Well, good evening. It is a pleasure to be here with you on this fine Lord's Day. Indeed, every Lord's Day is fine. It's particularly a lovely day and we just have really enjoyed being here and having this opportunity to stay over after Presbytery and to be here with you. I do bring greetings from Sparta Reformed Presbyterian Church. Many of you know several of the families in our church. A couple of them are from here, actually. The Odoms are doing pretty well. They've gone through a bit of a struggle with their business, just so you can know that, to have that in your prayers. They would like you to know about that. They have their homeschool curriculum business, Covenant Home Curriculum, and they've had some recent signs of increase. They're very grateful for after a low spell. And so just keep them in your prayers so that that'll maybe pick up a bit. And they can continue to serve. They have a particularly reformed-oriented homeschool curriculum. Jim McMahon is doing very well. He was actually able to stay through the entire meeting of presbytery without getting too tired, and he was excited to be there, and we're excited that he's feeling so much better. He does request a prayer for his son-in-law. His name is Tim Gray, who has just been diagnosed with cancer, and it sounds like it's quite advanced in his abdomen, and so we just want to have that in our minds and on our hearts at this time. I open now God's Word and turn to Mark Chapter 9. And I'll be reading verses 30 through 41. As we prepare to handle God's Word, let us come before Him in prayer. Lord, it is such a pleasure to be in your presence, to know that you are meeting with us in covenant grace. And as we consider your word at this time, we are so thankful that your servant indeed is warned by these words, indeed is taught what it is to be your servant. We pray now that you would enlighten our minds and prepare us to receive your truth. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, here is God's holy word as the Holy Spirit inspired Mark to record from the ministry of Jesus as he was on earth. We heard about his ascension today, and here we're back into his earthly ministry. Mark 9, verses 30 through 41, this is God's word. Speaking of Jesus and his disciples, they went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise. But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him. And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house, he asked them, what were you discussing on the way? But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the 12. And he said to them, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And he took a child and put him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms, he said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me. John said to him, teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us. But Jesus said, do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward. And that sends the reading of God's holy word for us at this time. Well, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands here, lest we put undue pressure on someone to make a false confession or false profession of faith or something, but just think about this. How would you answer this question? How many hands would you expect to go up if I asked for hands to come up? Who here is a Christian? Now think of how many hands would go up if I asked the question, who here is a deacon? You're going to have an ordination of deacons tonight. That's a very meaningful thing. Every Christian can probably tell you that the Christian life involves humility, it involves service, and we know that deacons need to be humble servants. And I think for some of us, we might be surprised by the answer to the question we'll find here as to who is a deacon. I believe the scripture that we just read forces us to think a lot more broadly about not only who a deacon is, but about what humble service really is, about what humility, Christian humility, and that can't be disengaged from Christian service, what that really entails. But first we need to set the context, and just to illustrate why. I mentioned this morning, for those of you who were in Dr. Pruto's Sabbath school class, you will remember him saying, context is king. Then this morning in worship, we heard Pastor Ferris say, Jesus is king. Did Dr. Pruto and James Ferris contradict each other? And if James Ferris is right, is Dr. Pruto a heretic and a blasphemer because he just said the context is king? Well, in context, we know that Dr. Prouto was talking about scriptural hermeneutics, about the discipline of understanding how to interpret scripture. And of course, in that context, we know context is king because as we study scripture, if we don't know the context of a particular scripture we're dealing with, then it will not be meaningful to us. In fact, we are likely to get the wrong meaning out of it. And so I'm going to give you a little context here. Prior to Jesus' transfiguration, Peter had declared him to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. After that, Jesus spoke of his impending death and his resurrection to come, and Peter dared to rebuke him. Not about the resurrection, I don't think. In fact, we find numerous times as people spoke of the resurrection, or rather as Jesus spoke of the resurrection, his disciples just were very confused about what he was talking about. But we do see that Peter dared to rebuke Jesus, and he rebuked him about his revelation that he would have to suffer and die. Peter said, say it isn't so, far be it from you, Lord. You remember what Jesus' answer to him was? Get behind me, Satan. Why would he call Peter Satan? We understand that that's because when Peter was making this challenge to Jesus going to the cross, he was really offering the same temptation that Satan had offered before. When Jesus was in the wilderness, you know, Jesus was offered by Satan, bow down before me and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world. He was offered kingdom without suffering, glory without the cross. And that's really what Peter was doing. He's saying, no, don't go to the cross, Jesus. Just take up your glory. And so Jesus said, get behind me, Satan. Well, you might imagine after that, you're going to be a little bit reluctant to jump in and question Jesus the next time he talks about his crucifixion to come. So about a week later, Jesus takes not all of his disciples. not all of the 12, but three only. He takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, probably Mount Hermon. And these were the same men that had had the privilege of witnessing his resurrection of Jairus's daughter. And he took these three men up the mountain and they witnessed his being transfigured. And they heard the voice of the father declare, this is my beloved son, listen to him. And they came back down the mountain to find the other apostles had been unable to cast a demon out of a boy. And all of this probably took place, as I said, around the area of Mount Hermon, maybe 40 miles north of the Sea of Galilee on the northern extreme of the ancient land of Israel. Well, following that episode and the delivery of the demon-possessed boy, Jesus and his disciples go south. when they pass through Galilee secretively as he privately teaches them. This is where we picked up this evening and I read verses 30 through 32 there just again to give context. Passing through Galilee secretively, he privately taught his disciples concerning his impending death and resurrection. And just so you know, some translations use the word here that says betrayed, saying that the Son of Man will be betrayed into the hands of men. But the meaning of the Greek word is a lot broader than that. It means delivered or given over. It can mean betrayed. But in this broader meaning, I think we need to keep that in mind. This is meaning really that it's the ordained plan of God. It's the decree of the Father that Jesus will be given over into the hands of men. One means of carrying that out, of course, will be the betrayal by Judas. But God has ordained that he will hand the Son of Man over into the hands of men, and these men will kill him, and then he will rise again. And you may recall, if you're familiar with the gospel according to Mark, that recently Peter, having rebuked Jesus for saying this kind of thing, had been rebuked by Jesus. And then also after Jesus spoke of it, as they came down the mountain, they were very confused. And here again, they're very confused. And all of them had witnessed that rebuke. All of them had witnessed Jesus telling Peter, get behind me, Satan. So who's going to challenge him now? Do they want to hear that kind of rebuke from Jesus? So they keep silent. Peter, James, and John, in fact, have just been commanded by God the Father directly, listen to him. They're not going to dare to rebuke him now for saying he had to be handed over into the hands of men and to be killed. But they were still confused when he spoke of the resurrection And so everybody here is afraid to ask, what do you mean, Jesus? Well, they get to Capernaum, and they enter a house, quite likely Peter's home, and he asks what they'd been discussing along the way. And they're too embarrassed to answer. Now, those of you who are parents, I don't have the privilege of being a father yet. Lord willing, we'll have some children who would love to pray for us. But those of you who are parents, if you ask your child, what have you been doing? And the child refuses to answer. What do you expect was going on? You think they were up to something that you approve of or something you disapprove of? Well, of course, they're too embarrassed to answer and they know it's because Jesus will disapprove of what they were discussing. Interestingly, they weren't trying to puzzle out what Jesus' teaching meant. They were so confused about the resurrection. They had challenged him before. Peter had challenged him before on saying that he was going to suffer. But instead of trying to puzzle that out, you know, they have among the men who studied under John the Baptist, Andrew and John, they had the great student of scripture, Nathanael Bartholomew, Israelite in whom there is no guile, who was just eager for the scriptures all the time and waiting for the Messiah to come and knew who he was when he met Jesus. Instead of letting Jesus' teaching here drive them to the scriptures, they changed the topic. They got to arguing amongst themselves. Which of us is the greatest? And you can see what might have spurred that on. Jesus keeps favoring, it seems, Peter, James, and John. He lets them see him resurrect somebody. Nobody else sees that. He takes them up the mountain. They see him transfigured. Does that make them greater? Does it make them more important than the others? You might think of what some of the others might be thinking. Judas thinks, well, I'm the greatest, Jesus, and trust me with the money. So we can see that the disciples are arguing which of us is greatest. But Jesus, even though they refused to answer when he asked them, what were you discussing, knowing what they were discussing, gathers the twelve around him and says, if anyone would be first He must be last of all and servant of all. This is a concept that we find in Christianity and in few other places, if anywhere at all. This is servant leadership. You don't find this in other religions and other cultures, only in the Bible and in Bible-influenced cultures, you find this concept that the leader is supposed to be the servant. Jesus speaks elsewhere of how the rulers of the Gentiles lord over them. They feel entitled to their position, but not so you, he says. Notice Jesus does not rebuke them for the desire to be great in the kingdom, but he corrects the way that they're thinking about greatness. To be great in God's kingdom means being a servant. It's appropriate for us to aspire to greatness in the kingdom because that means being a great servant of Christ. And knowing that Jesus doesn't rebuke them for their desire to be great in his kingdom is a lesson for us. It teaches caution against a false or a skewed or a wrongly proportioned humility. You know, I went to a rather liberal seminary and I encountered a lot of people who would say things like, well, you know, Jesus is my way to God, but you know, it would just be arrogant for me. I'm too humble to say that he has to be everybody else's way to God. One of my colleagues at Presbytery this week, I think it was Adam Keener, said that would be rather like if I had told him that I've never robbed a bank. And then he went around telling people, well, you know, Daniel says he's never robbed a bank, but I'm just too humble to declare whether I think he's honest and wouldn't rob a bank or not. So he's really casting aspersions at me. He's calling me a liar and possibly a thief. And that's what we do if Jesus says he's the only way to the father. And we say, oh, we're too humble to say that we know that Jesus is the only way. Well, Jesus said he is, so we're calling Jesus a liar. So we're so humble, we would say that our Lord is a liar. But this cautions against that kind of strange humility, that real false humility, wrongly proportioned or skewed humility. It is appropriate to aspire for greatness in Christ's kingdom. But to do that, we must be ready to be a servant. And indeed, Jesus says, we must be the servant of all, the last of all. The word here for servant is diakonos. We are Christ's slaves, douloi. Doulos is a slave in Greek. And it means we must be at the very least one another's servants, diakonoi. And this is where we get that word deacon. So when I asked you how many people in here would raise their hand if I asked how many of us are deacons, everyone who said I'm a Christian should have been willing to raise his hand or her hand and say, I am a deacon. Because we are servants. And when we ordain men and women in this church to be ordained as deacons to that ordained office, what we are doing is setting them apart, yes, for a particular ordained office, but part of that is the meaning of that office, the importance of that office is to exemplify servanthood for the rest of us. We are Christ's slaves. He has bought us with a price and therefore we must be one another's servants. To illustrate the point, Jesus takes a little child in his arms. If this is Peter's house, we might imagine this could be a little son of Peter or Andrew. We tend to think of babies in our culture. You know, there are some young children here, and all of us just delighted in how many babies we got to hold today. And my little niece, my wife's little niece, is with us, and we're just so delighted to have her with us this evening. We just dote on children. We love babies, we think they're wonderful, adorable little things. And this is partly because of the influence of the Bible on our culture, and it's also a byproduct of the era in which we live. In times and places where the infant mortality rate was about half, and when about half of those who lived beyond infancy never made it to adulthood, people tended, right or wrong, to learn not to get too attached to their young children. even Israelite culture, which had the Bible to tell them. Things like we sang, I think we sang from Psalm 128, didn't we, this morning? Talking about the olive branches gathered around our table and how wonderful that is to have children gathered around your table like that. The Psalm before it, Psalm 127, speaks of the blessings of having children in your youth. It's like a warrior having his quiver full of arrows. We know the Bible says that having children is a wonderful thing. Even Israelite culture, which had that influence, which valued young children maybe more than other cultures around them, still considered very young children to be rather insignificant. Particularly in Jesus' day, that had come to be the norm. They had no dignity or standing in society. Rabbis of this time period taught that it was a waste to teach a child under the age of 12. They just weren't worth investing in yet. And so Jesus takes this little child who the general culture around them says is basically valueless, takes this child in his arm and says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. And whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me. And we ought to know that receiving in this context is not talking about making a decision for Christ or inviting him into your heart or something like that, but rather it's the term for receiving a guest. It could be the term for receiving an ambassador when a government received an ambassador from a king, which was just like receiving that king as your guest. And what do you do with a guest? Do you let somebody come in your house and say, well, you know where the refrigerator is? and go get stuff for yourself. It's wonderful when we have those kinds of close friendships that we don't mind going to somebody's refrigerator or going and getting our own glass. We know where everything is and getting a glass of water for ourselves. But no, usually when the guest is in your home, you serve them. So this is what Jesus is saying. When he's talking about receiving, he's talking about service. And if we turn this around, we can see what Jesus is saying. To receive, to serve the Father, we must receive Jesus. To receive, serve Jesus, we must receive or serve the most insignificant. And what a grace it is that he counts it as having been done to him when we serve the most insignificant. There's nothing I can do for Jesus that he can't do for himself. There's nothing that he can provide or that I could provide for him that he couldn't provide for himself. And yet he counts it as if I've done it for him when I serve the most insignificant. Well, this lesson must have sparked something in John's memory. And there's a reason a lot of you would probably wonder, well, why in the world did you not stop at verse 37? Why not just go, why go on with, why not just stop there and speak about the first and the last? But it seems to me that this sparked something in John's memory. And he jumps in with, teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us. Now, some Bible commentators think that John was trying to change the subject. He just couldn't handle what Jesus was teaching about servanthood and how to be great in his kingdom, he had to be lowly. And so he changed the subject. But I don't think that's what's going on. I think John realizes there's an application here, a connection between his behavior and what Jesus has just said. I think the wheels are turning in his head. And he's thinking, if I must be servant of all, and last of all, how does that affect what I did? Was I wrong to try to stop a man who was following Jesus simply because I didn't perceive that he was following me? Because look at the sentence structure. This should be clear even in English. He says, we saw someone and we tried to stop him. That we, of course, does not include Jesus. Most likely this happened when Jesus sent the apostles out two by two, gave them authority over demons, and they were preaching the gospel and casting out demons, and they just rejoiced when they came back to him. So clearly the we doesn't include Jesus. We saw someone, we tried to stop him. because he was not following us. So who's the us he wasn't following if we tried to stop him? And that didn't include Jesus. Probably not the apostles and Jesus, but just the apostles. He wasn't following us, and so we tried to stop him. Even if we stretched the grammar to say that somehow the us includes Jesus, he wasn't following the apostles and Jesus. Should you and I think that someone needs to be following us and Jesus or just following Jesus? Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that we ought not to hear the apostles and that the apostles are not given Jesus' authority in Scripture. I'm not telling you that, well, you can just follow Jesus and ignore the Bible. That's not at all what we're saying here. Certainly the New Testament offers the apostles as examples to follow. And they actually teach us God's word. They have proclaimed God's word to us. They wrote it, they endorsed the New Testament. But of course, that's for one thing, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But when, for example, the Apostle Paul offers himself as an example of how Christians ought to behave, he's not offering himself as a perfect example. He's just saying, here's a way to step in the direction of being more like Jesus. So we follow Paul only in that he is following Jesus. The object is to follow Jesus and not just to be followers of men. So John, I think, is wrestling with this. Did I do the right thing? It seems this man was following Jesus, but I was concerned he wasn't hanging out with the 12 and following us. And so I tried to stop him. And Jesus answers, do not stop him. For no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Notice he doesn't say such people can never teach falsehood, but that they won't do so soon after. But Jesus goes on, for the one who is not against us is for us. Now, if we took that out of context, again, context is king. If we took that out of context, and I've heard this taken out of context, As long as somebody's not actively trying to prevent your preaching the gospel or persecute the church, they're on our side. So you don't have to go out and convert the Muslim as long as he's not persecuting the church. You don't have to convert the atheist as long as he's not persecuting the church. We take this in context of scripture. We find in Matthew 12, 30, Luke 11, 23, Jesus says, whoever is not with me is against me. So we see with these scriptures together, there's no sitting on the fence. Either you're on Jesus' side or you're not. But this man is genuinely casting out demons in Christ's name. There's a miraculous confirmation of the power of Christ working through him, which means he was likely a genuine follower of Christ, and certainly means that the message he was proclaiming was God's truth. So the gospel was being proclaimed by this man, and John tried to stop him. At least we ought to think of what Paul says in Philippians 1, that even if people proclaim the gospel for the wrong reasons, we should rejoice. Not that they have the wrong reasons, but that the gospel's being proclaimed. We rejoice that the gospel is proclaimed. And here we have someone who seems to be this genuine follower of Jesus. He just doesn't seem to be at this time following arm in arm with the disciples, with the 12. Does that make him not a servant of Jesus? No. Jesus says, do not stop him. Now I joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church because I believe this denomination is following Jesus more biblically than others. That doesn't mean that others aren't following Jesus. It's just that this is where I think I ought to be because it seems the most biblical. Should I be concerned that my brothers in Christ are violating, as I understand it, God's worship principles when they sing songs of man's devising and use unauthorized musical instruments in New Covenant worship? Absolutely, I should be concerned about that. I want God to be worshipped as He has revealed He should be worshipped. I want my brothers and sisters in Christ to delight in worshipping God His way. The important thing is the obedience to Christ, not the context in which they do it, not the denomination in which they do it. There are some who will not tolerate the least deviation from the way that they think things ought to be done in the church, and they will have no Christian fellowship across any lines of any disagreement with the most minor points Church's entire denominations teach that to be outside of their fellowship is to be outside of the kingdom of Christ altogether. But in truth, if others are confessing the real Christ and teaching the true gospel and doing the things that issue from them that result from the gospel, do not prevent them. They don't have to be following in lockstep with us in order to be following Christ or proclaiming him truly. And our debates in the church over psalmody, over polity, over whether to baptize covenant children or not. We had the joy of seeing a covenant child baptized this morning. Those debates ought to take place among genuine believers who are genuinely seeking to serve Christ in genuineness. But they ought not to cause us to declare one another to be outside the kingdom. or to stop one another from proclaiming the true gospel. If someone so much as gives you a cup of water, Jesus says, because you belong to him, because you're his servant, there's a blessing in it for him. He shall by no means lose his reward. How much better is it then if he helps you proclaim Christ to the world? We ought to rejoice when Christ is proclaimed. Christians can and should debate how best to serve Christ. That is, what is the God-revealed way to do things? But we must rejoice and prayerfully support one another as we serve Christ and proclaim his gospel. Because the point isn't that someone follow us, but that they follow Christ. You know, we want to see more people in our congregations. Sparta, where I'm at, is a very small congregation. We would love to see as many people as there are here this evening, or as many people as there are in one section of this sanctuary as there are here this evening. But what if God were to send more to the PCA church down the street from us, or to a Baptist church in town? What if that happens here? I know that you would delight to see, to have to expand this building because your worship services are just too full, but what if the Lord sends more to another Bible-believing church in town? If they're hearing the genuine gospel and responding in genuine repentance and trusting truly in Jesus Christ, rejoice that Christ's kingdom is being advanced. And then we can debate those other issues with them later, but we'll be debating with brothers in the kingdom. So as I mentioned earlier, you might have been thinking, Daniel, why didn't you stop at verse 37? Isn't that passage about being last of all and servant of all sufficient for a sermon? And of course it is. But God did sovereignly order the events that were recorded here in scripture. The Holy Spirit knew what he was doing when he inspired these. And I think John's question and Jesus' answer gives us an immediate application of what Jesus was teaching about greatness through service. We find, therefore, that Jesus' words in verse 35 have a much broader and many more applications than most of us would think they do. Being last of all and servant of all is not merely about taking some time out to be nice to other people. It certainly involves that. It's not only about serviceable actions, doing good things for others. It extends far beyond that. to your very thoughts, to your very attitudes, to the very orientation of your heart, to the humility that reminds you not to speak the truth only, but to speak it in love, to rejoice when Christ is proclaimed, even if he's not proclaimed exactly the way you think he should be. You know, I should be zealous for the truth. I want to be zealous for the truth, but never should I use my zeal as an excuse for ridiculing or belittling my brother or dividing the body of Christ, as long as they're proclaiming the authentic gospel. I tend to avoid getting involved in internet debates for several reasons. One is that it's just so easy to be misunderstood or to come off as unloving or insulting when the person at the other end of that thread of the world wide web can't see my gestures, can't see my facial expressions, can't hear my tone of voice. But I also avoid them because they're often a poor witness. And don't get me wrong here, I'm by no means condemning the use of social media or something like that. It's here with us and I think condemning the use of social media in the church would be rather like Martin Luther saying, I don't like that printing press thing. Let's not use it. No, we're going to have to get used to this, and it could be a powerful tool for the advance of the gospel. But I do think that these internet debates can often be a very poor witness to the church. People called by the name of Christ engage in hateful, vitriolic, invective speech, and it's there for the whole world to see. and you can't get rid of it. And it witnesses really, I think, to the opposite of what Jesus is teaching here, that whole heart attitude of service, being each other's servant, being in fact the servant of all. Be ready to be the servant, not just of the people you like, not just of the people who are arm in arm with you and everything, but of all. Don't limit that service only to doing good deeds, but let it be an attitude of heart, a whole state of mind of service to the entire church and to everyone around you. We have to have the humility to place Christ's glory and the good of all his people ahead of ourselves. If anyone would be first, and that's a good thing, you should aspire to greatness in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. But if you want to do that, Jesus says, you must be last of all and servant of all. And remember that means a lot more than just doing serviceable things, but have a heart attitude of service. Be a servant in your heart of all of God's people. Well, let's pray. Lord, we do pray that you would grant us that humility that you have called us to, to be last of all and servant of all, that we might receive the most insignificant in your name and rejoice whenever and wherever that name is proclaimed in truth. Lord, we pray especially for those who have been set apart, the men coming before us tonight, who are going to be ordained to the office of deacon in the church. We pray that especially they would have this attitude of heart and mind, that it would be an example to all of the rest of us of the kind of servanthood to which you have called us. We pray this in the name of the one who came not to be served, but to serve in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.