Matthew 20:17-34

INTRODUCTION-. SERVANT: • doulos – slave • diakonos – minister, deacon JERUSALEM - MATTHEW 20:17-19 ➦The march to Jerusalem was lonely. • The challenge here is to listen to God enough to understand what He is doing in your life. • For us, to call ourselves Christians, we must ask, what is the greatest voice in your life? Who or what do you listen to most? ➦Jesus tells the disciples privately of His death. • Jesus is leading His disciples to the Great Commission… leading us to the same commission ➦The cross didn’t just happen to Jesus. • The cross was not just something that happened, but was something accomplished... • It is why we can’t see Jesus as a victim. As hard as the path is, we must see this as God’s plan for victory. ➦Jesus gives us the reason why we should be servants: because He served! • In other words, rather than being the recipient of service, Jesus was the example of service. • The greatest service we ever received from Jesus came by way of the cross, where Jesus humbled Himself to death in order that we would have life. NOW I SEE – MATTHEW 20:29-34 ➦In marching to His death, Jesus stops to be a servant to those society considered worthless. • In one kingdom, these men were beggars, blind and helpless. In the Kingdom of God, they had worth beyond all their conditions and were made whole. • Maybe wholeness begins in someone’s life based on which Kingdom we live from when we speak to them! ➦It is not a coincidence that two men want power and two blind men want sight. • The blind men only asked for what those with sight took for granted every day. It is the difference between the world and the Kingdom of heaven. Those who think they see want power but those who know they are blind want Jesus. WHO ARE YOU LIVING FOR? AMBITION – MATTHEW 20:20-28 ➦Living for the Kingdom of God changes everything! It changes what advances ➦There is a sharp contrast between the leadership of Jesus and the ambition of His and what retreats in the world! disciples. ➦We have been called to be servants and servant leaders because Jesus did • We unknowingly imagine that God’s will is synonymous with our wants and our prayers often mimic the request of James and John. ➦Jesus confronts self-focused living and a self-directed life with servant leadership. both! ➦In the Kingdom of God, being a servant is not a loss, but a gain. • Jesus looks at His disciples and cries out to us to choose the lowest position. • Often what happens is that people don’t picture themselves as leaders so Philippians 2:5–8 CSB Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing they never invest in their leadership. in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 “The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.” – John Stott obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.