Mark chapter 10. And let's just
pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank
you for your faithfulness and we pray, our Father, that you
would make your Word, the living Word that reveals our Saviour
to us and reveals us to ourselves, that you would make that real
and active in our lives this morning, Heavenly Father. We
thank you for your promise to be the teacher of your people.
And we thank you and expect you to do wonderful things amongst
us again, our Father. We thank you in Jesus' name.
Amen. So you have before you Mark chapter
10. Last week we looked at this passage
of scripture from verse 32 down to 44. Today I wanted to look at that
passage again, but we want to focus on verse 45. If ever anyone asks you, what
do those people there at Nowra really believe? Then I pray that
this will be a living part of scripture that you can take them
to and say, those people at Nowra believe this. And we know that
millions of trees are sacrificed to write against the plain meaning
of these words. Institutions, Bible colleges,
missionary organisations, an enormous amount of human activity
is expended in this world to undo what God plainly says here. So the picture of course is of
the Lord Jesus marching to Jerusalem. In fact, he marched in such a
way that the people around him were amazed and fearful. Such was his determination to
go to Jerusalem. This was no accident, what was
going to befall him in these next few weeks. So let's just
read this passage together. Mark 10, verse 32. The Romans. They will mock him
and spit on him and scourge him and kill him. And three days
later he will rise again. James and John, the two sons
of Zebedee, came up to Jesus saying, Teacher, we want you
to do for us whatever we ask of you. And he said to them,
What do you want me to do for you? They said to him, Grant
that we may sit, one on your right and one on your left, in
your glory. But Jesus said to them, You do
not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup
that I drink? or be baptized with the baptism
with which I am baptized." They said to Him, We are able. And
Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink, you shall drink. and you shall be baptized with
the baptism with which I am baptized, but to sit at my right or on
my left. This is not mine to give, but
is for those for whom it has been prepared." Hearing this,
the ten began to feel indignant with James and John. Calling
them to himself, Jesus said to them, You know that those who
are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and
their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this
way among you. For whoever wishes to become
great among you shall be your servant. And whoever wishes to
be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man
did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life
a ransom for many. As we saw last week, we have
this amazing contrast in the scriptures between Man, the best
of men, this amazing contrast between the best of men, these
men who had left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, had suffered
much to follow the Lord Jesus, been with Him now for three years,
but these men are still men. And we have this extraordinary
contrast between the nature of man and the nature of God. We looked last week at the insensitivity. Now the third time the Lord Jesus
has spoken to his apostles, that close band that followed him
and lived with him constantly. The third time he mentions his
death And every single time he mentions it, they respond with
something about themselves, something for themselves. There is a way, says God. The wise man in the book of Proverbs
repeats it twice. There is a way that seems right
to a man. But the ends thereof are the
ways of death. There is a way that seems right
to a man. The difference between spiritual
life, real spiritual life, and anything else that pretends to
offer spiritual life by the activities of men, by the will of man, is
all the difference between heaven and hell. These apostles were
loved by the Lord, but these apostles show us so clearly how
much they need a saviour, how much they need to be redeemed. So what my desire is this morning,
if the Lord allows, is for us to go through the last verse
in that section, verse 45, and just look at each word in it,
and just let those words speak God's words to us. In a sense, this is the only
time in Mark's Gospel where the Lord Jesus tells His people why
he is going to die. He tells them again and again
what is going to happen to him at Jerusalem. But this is the
verse where he most clearly says why he's going to die, and what
is going to happen at Jerusalem, and what will be the result of
what happens at Jerusalem. And so verse 45 starts with for. The word means because. because of all of what's preceded
it. Specifically, of course, in those
verses where the Lord Jesus in verse 43 and 44 shows us that
spiritual greatness, greatness in God's kingdom, is the opposite. to man's thinking. Everything
in God's kingdom is the opposite to natural man's thinking. Everything
in God's kingdom is the opposite to religious man's thinking. It is all the opposite. And the
really great person, and the really great servant, and the
really great slave among them is the Lord Jesus himself. Then he describes himself. The pharaoh means that there
is a purpose. And then he has the title that
he gives himself throughout the gospel narratives. The son of
man. God, his Father, spoke from heaven
in Mark's Gospel twice. At his baptism, God the Father
said in Mark 1.11, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. Then, before those three apostles,
the two of them here, wanting to have glory for themselves,
He actually showed himself as he really is. He was transfigured
before them. His clothes became dazzling white. And God the Father spoke from
heaven and said, this is my beloved son. Hear him. The Son of Man is a title. It's
a title that comes from Daniel 7. In verse 13 and 14, there
is this amazing description of the One who is coming. I was
watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son
of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven, He came to the Ancient
of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him
was given to this Son of Man was given dominion and glory
and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages shall serve
Him. His dominion, the dominion of
this Son of Man, is an everlasting dominion. which shall not pass
away. And his kingdom, the kingdom
of this Lord Jesus, this Son of Man, is the one which shall
not be destroyed. Nothing is going to interfere
with this kingdom. And so the Son of Man is a title. So many titles, it is descriptive
of the fact that the Lord Jesus truly was a man. In every sense, He was a man
like us. And in every sense, He was God. He truly was God. At Christmas
time, people sing those words from Isaiah. They're so well
known. Unto us, a child is born. Unto us a son is given and the
government will be on his shoulder and his name will be called Wonderful
Councillor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government
and peace there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and
over his kingdom to order it and establish it with judgment
and justice. From that time forward, even
forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform it." And
so the Lord Jesus is on His way. now to Jerusalem, to claim the
throne of his great ancestor David, to claim the throne that
was his, to establish manifestly an everlasting kingdom. And so
the Lord Jesus came. He did not come to be served. He came from his Father. He was sent by his father, but
he was driven by love for his bride and love for the glory
of the Father. I come to do your will, O my
God. He didn't come to be served by
man, because man cannot serve God. In Acts 7.24, Paul is in that
pagan city of Athens, and he describes God to these people. God who made the world and everything
in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped by men's hands
as though he needed anything, since he gives life and breath
and all things. God is not going to be served
by human hands. He is in need of absolutely nothing. In his essential deity he is
lacking absolutely nothing. He sits on a throne in heaven. He reigns over this universe. He owns the cattle on a thousand
hills. The streets of his city are paved
with gold. He has no need of anything other
than what comes to him via the worth and the merit and the work
of his dear son. The problem is that we are sinners. And for some people that word,
sinner, is almost like a badge of honour and they can almost
brag about the fact that they are sinners. For God's children,
they know something deeper about sin. They know that sin is what
they are. They know that sin The sins that
people see on the outside and the sins that we get really good
at covering up from other people on the outside, the sins that
are there come out of a heart that is wicked. The heart of
man is deceitfully wicked and beyond cure. Who can understand
it? We are so seriously polluted. And what do we see before us
but a great example of that? The Lord Jesus says in Lamentations,
is there any suffering like my suffering? He describes what's
going to happen to him and the apostles turn round with the
two great words of all men apart from the grace of God. Verse 35, we want. Verse 39, we are able. If God leads you to your wants
and to your desires and allows you to go the way you want to
go, you will go to hell. If you presume that you will
meet God and say in that last day, we are able, look what I
have achieved with my hands, God will cast you into hell. He came to serve. How much do
we need to be served by God? Only people who have seen themselves
by the grace of God to be real sinners, not just pretend sinners,
real sinners, know that they need to be served by God. We want, I will, We are able by
the cries and the testimony of wicked hearts. When Satan fell,
his great claim is before us in Isaiah 14. Just listen to
his words. I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above
the stars of God. I will also sit on the mount
of the congregation on the farther sides of the north. I will ascend
above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High."
God condemns humanity in Psalm 50 by saying, You human beings think that I
am altogether like you. When man came under Satan's dominion
and gave Satan rulership of his world and rulership of his life, he enticed and deceived Eve by
saying, did God really say You can doubt this Word of God and
you can be the judge of God's Word. You will not surely die. Surely it's in every human heart.
We really do believe that we are going to live forever. And then the great promise of
Satan. which lives in every human heart,
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil. We really do want a throne. We are born into this world feeling
as if we need to be on a throne. We want, says the apostles, we want
We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. How many billions
of Christian prayers are like that? Billions of Christian prayers
every day. We want, we want how many people
in churches today believe we are able We can do it, just like the Israelites
at the foot of Mount Sinai. Give us the rules, God, and we
can do it. Give us some things to do, and
we can do it. Barack Obama won an election
with a great promise, didn't he? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. God is in the business
of frustrating all of the plans and all of the activities of
all of the people in this world, and especially when they gather
together. Especially when they create their
little towers of Babel and say, we will, we will, yes we can,
we are able. As I said earlier, the only hope
for your immortal, eternal soul is if God does not let you have
what you want, and God strips away from you that claim that
we are able. He came to serve. There's a wonderful
article in your bulletin by Henry Law. I suggest you read it and
if you like we can download it from the internet. But it just
describes the amazing service that the Son of Man had to render. You have to come to what we have
made by our sin with Adam and what we have made in our lives
which the scriptures call the strongman's house. We have given
dominion over this world to Satan. And the Lord Jesus says no one
can enter the strongman's house and plunder his goods unless
he first binds the strongman. Then he will plunder his house. The Lord Jesus has to serve us
They're rescuing us from the strongman. We must be rescued
out of Satan's dominion. Satan, in the Bible, is a liar
and a murderer. To murder people, he lies to
them. He makes them believe that we
are able and we can do it. We need to be rescued from ourselves. We need to be rescued from saying,
I want, and I am able, and I will. We need to be rescued from the
law of God, which is unchanging and written in stone and is a
holy, fiery law. The law of God says simply, be
perfect. Be absolutely perfect and you
will live. We need to be rescued from sin. We need to be rescued from the
sin which stains absolutely everything about us and absolutely everything
we do. We have a debt. We are cast in the
scriptures as people who have a debt. God demands from every
human being absolutely 100% perfect holiness, 100% of the time. If you think you are able, that
is God's standard, perfect obedience. To those who say, we are able,
we are able, we need to be rescued from our self-righteousness that
says, I can do nothing. I can do nothing unless God helps
me. The Lord Jesus came to serve
his bride, his bride who had been captured by Satan, his bride
who had been blinded by Satan. His bride, who He loved with
an everlasting love, but had given herself in adultery, spiritual
adultery, to many husbands. I will, I want, I am able. So salvation, real salvation,
is a gift from God. He came to serve and to give. And the word give means to cause
to happen. We better keep being reminded
that our God The Lord Jesus Christ sits on a throne. He marched
to Jerusalem. Absolutely nothing happened in
Jerusalem without His absolute 100% perfect will and control. And all of it happened according
to His promised word. Just listen to the I wills of
Jesus. Behold we are going up, verse
33, we are going up to Jerusalem. No one's going to stop us. The
Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the
scribes. They will condemn Him to death
without any evidence whatsoever, an absolute mockery of justice. And they will hand Him over to
the Gentiles. Then the Gentiles will mock Him,
and they will spit on Him, and they will scourge Him, and they
will kill Him. All of what happened to the Lord
Jesus is promised. It's caused to happen. He gave himself. He gave his
life. He gave his back to the smiters. He came to give. He gave all of that amazing life,
all of that amazing life was given. He wasn't coerced into
going to Jerusalem. He went as a lamb to the slaughter
and he went with willingness and in fact he went with great
eagerness and anticipation, great eagerness for the joy set before
him. He endured the cross. All salvation is a gift. The place that the apostles wanted
to be is the place that's been prepared beforehand. It's a gift. All the pictures of salvation,
and we've seen so many of them in Mark's Gospel, the miracles
are pictures of salvation, and all of them, every one, is a
picture of someone in desperate need, unable to help themselves. A paralyzed man, a leper, a blind
man, a demon-possessed man, a woman bleeding for 12 years, a dead
girl, and they all receive the gift of grace from the Lord Jesus. He gave Himself. His life was
not taken from Him. His life was given. And there are two elements before
us in these verses which show us what happened in the giving
of that life. He was handed over by the chief
priests and the scribes to the Gentiles. And human activity
and physical activity were done. They mock and spit and scourge
and kill. They crucify him. And even though we return in
horror at the way they treated a man who had just gone around
doing good, a man who had done no sin, a perfect man, was treated
with such abominable wickedness. That wasn't the greatest pain
the Lord Jesus suffered. In verse 38, to give his life, he had to drink
a cup. The cup in the scriptures is
a reference to the cup of God's holy infinite wrath, justified
wrath against sin. God is not going to save anyone
and violate his holy character and violate truth and violate
justice. Sins must be punished. Sins will be punished infinitely
and eternally. They will be punished in two
places in all of this creation. They will either be punished
in the Lord Jesus and in his body, or they will be punished
in hell, where a finite man can never pay the price. So the cup that Jesus is talking
about here, the cup that he will drink is the cup of God's wrath. The
Lord Jesus was in agony in Gethsemane as
he contemplated the fact that that very day he was going to
be made sin. All of the sins of all of God's
people were put on the Lord Jesus He called them his own and God
treated him as if he had really committed every single one of
those sins. This is what broke the blood
vessels in him and caused him to sweat blood and plead with
his father that if it's possible take this cup away from me. And if it's not possible that
this cup can be removed unless I drink it, your will be done." God made His soul an offering
for sin, Isaiah 53 verse 11. 2 Corinthians 5.21 is a great picture
of the Gospel, isn't it? God made him who had no sin,
knew no sin, to be sin for us, that in him we might be the righteousness
of God. This is something of what it
is for him to have given his life. And the next word is a beautiful
word, isn't it? It's a word that we know well,
the word ransom. In the Philippines at the moment
there's an Australian who has been living there for some time,
and last I heard he was captured by some Muslim rebels, and they
have put a price on his life. Two million dollars is his price.
For two billion dollars, his family can have him back. What's the ransom price? It's
before us all the time in our understanding. He gave his life
a ransom. The ransom is what's required
to make you free. What's required by God to set
you free, what's required by God to take you to heaven is
a ransom. Your debts are infinite. Your indebtedness to God's holy
law is infinite. You have broken every single
one of them and we continue to do so. We think that the ransom price is
this cheap thing, isn't it? And the religious world cheapens
the ransom price by saying that it was a ransom for everyone.
If it's a ransom for everyone, and the Lord Jesus paid His infinite
life for that ransom, then there is no need for us to be here,
we can all go to the beach, because everyone is going to be saved.
The scriptures make it very clear that this ransom is a real price,
a specific price, and a huge price. For the redemption of
souls according to God in Psalm 49.7 is a costly thing. It costs a lot to get people
like us out of hell and into heaven. I will ransom them from
the power of the grave and I will redeem them from death. The Lord Jesus had to both suffer
physically under the Gentiles and the Jews, but he had to suffer
in his soul the infinite price that God demanded. Effectively,
without going to the place, he had to go and suffer the hell
of God's wrath. to redeem one of his own. To
say that that ransom is thrown out there and is available and
a possibility for everyone is to make a mockery of God. I was talking to a well-travelled
theologian a little while ago, and he said in all of his experience
in Bible colleges for 20 odd years now, he knows less than
that number of people who believe that the Lord Jesus really died
to ransom his people. Less than that number of theologians
in Bible colleges scattered throughout the world really believed that
the Lord Jesus as God suffered infinitely for his people and
knew what he was doing and was successful. Such is the nature
of the world, the religious world that we live in. Our God marched
to Jerusalem. Our Saviour went willingly to
the cross for the love of His bride. Our Saviour paid a ransom
and God said it is finished. God said He is satisfied. And with His own blood He entered
into the most holy place for once having obtained eternal
redemption. He had it in his hand as a finished
thing. The ransom was done. The blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without
spot to God. And so God's children receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance. God says, I have found a ransom. Deliver him from going down to
the pit. And to make it even more clear
for God's children, the next word for is different from the
word for at the beginning of the sentence. The word for here
quite simply means, in the place of. What else would we expect
from a successful God? In the place of, or on behalf
of. That's who the Lord Jesus died
for. When he's finished, he's successful. He came sent by God,
not to create possibilities and potentials. He came on a mission. His very life is the ransom for
our souls. And when he's finished, he says
it is done. And he sits in heaven now, expecting
and waiting and ruling this universe for the good of his people and
for his glory. And that's why this verse finishes,
it's a ransom for many. Wonderful, clear words, isn't
it? It's not a ransom for all. It
was never intended to be a ransom for all. It's a ransom for many. It's for those, in verse 40,
who are prepared. It's for sinners like this apostle,
these apostles, who want and claim that they are able and
have to be stripped of their wants and stripped of their abilities
to realize that God has to do all of it. from beginning to
end. It's for those who are prepared,
have places prepared for them. A remarkable challenge in these
verses, isn't it, is that we always want to sit on a throne,
the throne of our own lives. The question that the verses
ask us, are we prepared to do nothing? and be served by the
Lord Jesus. Only grace can bring that to
us. He served His bride in eternity
before the worlds were made when He said, I will take responsibility
for all of my people to bring them to heaven. He served us
on this earth with a holy life and a sin-bearing death on the
cross. And He serves us now, working
all things for our good. And He will serve us always into
eternity. In Luke, there is a most remarkable
verse. Chapter 12, verse 37. Blessed
are those servants whom the Master, when He comes, will find watching.
Assuredly I say to you that He, the Lord Jesus, will gird Himself
and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them. He makes his sheep to lie down
in green pastures. The boundary lines have fallen
for us in pleasant, pleasant places. Our God reigns. He rules. He is successful. It is finished. And God's people
are at rest from their labours, and rescued from their wants, and rescued from their abilities. And like the Lord himself, We
need to pray that we'll have the grace to continually cry
out, Your will be done. Amen.