Greatness Isn't What You Think (It's This) | Get In The Fight | Week 2

Well, hey Flatirons, it is so good to see you all. Thanks so much, Ellis, a lot of amazing things that are taking place at Flatirons. Why don't you all give yourselves a hand as we get started? Although I haven't had an opportunity to meet all of you all in person, whether you're in the room or joining us online, there's one thing that I'm pretty confident that we all have in common, that we all want our lives to matter. We all want our lives to count, we want to make a difference. That desire shows up everywhere, in our homes, at our work, in our neighborhoods, on the teams that we coach, and right here at Flatirons Church. And I don't think that that's a bad thing. In fact, I believe that God put that desire in all of us. In May, I attended my very last kindergarten graduation with my youngest son, Shaden. I think we've got a picture that I wanted to show you all. Yes, kindergarten graduations are a real thing. It's no secret that my wife and I have six kids from seven all the way to 17. Yes, it was on purpose. One of the things that I thought about when I was at Shaden's graduation, it's pretty crazy that he is going to be a part of the graduating class of 2038. All right, where are you gonna be in 2038?

Feels like so long from now. But here's one of the cool things. During the ceremony, each student was asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Here's one of the things that I noticed. Not one child said that when they grew up, they wanted to live a life that didn't matter. None of them said, I hope to coast through life. Every kid had a dream. One young boy, he kinda came up to the microphone, and he said, I wanna be a doctor. Another kid said, I wanna be a firefighter. Another kid said, I wanna be a pilot or an astronaut. One little boy said, and again, this is evidence of the times that we lived, and he said, I wanna be a full-time YouTube streamer. And we nodded our head. There was also one little girl who came up, and she said, I want to be a mommy. And when she said that, the whole room melted the way that you just did. Here's what stuck with me. Behind every one of those questions that the students were asked was this answer, that they all had this same desire. Whether they wanted to be a doctor, a firefighter, a YouTube streamer, or a mom, every kid wanted their life to count. The truth is, that desire doesn't disappear when we become adults.

What changes is how we're taught to measure it. Somewhere along the way, the world we live in begins to shape what we believe a life that matters looks like. So here's a question that we're gonna explore today. So how does Jesus define greatness? If you have your Bible, I wanna encourage you to open them right now. We're gonna be in Mark, the 10th chapter. If you don't have a Bible, we have some free Bibles in the back of our auditorium. It's our free gift to you. We'd love for you to take one, and we'll also have the words on the screen. So we're gonna be in Mark, the 10th chapter. Before we jump in, let me give you just a little bit of context on where we're gonna be in the book of Mark. Jesus is nearing the end of his earthly ministry. He's on his way to Jerusalem, and he knows that the cross is waiting for him. In fact, he has just told his disciples that he's gonna suffer, he's gonna be rejected and killed, and three days later, he's going to rise from the dead. But while Jesus is preparing to give his life away, his disciples are still thinking about getting ahead. In fact, James and John, two of the more popular disciples in the New Testament, they come to Jesus during the meal, and they ask for the seats of honor to sit at his right and his left hand

when he comes into his kingdom. When the other 10 disciples hear about it, they are furious, not because James and John asked the question, but because they wanted the seats of honor, too. Jesus, at this point in his ministry, is focused on the cross, and the disciples are focused on their crowns. Let's pick up in Mark chapter 10, verse 42. And Jesus called to them and said, you know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you. But whoever would desire to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would desire to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Jesus looks. and his 12 disciples. And he says to them, but not so with you. Church, here's what I want us to all say on the count of three. Let's say it again, let's say it for us. But not so with you. One, two, three. But not so with you. In other words, Jesus says that's how the world operates, but that's not how my followers should live.

Notice that Jesus doesn't rebuke their desire for greatness, he redirects it. The world defines greatness one way, and Jesus defines it another way. Our culture has a scoreboard for greatness. How much do I make? What's my title? Does everybody know my name? Is my social media popular? If you have kids, how successful are they? Do they get into the right school? Am I succeeding? Am I doing as well as the people around me? And listen, none of those things are necessarily bad. The problem is when they become a scoreboard that tells you or I whether our life matters. Let me give you today's message in one sentence. Greatness in God's kingdom is measured by your willingness to serve others. Let me say it one more time. Greatness in God's kingdom is recognized by your willingness to serve others. We're in part two of our series entitled Get in the Fight, and that is the fight because serving doesn't come naturally to us. Our hearts naturally drift towards making life about ourselves, to climbing higher, to getting ahead, to being noticed, but Jesus calls us to a different kind of greatness, a greatness that puts someone else first.

But here's the good news, and one of the things that I love about Jesus is that Jesus never asks us to live a life that he wasn't willing to live for himself. He didn't just teach it, he modeled it. Listen to how the Apostle Paul describes the humility of Jesus in Philippians chapter two. In Philippians chapter two, if you have your Bibles, let's turn there in Philippians chapter two. We're gonna read a good amount of scripture. Is that okay to read a good amount of scripture today? Amen. I'm gonna start at verse number three. Here's what the Apostle Paul says about the humility of Jesus. He says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Having this mind among yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But Jesus, emptying himself by taking the form of a servant, being formed in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name,

so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen? Amen. Jesus existed in the form of God, yet he didn't use his position for his own advantage. The scriptures say that he humbled himself, he took the form of a servant, and he became obedient all the way to the cross. And notice what happens. Jesus goes down in humility, but the Father lifts him up. Here's the pattern that we see in the life of Jesus, and it's the pattern that we're called to follow as his followers, is the way down is the way up. And when I look at the example of Jesus, I'm reminded of something that I have to remind myself all the time. My life is not about me, because I love me. Anybody else in here, you love yourself? All right? I love my plans, I love my schedule, I love being in control, though that's really an illusion. And 21 years of marriage and raising six kids have probably revealed my selfishness more than anything else in my life.

In fact, this week, I was sitting at home preparing this message, I was completely kind of locked in on my laptop, I'm working, trying to solve problems, trying to figure out, man, what I'm gonna do this week and what I'm gonna say, and one of my sons, who's really, really passionate about baseball, walks over to me and he says, dad, Can you come outside and throw the ball with me? And regrettably, I don't always get this right. Am I the only one? I can convince myself that whatever I'm working on in that moment is more important than the person that's standing right in front of me. And I'm learning, it's still a struggle, that sometimes the most faithful thing that I can do in that moment is to close the laptop, to grab the ball, and to go outside and be dad. Because faithfulness isn't just about what I say up here, it's about how I love and serve the people that God has placed right in front of me. And the same is true for you. If you are a follower of Jesus, your life is no longer your own. It's about what God wants to do in you and through you for his glory and for the good of people that he has placed around you. So here's the question. So how do we live this out?

In John chapter 13, Jesus shows us three choices that lead to a life that truly makes a difference. A little bit of context, it's the night before the cross. Jesus has gathered his disciples together for one final meal. Let's pick it up in verse number three. It says, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand, and he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garment and, taking a towel, he tied it around his waist. Then he poured the water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. If you want to live a life that truly makes a difference, here's the first choice. You have to choose to get up. I want y'all to say that with me. Say, choose to get up. In the first century, washing feet was the job of the lowest person in the household. So I want you to imagine, again, some 2,000 years ago, people walked dusty roads in sandals, so by the end of the day, you have to imagine what their feet feel like, but then also perhaps, what? Smell like. They were filthy. And so nobody wanted the towel. And that's what makes what Jesus does so powerful.

The one person in the room who had the right to be served is the one person who gets up to serve his disciples. Getting up means making yourself available to the people that God has placed in front of you. And most times, those are the opportunities that aren't dramatic, they're ordinary, and they're often inconvenient. Maybe your spouse has had a long day at work, and when you get home, instead of disappearing into your phone, you realize that as you stand at the threshold of your door, the most loving thing that I can do when I go into the house is to love and serve my family by helping do the dishes, by helping get the kids ready for bed. And so you choose to step in and help. Brothers, I'm trying to help y'all out right now. Maybe there's somebody at work, and you know, you kinda know the people at work that often seem a little bit overwhelmed. Like, you can just kinda feel the tension on them as they walk through the office. And perhaps there's this person at work this weekend, and you're gonna encounter this situation, and you can just see the anxiousness and the frustration on them, and you make the decision that this week that you're gonna say, hey, is there something I can take off your plate? Even if you know it's outside of your job description. Perhaps for our students in here, a lot of our students are starting school this week.

Students, if you're in here, make some noise. You started school this week. Any students, make some noise. All right, students, here's the thing. Parents, make some noise if you're excited that your students are back in school. Look at that. But students, maybe there's that kid at school that everybody ignores or makes fun of. And instead of you joining in or stepping away, you decide that you wanna represent Jesus by sitting with him, by stepping in. You make sure that that kid or that student knows that somebody else sees them. That's what getting up looks like. You see a need, and instead of asking somebody else to do it, you take care of it. You move forward. Here's the second choice, is that you choose to go low. After Jesus finished washing the disciples' feet, his desire was to explain what it meant. Listen to what he says in verse number 13. Jesus says, you call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so am I. I love when Jesus just kinda steps up, and he's just honest and open about who he is. He says, if then your Lord and your teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do

as I have done to you. In other words, Jesus was willing to get down and wash their feet. So none of us is above serving. Going low is taking what God has given you, your gifts, your abilities, your influence, and using that for the good of somebody else, even when it costs you something. That takes humility. Men, as I was reflecting this week on some of the men that God has shaped and helped to shape my life, there have been a number of different men. So this is an exhaustive list, but three came to mind. The first is my dad. The second is my childhood pastor, and the third is my freshman basketball coach. My dad taught me the value of education, hard work, and not quitting when life gets difficult. My childhood pastor gave me access to his life as a teenager. I became a Christian when I was 15. I just remember that he gave a lot of teenagers in our youth ministry access to him that shaped me for the entirety of my life. And I got to see his love for God, his love for God's work, and his integrity. And also, my freshman basketball coach. Man, he was so much fun to play for.

The reason I love playing for him is that he always encouraged me to shoot. It's 30 years later, and I can still hear Coach White in my head say, keep shooting the ball, Lee. Whenever I missed a shot, instead of him tearing me down, he believed in me and gave me the confidence to take the next shot. And as I thought about those men, I realized something, that none of them were perfect, but they lent me their strength, their time, their words, their example, their influence. They took what God had given to them, and they saw that their gifts and their time and their influence, that they knew that they needed to give it to me. Men, that's part of what it means to go low. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be willing to take your strength and to give it to someone else. And to all of us who follow Jesus, he calls us to do the exact same thing, to move from asking the question, what about me, about my wishes, my wants, and my desires, to move to a place of health and maturity where we're asking the question, how can I help? So here's the question that I want all of us to consider this week. Who has God placed in your life that you can lend your strength to? Who has God placed in your life

that you can lend your strength to? Here's the third choice, is that you choose to grab a towel. Listen to what Jesus says in verse 16 and 17. Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor a master greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. Don't miss what Jesus is saying in these two scriptures. Jesus is not saying, blessed are you if you know these things. He's saying, blessed are you if you what? Do these things. Church, it's one thing to know that Jesus washed feet. It's another thing to grab a towel yourself. Grabbing a towel means putting your faith into action. One of the privileges I have as your campus pastor is that all throughout the week and on the weekends, I get to see hundreds of you grab a towel. I watch you welcome people that are new. I watch you hold babies in our nursery. I watch you invest in our kids and students. I watch you pray with people, often right here after service, who are experiencing some of the most challenging times in life. And behind the scenes, you run cameras, you keep our campus safe, you keep our campus clean after everybody goes home, and you do so many things that often people will never see.

In fact, most of what you do won't get noticed unless you don't do what you do. Amen? But here's what I want you to know. As you serve all throughout our campus all throughout the week. is that when you serve, Jesus isn't doing something through you, he's doing something in you. He uses the inconvenience, the sacrifice, and the moments that test your patience to teach you and I to love more like him. And I can't imagine what would happen in our church if simply more of us decided to grab a towel. Every yes expands our capacity as a church to bring more of the awesome life of Christ to people in a lost and broken world. That's the kind of life that truly makes a difference. But here's what I wanna make clear, if you're new to church or new to Christianity, is that Christianity is ultimately not about what you do for Jesus. It's about what? It's about what Jesus has already done for you. Scripture teaches us that we've all sinned, we've all fallen short of God's standard of perfection. Our sin separates us from God and there's nothing that you and I can do to earn our way back into right relationship with him. We need forgiveness.

We need a savior. And I don't know what you brought in here this morning and whatever your story is, here's what I want you to know, Jesus already knows about it. It's not a surprise to him. The sin, the shame, the regret, the failure. But here's what I want you to hear is that none of those things in your life kept him from coming after you. That's why Jesus came. He lived the perfect life that we couldn't live on the cross, he died in our place and for our sin and three days later, he rose from the dead. And when he rises from the dead, it is evidence to you and I that his sacrifice for sins has been accepted. And here's the good news today is that Jesus is alive. Amen? Amen. He's alive. Amen. And if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus with your life, you can do that today. You can simply say in the quietness of your own heart, Jesus, I need you, I believe that you died for my sin and rose again, forgive me, I trust you with my life and I want to follow you. Church, is there anybody grateful in here that Jesus took our place on the cross?

Amen? Amen. Can we give Jesus some praise that he took our place? Amen, amen. Thank you, Jesus. And so before we close today, I want you to hear a story from some very special people here at Flatirons Church, Toni and Veronica. Take a look. My youngest, I had made the decision to not keep her. That day came, something just said, no, you're stronger than that. Because Veronica decided to keep her baby, 26 years later, here we are today, living in a world where we're not allowed to have children. We're here today, living a much fuller life. We started coming to Flatirons and then literally a month later, we found out that I was diagnosed with cancer. We were there and we're sitting in the back and the guy in front of me had his hands up and as we're singing worship and I didn't even know it was called worship then, but I turned to her and I'm like, just my luck. We come to church for the first time and here I am sitting behind Touched in Jesus. Greeting has changed who I am outside of church, with my kids, with my coworkers, I'm a supervisor at work and I treat my staff differently. Since he started greeting, he's opened up a lot

and I like that about him. So he's got, I think, a lot more confidence in himself and that he can make a difference in somebody else's life as well. I've noticed that she's finding people who are going through their own journeys, people who've lost spouses, who've lost parents and she's finding a way to find those people and make a difference in their lives. If you're thinking, I can't do that or I can't make an impact, you can. And that's how I felt when we first started. It's like, I'm just a nobody, but now I'm just a nobody. I tell everybody, you know, about, they are song lyrics. I am just a nobody trying to tell everybody about Jesus. For me and for us, what I see is just the growth in our relationship and how it's brought us closer together and how it has impacted others around us, just by saying, yes, we're gonna do this, and yes, we're gonna, you know, fight this together, or yes, we're gonna, you know, we're not gonna walk away, we're not giving up. We're gonna keep saying yes until God calls us home. We can give it up, awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. What I love as I watch that video is you realize that only Jesus can write a story like that. And I love what they kept saying at the end of that video, just keep saying yes.

To those of you that are already here, you're part of Flatirons Church, you love our church, thank you for helping to create a place and a space where people can grow in their faith and people can bump into Jesus. Hey, can we just show our appreciation for all the folks that are serving at our church? Amen, amen, I know a lot of y'all are in here today. And for those of y'all that call Flatirons home and you don't have a place of service, we don't want you to do it alone. I wanna encourage you right now to take out your phones and text serve to 808-57. We'll help you to find a team that could be a good fit and give you some simple next steps to get more connected. You don't have to figure it out on your own, you just have to say yes to the next step that God is leading you to. Text serve to 808-57. Jesus has showed us what it looks like to get in the fight. Let's choose to get up, let's choose to go low, and let's choose to grab a towel. Let's stand and pray together. Our God and our Father, we thank you for who you are and all that you have done. And I pray, Father, for every person under the sound of my voice and those watching online, we are grateful for the example of Jesus, we are inspired by it. But Lord, you don't want us just to be inspired,

you want us to be compelled to action, to do what Jesus has done and to live the life that he has called us to live. But we don't do that on our own, we do that through the Spirit's empowering that works through us. And so, Lord, we thank you for the life of Jesus, we thank you for the death of Jesus, we thank you for the resurrection of Jesus. And we pray that in our homes, in our neighborhoods, on our jobs, that you would help us to let our light so shine before men that they might see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. For those under the sound of my voice who have not yet made a decision to follow you or perhaps they decided to follow you today, Lord, I pray that today will be the first day of the beginning of their new spiritual life. Lord, we love you, we thank you, Jesus, that you are our cornerstone, you are our savior, you are our friend, and we love and we worship you today. And all God's people said amen. And amen. Let's give God a hand clap of praise. Amen.