Sermon Tone Analysis

The world usually operates under a very simple principle.

Adin Ballou, a nineteenth-century American pacifist and abolitionist, put it this way: “might makes right.”

In logic the same approach is called /argumentum ad baculum/, which means, “Do what I say or I’ll hit you with my stick!”

When this is the principle that people live by, the person with the bigger stick wins.

But what else can we expect from the world?

If its wisdom is, as James wrote, /earthly, sensual, devilish/ (Jas.

3:15), it cannot operate on the basis of truth.

The only thing it has left then is brute force or raw power, which is in reality nothing more than an abuse of God-given authority.

And that is why human governments tend to deteriorate over time.

They get bigger and bigger and push themselves into more and more areas.

Samuel said that this would happen when the people of Israel asked to have a king like all the other nations.

Unfortunately, church government is not completely immune to this kind of abuse either.

If it were, there would have been no need for Peter to exhort the elders of his day not to become /lords over God’s heritage/ (I Pet.

5:3).

The history of the Reformed Church in the United States in the nineteenth century gives countless illustrations of the abuse of ecclesiastical power, as the Mercersburg and liturgical controversies dominated church business.

But the Biblical principle applies to more than just the civil and ecclesiastical government.

It requires individual members within the body of Christ not to lord it over others.

After all, there is no one person in any congregation whose opinions are always right or whose recommendations are always wise.

Instead of insisting that others conform to our expectations, our attitude toward one another should be that of service.

We should ask how we can best minister to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Whatever We Ask

With all of this in mind, let us now consider the prayer of James and John as recorded in verse 35 of the text.

/Master/, they said, /we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire/.

Prayer is a good thing.

Jesus himself told us to keep asking, keep knocking and keep seeking.

He promised us that if we asked anything in his name and according to his will, he would give us what we asked.

Elsewhere the Bible says that God delights in the prayers of his people.

But the problem with James and John is that they removed all the perceptive restrictions from their prayer.

Not only was their prayer very open-ended, it was also very self-centered.

In the Greek, there is some emphasis on the phrase /whatsoever we shall desire/.

They asked the Lord to give them whatever they wanted without telling him what it was that they were looking for.

If Jesus had agreed to this, they could have asked for literally anything.

Unlike Herod, who to his regret offered Herodias’ daughter whatever she wanted up to half of his kingdom (Mark 6:22–23), Jesus was not about to do anything open the floodgates of the foolishness of these two disciples.

He knew what they were thinking.

In chapter 2, when the scribes debated in their hearts how Jesus could forgive sins, Mark wrote that /Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves/.

Later, in chapter 8 the disciples reasoned among themselves when they did not understand something that Jesus had said.

Again, Mark made it clear that Jesus knew what they were talking about even though he was not involved in the discussion.

So, how it was that these two brothers thought that they were going to get this passed Jesus is hard to figure.

But rather than rebuking them for failing to understand who he was, Jesus asked them to make their request explicit.

He said, /What would ye that I should do for you?/ (v.

36).

What they wanted is nothing short of amazing!

In verse 37, they asked Jesus to allow them to sit one on his right hand and the other on his left hand when he reigns in his kingdom of glory.

They sought positions of tremendous honor and power.

A king’s most trusted advisor sat at his right hand, and his second most trusted advisor sat at his left.

James and John wanted to be the chief persons in Jesus’ cabinet.

They wanted to reign with him and for him.

So, this was no small request because they were really asking for everything.

They wanted to be like Joseph in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh, or like Daniel in Babylon, whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed over all his counselors and governors.

When we read that they wanted to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in glory, that raises a rather interesting point.

We tend to assume that /in glory/ means “in heaven,” as if James and John were asking to reign next to Christ in his consummate kingdom.

But I really doubt that they were looking that far ahead.

It’s far more likely that they were just men of their own times.

There are numerous indications in the New Testament that the Jews of the first century believed that the Messiah would deliver them by casting off Roman oppression and establishing a kingdom on earth.

Think about how Herod the Great feared the arrival of the young king.

And when Jesus fed the five thousand in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, the people tried to make him their king.

After all, anyone who could fill the bellies of so many people with so little food would certainly be able to build a kingdom.

Even on Palm Sunday the crowds threw down their garments and palm branches, declaring that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of David had arrived in the person of Jesus Christ.

Although in the verses immediately preceding our text Jesus announced a second time that he was going to Jerusalem to die, the disciples did not understand what this meant until after he actually died.

They thought he was going to Jerusalem to begin his earthly reign.

James and John wanted to be earthly kings with earthly power and earthly glory.

Why did they think they were entitled to this?

They probably had several reasons in mind, some of which are almost plausible.

For example, they were Jesus’ biological cousins.

Their mother and Jesus’ mother were sisters (cf.

Matt.

27:56; Mark 15:40; John 19:25).

In the Old Testament, when God raised up David to gather together a disunited people and form them into a powerful empire, David chose Joab his nephew to be the commander of his army.

This set the precedent of choosing close relatives for advisors, i.e., men who can be trusted.

In fact, James and John counted on this relationship.

Where the same narrative appears in Matthew 20, we find that they did not approach Jesus directly but rather asked their mother to make their request for them (vv.

20–28).

This was further confirmed to James and John by the fact that Jesus chose them, along with Peter, to be part of his inner circle of disciples.

It was these three men that Jesus took with him to witness the Transfiguration, and it was also they who went with him to the garden the night of his arrest.

But whatever their reasons for making their request, it’s abundantly clear that they didn’t really understand either the nature of Christ’s mission or his call to discipleship.

They were interested in power and glory.

This is something that we must all be careful to avoid.

The Word of God admonishes each of us /not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith/ (Rom.

12:3).

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The Cup that I Drink

The Lord greeted the request of James and John with a mild rebuke in verse 38:/ Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?

and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?/

There is a common saying that says, “Be careful what you ask for —you might just get it!”

That is certainly the case here.

Jesus had called the twelve to be his apostles.

This was a very special office with a very special authority.

The apostles either wrote or authorized the books of the New Testament, plus they engaged in missionary, evangelistic and pastoral work that helped to establish the New Testament church.

Their authority went beyond that of an ordinary pastor.

When they spoke and wrote, it was really Christ speaking or writing through them.

So, in a sense James and John had the honor that they asked for.

But what they didn’t understand at the time is what it would involve.

They would not govern from thrones of gold at the head of a vast and powerful earthly empire, but by drinking from the cup of Christ and by being baptized with his baptism.

But was this something that they could do?

And even if they could do it, were they willing to do it?

To appreciate the seriousness of these questions, we have to understand what it means to drink of the cup and be baptized with the baptism of Jesus.

In the Old Testa­ment the cup sometimes symbolized God’s blessing, as when Psalm 116 says, /I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD/ (v.

13).

And other times it represents the outpouring of God’s wrath in judgment.

Psalm 75:8 says,/ For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them/.

To be more exact, the cup always involves wrath because the only reason that our cups run over with the blessings of salvation is because God has poured out the cup of his wrath, which we deserved, on his only begotten Son.

In our text, the cup from which Jesus was about to drink was most certainly the cup of divine wrath.

It was such a horrible cup that Jesus himself prayed for its removal on the night of his arrest.

The first time he went into the garden he said, /O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt/ (Matt.

26:39).

Later, he showed his willingness to drink this cup for us when he prayed, /O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done/ (Matt.

26:42).

So, when we partake of the Lord’s Supper, let us remember that the cup is not merely a symbol of Christ’s blood, but a symbol of the fact that he poured out his blood to satisfy the wrath of God concerning our sins.