best, Muhammad Ali interpretation there in 2002. 2008, the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches got into a violent brawl over control of different portions of this church. It goes on and on and on.
In any case, I was reading around Easter an interview with a series of different monks from some of these different groups that control different parts of the church. And this one put it very succinctly. Here’s a nice, humble view of things. He said, of the other monks of different orders, he said, we don’t really want them to leave. We just want them to admit that it’s really ours. That’s a humble take, right?
Now, the interviewer went from group to group and finally he thought he’d found some humility. He goes down a hallway following one of the monks. The monk is talking to him about the situation. And there’s a monk from a different part of the Christian church walking by. And the two of them wave, and they don’t say anything rude to each other. He thought, ah, here’s something.
And he comments to the monk that he’s been following around about this. And the monk says, yeah, that’s true. At the end of the day, we are fathers in Christ together. And then he points out that the architecture is clearly the style of church that his group belongs to. What are we always trying to do? I mean, it’s kind of funny. You think about it, it seems absurd. But don’t we do the same thing? Don’t we do the same thing in the church?
We want people to know that our church is the best. And by the way, if you want to go online tonight and talk about how Little Hills is great, I’m not trying to dissuade you from that. So, you know, maybe go and tweet or go on Facebook right now before we get into the rest of the sermon and talk about that.
Wow, I am at the greatest church ever. That would be great. That would be great. But it’s not really about that, is it? Our point isn’t to make much of Little Hills or any of ourselves, but of Jesus. And that is what we’re called to do.
The disciples, as they are walking along with Jesus, come to the point where Jesus tells them, speaking of the greatest, he is the greatest, right? And they’re called to make much of him. They finally are getting an insight into where this is going. Jesus says, I’m going to go to Jerusalem and I’m going to die for the sins of the world.
And that’s the context in which the disciples decide the appropriate follow-up conversation as they’re going along the road, as they’re processing what Jesus has just said about himself, that he’s going to die in Jerusalem, as was foretold by the prophecies. Their conclusion is what they should do next is argue, which one does he really like the best? Jesus always likes me a little better than you. You know that, don’t you? I mean, Jesus, he always, when we’re walking along on the road, don’t you see he’s just a little bit closer to me than to you? Don’t you see that?
That’s what they think they should talk about when Jesus says, I’m going to die to fulfill prophecy, to save the world. Jesus, of course, knows what they’re arguing about. They’re staying a little bit behind him, but it says in Mark 9, verse 33, and they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he asked them, what were you discussing on the way? Jesus didn’t really hear us, did he? But they kept silent, for on the way, they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.
And he sat down and called the 12, and he said to them, if any would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. There’s our calling, but boy, is it hard to do.
So as we think about this tonight, let’s come before our Lord in prayer and ask for his help. Father, we come before you, and we know the right words. We know to say that we aren’t the greatest, that we are the worst, that we should be cast out, that you should have nothing to do with us. We know that’s what is theoretically true, and yet somehow in our hearts, how is it that pride creeps right back in? How is it that we crave to be told that we are great? How is it that we come back and want to be made much of?
Lord, will you help us tonight to recognize the path of following your Son? Would you help us to be genuinely humble, to be known in this world not as those who think of themselves as great, but those who follow the Lord who is great. It is the name of our Savior, our great Lord Jesus, that we pray, amen.
Now, how many of you hear that passage and think, wow, those disciples, aren’t they wise? They hear that Jesus is going to fulfill prophecy by dying, and they argue over their greatness. They have to, right? They have to get ahead. They need to know who’s going to take control when Jesus is gone, right? Anyone just applauding them for doing that? No one? No, right?
We know that’s not what they’re supposed to be doing. But we need to understand that they’re buying into the culture of their time that as disciples followed a rabbi, it was important to know, well, who was the greatest disciple? Who was going to be the heir of the disciples? Who was going to take charge next? Who was going to go and start the next school after that?
And if you really think about it, it’s not that different from us today. What do we do all the time? We’re constantly jockeying for position. We jockey for position at work. We want to know that we’re the boss’s favorite, the one who’s going to get the promotion, the one who’ll be promoted to senior management, the one who will be given the extra pay, the one who will get the higher grade in school, the one who matters.
What do we do with our elected officials? Well, of course, they jockey to be the greatest, to get elected, and then we immediately start thinking, well, who’s the second greatest that will take over after that person moves on to the next office? We have term limits for our state politicians here in Missouri, so it’s always a perpetual thing. Who’s going to be the next greatest in that office?
President of the United States, of course, we’re constantly hearing, well, who is it that’s in the wings waiting to take over? It’s built into our culture. It’s not that different. They’re doing the same thing. Who’s going to be the greatest after Jesus? Who’s going to be promoted to senior vice president of Jesus Ministries Incorporated and take over the Gentile division? Who’s going to take over the Jews around the Roman Empire outreach division? Who is going to be favored by Jesus? It’s what we do.
I read this week someone said, humility is not a natural virtue, and I thought that was a thought-provoking comment because there’s some virtues that sort of just sometimes come out of us, it seems like, right? Hopefully. But humility is probably the one least likely to show up, at least in its genuine form. Sometimes we can approximate it. Sometimes we’re really good at denigrating ourselves, but even that can be a form of pride because it puts us in control. I’m going to say I’m not good at this so that one, again, you can compliment me, but two, no one can cut me down. I’m not going to give you the opportunity to.
Genuine humility is really, really, really hard to achieve. I’ve shared this before, but I can’t help but think about it whenever I come to a passage on humility, the story of Benjamin Franklin and his wrestling with humility. Now, there’s a great man, right? One of the founding fathers of the country, a genius. He did so many things, invented so many things, observed so many things, had so much great wit and wisdom.
And in his autobiography, he talks about how he decided, how many people decided to do this? He wrote down a list of 12 virtues that he needed in his life, 12 virtues that would make him a better person. Benjamin Franklin was not a believer. He did believe there was a God. He didn’t believe in the Bible. He didn’t believe that Jesus was the Savior of the world. He thought it was interesting. He thought Jesus was a great moral teacher, but he didn’t like to hang around Christians.
And one of his Christian friends, a Quaker, was listening one day as Franklin’s talking about how he’s going to cultivate these 12 different virtues in his life, and he was making great progress on it, and his friend said to him, you know, you might consider adding a 13th, humility. Now, I think Franklin was a little bit taken aback by this at first. No one likes to be told, you know, you should be more humble, right? Because it goes right into that pride in us when people are saying, your pride is exuding out of you. You should be more humble.
But to his credit, he did decide to try to add a 13th virtue, and he was going to approximate humility. Now note, because he wasn’t a believer in Jesus, he didn’t pray to God, Lord, would you help me to be humble like you are? What did he decide to do? He was going to, by his own power, become more humble.
And he said he became quite good at presenting humility. He looked like a humble man. But he writes, every time he achieved the approximation, every time he looked humble, he became very proud of that achievement, and he realized he couldn’t actually get there.
But here was Jesus. Jesus, the one who made the very atoms that build up the very molecules that build up the very things of earth. He didn’t just build a building. He didn’t just plant a tree. He didn’t fashion a city. He made everything. He’s walking through that creation that he made with the people, and he doesn’t go around saying, look at me, I am great. What does he do? He goes and he serves.
The very God of the universe came into this world as a servant. Why did he do that? Because he was modeling what his kingdom looks like. What are we called to do here? I was joking earlier about how you should go and post about how Little Hills is the greatest church ever.
What’s our calling as a church? What’s our calling as Christians? Not to be known as the greatest, the best, the most accomplished, the most useful. We’re called to be known as Jesuses. That’s it. That’s the thing. That is the accomplishment. That’s all that we are meant to be, those who serve Jesus.
And yes, we have gifts and we use them. And I pray that the people will someday say this church is a blessing, not so that they compliment us, but because that means that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. But we’re meant to do that through service.
What does Jesus say in verse 35? He says that the one who wants to be great, the one who wants to be great, should be the servant of all. The disciples didn’t get that yet. The disciples were trying to figure out, how is this ministry position I’ve joined and signed up for, how is this going to get me advanced in the society? Who’s going to look up to me?
You know, I was a fisherman. I was a tax collector. I was a revolutionary trying to overthrow the government. Now I’m following Jesus. Now I’m going to be respectable in society. People are going to look up to me because I have been trained by this new up-and-coming rabbi.
What happens today when someone comes up with some new approach to doing things? All the people that want to advance try to associate around the inventor or the company or the organization and say, I’m part of it. I knew that person when I’m going up with it. People are going to know that I am cutting edge. I know a good thing when it’s happening.
We just want people to look up to us. And if we think about the disciples in a sense, we can say that’s true of them. The disciples were those who recognized who Jesus was in a way that most of the people at the time didn’t, but in that they weren’t supposed to be known as great. They were meant to be known as servants.
To the extent that we come into the church so people will praise us and compliment us and talk about how great we are, we’re going to be bitterly disappointed because the pains of following Jesus, the rejection in the world, will outweigh any little bit of an ego trip that we can get in the moment.
It doesn’t mean that there won’t be times that we get compliments. It doesn’t mean that at all. And there’s nothing wrong with us encouraging each other. When someone serves well and we compliment them and we encourage them in their gifts, that’s not a bad thing. Jesus did that too. He built up his disciples. He wasn’t constantly undercutting them. That wasn’t what they were supposed to be driven by.
Jesus was the true servant of all, is the true servant of all. He, the only one who didn’t deserve death, went to the cross and died for us to demonstrate not only to save us, but also to demonstrate then what it looks like to be in his kingdom, that he didn’t value what he deserved. He gave it all up for us.
And so therefore, how much more should we give up what we have? Because Jesus deserved everything. We deserve nothing. And yet we cling to the things that we have and say, but I need this. I need to be important.
I like what Henry Sweet says. He says, The spirit of service is the passport to eminence in the kingdom of God. For it is the spirit of the master who himself became the servant of all. We’re meant to serve all.
And to the extent that we find ourselves in a position where we lead, and every one of us at different points in our life is going to have leadership in some way. You might say, well, I don’t have any leadership positions. But all of us do. All of us do.
Every person I see in this room tonight, I know the opportunities that God is giving you to influence others and to lead. Those of you online, as I’ve learned your stories, I know that you have those opportunities too. We all are in places where we can influence and encourage and build up.
And those places where people are going to follow us, whether it’s at school or at work or at home. The question is, what are we going to do with that? Because the human temptation is to do like the disciples. And as we start to serve others, we start to see that service is a way for them to compliment us and build us up so we become more and more important.
That’s going to mean that we’re going to serve the people who build the biggest ego trip for us rather than the people that God has placed before us to serve. That’s not what Jesus has called us to.
Notice even in the criticism that he needs to level with the disciples, he does it in a way not intended to break them down. Not to say, okay, busters, you think that you’re too important? You’re busy fretting over which one of you is going to be second in command or is going to go and do this or that mission that we’ve talked about? I’m going to undercut you and I’m going to make sure that you know that there’s one boss here and there’s only one boss here.
He doesn’t say that. What does he do? He goes inside the house with them and then he asks, so guys, what have you been talking about? His point isn’t to embarrass them. His point is to help them mature, to become more of what they’re really meant to be.
As I read that, I thought back to a time early in ministry where I was serving under a pastor and I had got done preaching a sermon. I had only preached a few sermons at the time and I got done preaching this particular sermon. Service was over and you know, especially, well, it’s still nice when you hear, oh, that really applied to my life, right?
Once again, we like to know what we’re doing that’s helpful, but especially when you’re first preaching, you desperately want to know that you haven’t just gone up there and just completely wrecked the thing.
I remember getting done with this sermon. I had struggled over this one and I got done and this pastor I was serving with said, sit down. People were coming up like often they do to talk to whomever preached and the people are standing there and he said, sit down.
He starts doing this dramatic performance of what he thought were the worst things I’d done in the sermon and asking the people who intended to come up to talk to me if they agreed that that’s exactly what I’d done. And I just remember feeling just completely, utterly humiliated.
And I thought about that as I was reading what Jesus did because there’s an interesting combination of things we’re called to do as we seek to be humble. Sometimes we need people to correct us, but we also can demonstrate humility as we correct. And all of us are going to have an opportunity at times to say, you know, maybe you might want to rethink about this, but as we do, because we’re not trying to build up ourselves, we think about what we’re going to be doing for that other person.
Not how can I make sure that everyone sees that this person isn’t getting everything right and I know what I’m doing, but how can I help this person rise to his or her ability in the kingdom? That’s what Jesus is doing with these disciples. He doesn’t try to make them look like fools. Quite the contrary.
He privately corrects them. He encourages them in a way that’s going to build them up. Yeah, they needed to be set straight. They were busy feeding their pride, but he wasn’t trying to undercut them until they were in the ground and everyone said, well, clearly Jesus is the only one that they should listen to.
No, he wanted them to be built up so that people would be able to listen to them in the ministry they were going to do once Jesus returned from earth, once he left them there to do the rest of his work. That’s what we should be doing.
We don’t want to make ourselves indispensable and we don’t want it to be that we make people view other people as somehow unuseful or not contributing as well to the church. We should be constantly building each other up so that everyone sees the gifts of the kingdom being used even when it makes us a little less important, especially when it makes us a little less important.
The danger when we don’t do that, the danger when we allow ourselves to take our positions of importance and use those to tear others down, when we’re focused on, I’m going to serve in ways that build myself up, when I’m focused on, where am I situated in the body of Christ or in the continuum? Am I two steps down in the church from Jesus? There’s Jesus, he’s the head of the church, okay, and where am I in the org chart there?
When that’s the way that we’re thinking, what it’s going to cause us to do is to take those opportunities to end up actually destroying other people because when we allow greatness to essentially become our drug, when we are driven by how are we positioned and how do other people understand that we’re positioned, then our willingness to serve others and to serve others in ways that make them look good is going to be contingent on, does it make me look even better?
Do I look like the expert? Do I look important?
The disciples understandably struggle with this because they’re human. You think about some of the things they see, we have several examples here, we’re in Mark chapter 9, if we just go a little bit further, Mark chapter 9 verse 38, it says, John said to him, Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.
What are the disciples thinking? He hasn’t signed up like we have, he shouldn’t be doing this. Later on, Mark chapter 10 verse 13, the people, they were bringing children to him that he might touch them and the disciples rebuked them.
When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his arms and he blessed them, laying his hands on them.
The disciples are thinking, we’re the important ones. We’re the ones who should have access to Jesus. All these parents, they’re bringing their children to Jesus, maybe those kids don’t have their hands clean, they’re getting Jesus’ robes all dirty and they’re making all kinds of noise, and we’re the ones who have been following Jesus, we’re the important ones. What do these parents think that they’re doing?
We have to understand at the time, oftentimes children were viewed very, very, as very, very lowly. Why? Because they weren’t productive yet. They weren’t accomplishing much for society. Yes, there was the sense that it’s really good if you have children because someday they’ll take care of you, someday they’ll take over the family inheritance and the land and they’ll plow it and it’ll be good, but when they’re kids, they’re not really all that important.
That’s how the disciples are viewing them. On the one hand, you have these lowly ones of society and they’re getting access to Jesus and on the other hand, you have these disciples who recognize that Jesus is the rabbi that you should follow and why should those little children have the same access that the disciples have?
Again, we look at the disciples and it’s so easy for us. Hindsight’s 20-20, right? We look at them and think, come on, don’t you know that soon it’ll be that churches around the globe, just centuries later, around the globe you’ll go into a church and what will you see? You’ll see a picture of Jesus with a little child on his lap. Don’t you realize that? That’s like a slogan for Jesus essentially. What are you doing, disciples?
But we fall into the same trap. Let me show you some pictures. Here’s a picture from when I was in seminary. Just a few years ago. This was a picture from a group that I was assigned to my very first semester. I don’t actually remember the name of the guy next to me. I’ve been trying all week to think of, who is that? I’d run across this picture and I thought, I don’t remember his name.
This is a picture I ran into this week. I also ran into this picture this week. This was when I was teaching at Lindenwood. Does anyone know who that is next to me here? That’s Lou Brock. One of the greatest baseball players ever. One of the Cardinal Pantheon is standing right next to me.
I got to have dinner with him. I’m telling you about it because I got to have dinner with Lou Brock several times. His wife was on the board at the university and so he’d be there, just sitting there and we’d talk. It was great. He’s a believer. Well, he still is. He’s in Jesus’ presence now, but he’s a believer, thankfully. We had great conversations.
It’s fun to tell you about it because he’s Lou Brock in St. Louis. That’s better than knowing King Charles. I met Lou Brock and took a picture with him. When I was preparing this picture, I thought, I’m going to clean it up a little bit. I’m going to clean out the noise. It was taken with a camera that was older. It was a little noisy.
I cleaned that up. It was slightly blurry. I fixed the blur because I get to show you a picture of Lou Brock. Do you know what struck me? Do you notice I didn’t clean up this picture? It’s all blurry. I don’t even know who this guy is. I have shown people this picture. Oh, you’re talking about Lou Brock? Here, let me show you a picture of me with Lou Brock.
I’ve never shown anyone this picture before. Why? Because I don’t know who this guy is. I don’t know. As I was cleaning up my picture of Lou Brock this week, I thought, you know, what does that say about my heart? I want you to know that I met Lou Brock. I like that picture a lot.
It convicted me, maybe I should clean up that other picture too. I don’t know who that guy is. We didn’t run into each other anymore after that in seminary. But I do know this, that Jesus knows who that guy is. And praise God that Lou Brock is a believer, that he is now standing in the presence of his Lord. Praise God for that.
And God loves him. But you know what? God loves this man too, even though I don’t know who he is. One isn’t more important than the other in the kingdom of God.
And I found myself really struck as I thought about my own approach to those pictures. Because I wanted to be associated with the important ones. That’s what Jesus was talking to his disciples about. They wanted everyone to know, yeah, I’m with Jesus. I’m taking selfies with Jesus every day. My Instagram is trending. See, right there. Right there next to me. I’ll take another one so I can prove to you I’m live with Jesus right now.
But then I saw those little children coming up to him and they said, wait a second, we can’t have everybody getting pictures with Jesus.
We go back to our passage we started with. Verse 36. It says, he took a child and he put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.
Peter, James, John. Yeah, I’ve called you. I’ve made you my disciples. I have a mission for you, but I have a mission for that child that I’m holding to, he says.
So we look around at every person this week. God has given a calling to each and every person. Every person matters to him. It’s been noted that in Aramaic, the word for child and servant is the same. And maybe we don’t want to play that too much, but I think there’s something to expressing and understanding the culture of the time in that.
What do we even do sometimes when we are children? When we’re thinking about what it’ll be like to grow up, what do we often think? We think, well, someday I’m going to accomplish this, right? You ask a little kid, well, what do you want to do when you grow up?
I thought back to when I first started programming and I was in my early teens and I wanted this programming to work and I thought I was going to maybe start a company that did programming. That was going to be my future. And so I was so excited about this.
And one thing I made sure to do was never to tell anyone my age when I was posting this stuff online because I wanted people to actually pay attention to it, that it seemed important. And I knew if I put what my age was, people would say, eh. In high school, I started an online magazine. I made sure that I did everything possible to obscure my age because I wanted people to actually read this stuff and think it meant something.
Because I knew if they knew I was only 17, they’d say, oh, well, maybe we should reevaluate this. Maybe we won’t take it seriously. We still do this today. We get into this thing with age. Sometimes we do it at the other end of the spectrum. We say, oh, this person is X number of years old. I’m not going to name an arbitrary age there. But X number of years old, that must not, you know, he gets a little funny sometimes. She talks out of her head. We just sort of discount it.
Who do we devalue?
But here’s the thing that Jesus wants them to understand. It’s not about how important society thinks someone is. It’s not about, I know that in St. Louis, I can show you that one picture and you’re going to say, wow, Lou Brock. And that other picture, you’re going to say, huh? Who’s he? And I’ll say, I don’t know.
It’s not about how important society says the person is. It’s not about what they can do for us, that they can build us up, that we know that our skill set is so much higher than theirs that they’ll make us feel important, that we’re so much more talented, everyone will compliment us instead, that they’ll be indebted to us for what we can do or they’ll compliment us a bunch for how much we help them.
It’s not about any of those things. It’s about recognizing that the people around us are made in the image of God.
If you apply for a job, what do they often tell you to do? Well, you put down the experience relevant to that job, right? You don’t put down things that have no meaning to that. If you’re applying for a job at a bank, you don’t put down what level you accomplished in a video game. Now, maybe if you’re trying to be a creator at a social media company, you do, right? Oh, wow, I can do this, but not at a bank.
We customize the resume. We put down the right information. And here’s the thing that we run into trouble with God and with the church. We completely misunderstand what should go on our resume in the kingdom of God.
We start putting, well, I accomplished this, and I’m the best person in this church at this, and I’ve served this many years, and my testimony is so impressive, and I can save this many people. Ooh, boy, I can save this many people, huh? And so we start putting all these things down because we think that’s going to make us important.
That’s what the disciples were doing. We have these impressive resumes, Jesus. That person that wants to cast out demons and has been following you around for years, he doesn’t have the Jesus Academy graduate certificate. Those children, they haven’t even been through the Jesus Teams program yet. How can they have access to you, Jesus?
But there’s exactly one thing that matters on our resume before Jesus, that we know him. He made us in his image. He loves us. And the only thing that matters is, is Jesus our Lord or not?
When we understand that, we quit viewing other people as those who can’t advance or get in the way of our advancement. It’s the true equalizer, the true thing that says, we all matter to God. And when we keep that focus, then we serve as the body of Christ effectively because we’re not focused on how it will advance us, but how it advances Jesus.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, as we come before you, would you help us that we wouldn’t be focused on what people think of us, but we would be focused on what people think of you? Would you help us to be humble? Would you help us to value those who don’t seem to mean anything to us, who don’t seem that they can make us more important in society, who we don’t even know the name of, much less anyone else knows the name of that we know. That those people would matter just as much to us as the people that we know others will view as important, as we would view those who are better than us at things, as important as those who make us look good. That those who have nothing to give are just as important as those who have everything to give.
Lord, we know that in the grand scheme of things as we come before you, we have truly nothing to offer. And yet you have chosen us and called us your sons and your daughters. And Father, would you help us to see everyone else through your eyes? We pray in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
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