Turn with me, if you would, to
Matthew chapter 20. Matthew chapter 20. And we will begin reading in
verse 20. Then came to him the mother of
Zebedee's children with her sons, that's James and John, worshiping
our Lord and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto
her, what wilt thou? She saith unto him, grant that
these my two sons may sit the one on thy right hand and the
other on the left in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said,
you know not what you ask. Are you able to drink of the
cup that I shall drink of and to be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with? They say unto him, we are able. He saith unto them, you shall
drink indeed of my cup and be baptized with the baptism that
I am baptized with. But to sit on my right hand and
on my left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them
for whom it is prepared of my father. And when the 10 heard
it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren, But
Jesus called them unto him and said, you know that the princes
of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them. And they that are
great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so
among you. But whosoever will be great among
you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant. even as the Son of Man came not
to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life
a ransom for many. A few things stand out to me
about this portion of scripture. And I wanna take a minute with
each one of them and really enter into what's being said. There
are just a few different things that I noticed in here. So I
have decided to divide this portion of scripture into this Bible
study and into the message in a moment. We will actually be
in Matthew 20 all day. But these specific verses will
be here for both services. For this Bible study, I want
us to acknowledge, number one, that the flesh of man is always
going to be sinful flesh. It's always gonna be sinful flesh.
Our Lord just told them in the previous verses that he was headed
to Jerusalem to die on a cross. If you look at verse 17, it says,
Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the 12 disciples apart in the
way and said unto them, behold, we go up to Jerusalem and the
son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto
the scribes and they shall condemn him to death and shall deliver
him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify him
and the third day he shall rise again. So this was nearing the
end of his ministry here on this earth. His ministry was roughly
three and a half years and this is nearing the end of it. They
had been with him for years. And not just a true preacher
of the gospel, God himself. They had been with God himself.
You would think by this point that they would not be so fleshly. But James and John's mother,
after hearing the Lord say, this is about to happen, he said,
here it is. We're going to Jerusalem one
more time. This is about to happen. They knew that he was the Christ. They knew that he was sent from
God. They knew that he was the king.
They knew that he was the one who would reign on the throne.
They knew this. And as soon as their mother realized
this is about to happen, she thought, I need to go ahead right
now and put in my reservation for my two sons. And she said, Lord, and she came
humbly. The other accounts say she worshiped
him. That's what it says right here.
She came humbly bowing to him, it says. She said, Lord, when
you enter into your kingdom, I know that you're gonna enter
into your kingdom. And when you sit down on your throne, would
you let my two sons sit on either side of you? Would you let them
sit on either side of you? Now here's the thing I want to
say about that. Who wouldn't want to sit next
to Christ? Who would not want to sit there?
Who would not want to sit next to Christ? I understand her request. It says that the brethren, when
they heard this, they were filled with indignation. They were filled
with anger and resentment and jealousy. Why? They wanted to
sit next to Christ too. We all do, even as we read this
account. Every time I've ever thought
about this account, and I hear them say that, this thought goes
through my mind. Can you believe the audacity?
Can you believe that? Why? Why do I think that? Jealousy. That's the reason why. When we get to glory, we don't
want to be sitting way in the back where we're struggling to
see. Does anybody here say, well, yeah, I'll just, I'll, you know,
it's going to be a number no man can number. Yeah, I'll take
the back row. Thank God that's not how it is.
That's not how it is. I don't know what glory is going
to be like. My mind has imagined things,
you know, but I hath not seen, ear hath not heard. It's never
entered into the heart of man. I don't know what glory is going
to be like, but it's not going to be like that. Our Lord very patiently explained
that to them and He is explaining it to us right here in this account. Verse 25, He called them unto
Him. He called all of them unto Him
and said, you know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion
over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them,
but it shall not be so among you. But whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant. Even as the son of man came not
to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life
a ransom for many. He said, in glory, there are
no additional thrones of authority or power or rank. There is only
one throne. the throne of the Lord Jesus
Christ. All authority, all power, all
rank has been given to him. It has been put in the hands
of one man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in glory, he explained right
here, there is no near or far. There is only in. That's all there is. There is
no near or far, there's only in. The oneness of Christ and
his people is described in the scripture as he is the head and
we are the body. That's how the word of God describes
the oneness of Christ and his people. He's the head, we're
the body. Now, let me give you a little
illustration here. Even though my collarbones are
closer to my head than my toes are, physically closer to my
head than my toes are, are they more a part of the body? No. Do they have a higher place in
the body, meaning a higher rank, a higher authority? Do my collarbones
have authority over my toes? No. Are they more connected to my
head than my toes are? No. That's not how it works within
the body. In the body, we are all one. The body is one with the body. The body is one with the head. We're all one. There's no crowns. There's no ranks. We're just
one. And our Lord explained this in verse 22. It says, Jesus answered
and said, You know not what you ask. You know not what you ask. He said, you're not thinking
about this correctly. Jesus answered and said, you know not what you
ask. Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of
and to be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized with? They
say unto him, we are able. That has always amazed me. It's
always amazed me. I don't know if they said it
in ignorance or faith. I honestly don't know. He said, are you able to be baptized
with the baptism I'm baptized with and to drink the cup that
I'm gonna drink? They said, yes, we're able. Verse
23, and he said unto them, you shall drink indeed of my cup
and be baptized with the baptism that I'm baptized with. What he's saying in this is we're
all one. We're all one. As I am, so are
you. Where I am, so are you. In my body, in a human body,
whatever position I hold, my whole body holds it. Wherever
I am, my whole body is. Whatever I am, my whole body
is. I am the father of my two children. This finger is the finger of
the father of my two children. That toe is the toe of the father
of those two girls. Whatever I am, my whole body
is. Whatever I experience, my whole
body experiences. Whatever I endure, my whole body
endures. He said, you don't know what
you're asking. You're asking for separate places
and separate positions. That's like saying, can you give
more honor and authority to my thumb than my first finger? Well,
it didn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way.
All authority has been given to the head. Now let me ask you
this question. Does my head have authority over my toes? Yes. All authority has been given
to the head. The body is just an equal recipient
of the head. And he said right here, You are
going to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. You are going to be baptized
with me in my baptism. Yes, you are. And he said in
Ephesians 2, he inspired the apostle Paul to say in Ephesians
2, you're gonna sit with me in my throne. All of my people are
gonna sit right there with me in my throne. There are no separate
seats. He said, where I sit, there you
sit also. Now that's glorious. That's glorious.
There is no back row in glory. There is no back row. All of
God's people are baptized into him and baptized with him. Now let's look at what our Lord
means in saying that all of his people will be baptized with
the baptism that he is, he was baptized with. Baptism means
immersion. That's what the word means. It
means immersion. Water baptism is a physical picture
of a spiritual immersion. That's why we have a baptistry
right here. Our Lord gave us that ordinance
to confess something. Water baptism is a physical picture
of a spiritual immersion. When a child of God confesses
the Lord Jesus Christ in water baptism, he or she is not confessing,
which many people do confess this, wrongly. But a true child
of God that the Lord has revealed these things to is not confessing. I was immersed by the preacher
into water. You know, people talk about like
I got baptized. A child of God is not confessing. I was immersed
by the preacher into water. A child of God confesses. I was
immersed by God's Holy spirit into Christ. God's Holy spirit
laid hold of me. plunged me into Him." That is
the true baptism for God's people. It's the work of God immersing
the soul of the child of God into the blood and the righteousness
and the life and the death and the mercy and the forgiveness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism is a confession of absolute
union with Him, being joined by God the Father into oneness
with Christ. That's our baptism. Now, because
our Lord Jesus Christ was joined into true baptism with his people,
when we are baptized, we confess our union with Christ, union
with his righteousness, union with his holiness, union with
his purity. And when he was baptized, he
confessed his union with us. But His union with us, union
with everything that we are, union with our sin, union with
everything that we are, His union with us brought a completely
different immersion to Him. The union of Him to our infirmities,
his union, him being touched with our transgressions, our
sins, that union immersed him into an ocean of wrath. A spiritual ocean of God's judgment. He drank the cup of sorrows,
sorrows. We drank the cup of mercy and
grace. He drank the cup of sorrow. There
was no mercy in his immersion. Honestly, you think about what
we confess when we talk about being plunged into Christ, we're
confessing mercy and grace and forgiveness. There was no mercy
in his immersion. There was no forgiveness in his
immersion, none. There was only brutal torture
and punishment by the holy law of God for the demands of justice
against all the sin we committed. All of the sin we committed. He was immersed into judgment's
fire. He was immersed into the forsaken
outcast of darkness. The darkness of death. That's
what he was immersed into. But thanks be to God, he says
to each one of his people, you were immersed into all of that
in me, with me. You were immersed into every
bit of that right there with me. You were owed that cup of
punishment. Why did he receive that? It's
because that's what we were owed. Why do we receive what we receive?
It's because that's what Christ was owed. That's what we get
in our union to him. What did he get in his union
with us? Exactly what we were owed. We were owed the cup of
punishment. And he says, you took the cup
of punishment and you drank it dry. Right there with thee. Everything I endured, you endured
in me. God's people were in him. God was in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself. God's people were in Christ. And he says, everything I satisfied,
you satisfied in me. You did it with me. When God
was satisfied with the punishment that was poured out on me, God
was satisfied with the punishment that was poured out on you. In
me. With me. He said, you drank of
the cup that I drank from. You were baptized with the baptism
that I was baptized with. And he said, for that reason,
as I came here to join myself to you and to perform that service
for you, he said, as you are joined to each other in the body,
be joined to each other as you are. be joined to each other. As the members of the body are
there for the purpose of serving each other, he says, serve each
other. That truly is the case for all
the members of a particular body. Everything that these hands right
here do, if you really think about it, everything that these
hands do is for the service of the rest of the body. Really, everything that these
feet down here do is for the service of the rest of the body.
These hands don't serve themselves to the point that if something
needs to be done to this hand, it's the other hand that does
it. They don't serve themselves. Nothing in the body works for
the sole purpose of serving itself. Everything that happens is for
the good of the singular body as a whole. And our Lord said
right here to all the members of his body, he said, be the
same way as I have come and done for you, do it for each other.
Verse 25, but Jesus called them unto him and said, you know that
the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that
are great exercise authority upon them, but it shall not be
so among you. But whosoever will be great among
you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of Man came not
to be ministered unto." How glorious is that? The only one who was
worthy of it. He said, I came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. John the Baptist said he must
increase, I must decrease. And to that, all of God's people
say amen. Amen. May our Lord teach us to
have a humble attitude, that humble attitude of service for
his sake. Amen. All right, you're dismissed.