Following Jesus like a Child

We live in a culture where everything has to be great. 

We have Great Britain, the Great Lakes, the Great Plains, the Great Wall of China; the Great White Shark who swims in the Great Barrier Reef.

History has given us many “greats.”

Alexander the Great, Herod the Great, Catherine the Great.

According to Wikipedia, at least 114 world leaders used the word “great” with their names: from Albert to Xerxes the Great.

If you Google the word “great” you’ll get over 11 billion results.

But this morning we saw the path to greatness is not what we’d naturally think.

Jesus teaches you become great, by being selfless, not selfish and through service, not status.

Now, unfortunately, many people think they are servants, simply because they’re busy. They say, “Well, look I do this. And I do that. I help here. And I help there.”

But if you start to probe a few inches beneath the surface of their service, you often find selfish motives.

·      Maybe they say, “If I do a favor for that person, she’ll owe me.”

·      Or “if people see me serving over here, people will think more of me.”

·      Or “If I scratch his back, he’ll scratch mine.”

And they work & they serve & do things for certain people. But their whole goal is to gain leverage in relationships—to earn favors with those who can give back.

So in the next verses, Jesus clarifies what it means to be a servant of all.

This evening, we’re going to see how Jesus illustrates His teaching about greatness by showing that to be great, you should serve those who are insignificant and incapable of giving back (36-37).