One question that we are used to asking regularly is, “What do I get out of it?” Every shop, large and small, these days seems to have a loyalty card scheme. And as you go into yet another shop and you’re invited to sign up, you’re weighing up in your head: is it worth it to install yet one more app on my phone, or — if you’re old-fashioned and like a credit-card-sized piece of plastic to weigh down my wallet or purse even further so that I can’t find anything — the question that you want to know is, what do I get out of it? Is it going to be one of those ones that is effectively worthless? I get really very little out of it. Or is it going to be one of those ones where actually there are real perks that are worth having — some actual money off, or some treats that would genuinely be useful for you.
Or there’s a knock at the door, as yet another company decides to try and persuade you that you would be better off if you switched your broadband provision from whoever you’re currently with to them. Seems about every three months I get one of those. What questions are you asking at that point? You want to know: well, what would it cost? What will I get for this? Will it be fast? Will it be slow? More importantly, will it be reliable, or will it be somewhat flaky? And here’s the question they never want to answer: if it does go wrong, will the customer service be first class, taking ownership until it’s fixed, or will it be an absolute nightmare?
What do I get out of it? And what does it cost?
How about the Lord Jesus Christ? What does it cost to follow him? What would you get out of following him? What would he do for you? How is the cost-benefit analysis in your head when it comes to the person of Jesus?
Many of us in this room are already followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you say he is improving your life? Do you get something out of following him? What’s it costing you at the moment, in this particular season of life? On balance, does it feel worth it, or does it feel more like hardship and for not very much?
But others here — every week we have people coming, not yet following Jesus, happy to sit here and listen, ask questions, think about whether he might be for them. Maybe you can see the cost. You know what it would cost you if you went down that road. And the question you’re asking is, “What’s in it for me?” Or maybe you know on paper what he claims to be able to deliver for you, and the question in your mind is: can he deliver, or is it just on paper, and you’ll be phoning Jesus’s customer service line hoping that he is better than your not-favourite broadband provider.
Well, in Mark chapter 10, we meet different people who were asking that question: what can Jesus do for me? And we see that they get different answers. And the passage as a whole will answer that question for us. But as it does so, it will radically re-calibrate our expectations of Jesus and of what it looks like to follow him.
So we’re going to look at the passage in two sections, and I’ve given each section a heading to help us keep a handle on where we’re going.
Jesus must suffer
First, we’ll look at verses 32 to 40. Jesus must suffer, and so will we.
Verse 32: they were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. We know from the story with Bartimaeus that they’re in the Jericho region, down by the Dead Sea, from where the walk up to Jerusalem really is up. It is steep, it is long, and it is hot. And you might expect to take your time over a climb like that, but no — not Jesus. He is on the march. He is striding ahead. He is leading the way. And the others are trying to keep up with him. And we’re told that the disciples are astonished. Why is this man in such a rush? Why such a drive to get to Jerusalem so quickly? And then the others — there were various kinds of hangers-on following him, other than just the twelve disciples — we’re told they were afraid. They were aware that opposition to Jesus was growing. And they were aware that a lot of the opposition would be located in Jerusalem. Do we really have to go there? This is not going to end well.
Well, let’s see what happens. Jesus explains to them why he’s going. Verse 32 continues: again, he took the twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later, he will rise.”
Jesus predicts his death three times in Mark’s Gospel. And over the past two Sundays, we looked at the predictions in chapter 8 and chapter 9. And this week we’re in chapter 10. This is the most detailed prediction yet.
So what do we learn? What do the disciples learn here that is new? Well, it’s going to happen in Jerusalem — not been told that before. He will be condemned to death, so he’s not going to die as a fallen soldier in battle; he’s going to face a legal process leading to a sentence of death. We’re told that the Romans will be the ones to kill him — he will be handed over to the Gentiles — and then various details about how he will suffer: they will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him.
Now all of these extra details the disciples get tell us, for the very first time, not just that Jesus had to suffer and die, but why he had to suffer and die.
He has to go to Jerusalem. You may or may not know that in the book of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55, there are four poetic sections which get called the servant songs. They’re little sections where Isaiah, as it were, speaks as if he was some character in the future — a servant of the Lord — describing his suffering and his place in God’s purposes, that with hindsight we can see were words that belong on the lips of the Lord Jesus. Now the most famous of those is Isaiah 53. We’ll look at a verse from that later on. We’ll look at it some more on Good Friday, if you’re able to come and join us. But before Isaiah 53, you get Isaiah 52, which contains this phrase: when the Lord returns to Zion. Zion is one of the hills within Jerusalem. So we’re learning that God’s rescue for his people will come as God comes back to Jerusalem. And so Jesus goes to Jerusalem to suffer.
And then there are the details of the exact way he’s treated. Servant song number three comes in Isaiah chapter 50. So let me read for you from Isaiah 50, starting at verse 4. This is the servant of the Lord speaking:
The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears. I have not been rebellious. I have not turned away. I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame.
There’s the servant of the Lord — face set like flint, absolutely determined on that path, marching to Jerusalem, not hiding his face from mocking and spitting. The details that we’re told tell us that Jesus will suffer as the servant of the Lord from Isaiah 40–55. He will die to bear his people’s sin.
… and so will we
Jesus must suffer, and so will we. Let’s look at what goes on.
Verse 35: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
James and John want a blank cheque. Now, cultural background — and I’m showing my age — let me fill in for those of you who do not know what a cheque is, let alone a blank one. A cheque: in the old days, a bank would give you a little booklet containing a number of these little slips of paper that you can write out, that says, “I would like to pay Lee McMunn the sum of one hundred pounds.” And you write the amount in both numbers and figures, date it, and sign it. And then Pastor Lee can take it to his bank and they will — magically, three days later, it’s like the resurrection, you have to wait three days — the money will finally leave my account and go to Lee’s. See what archaic process this is? This should be in the science museum. I know. Now we just do it magically with our phones. But this was how it used to be done. That’s a cheque.
So what’s a blank cheque? A blank cheque is where you write the person’s name — Lee McMunn — and you sign it at the bottom, but you don’t write the amount. And then Lee can write in whatever amount he wishes. Now obviously you don’t do that. It’s not a very good idea, because then you’re not in control of how much goes out.
Well, that’s what James and John want: “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Or, if you’ve got children, imagine one day one of your children comes up and says to you, “I’d like you to do me a favour, but before I tell you what it is, I want you to promise that you’ll say yes.” What do you say if you’re a parent in that position? Pretty much, you probably say what Jesus says next in verse 36: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Now Jesus knows what they want, but he wants to get them to say it out loud. So here we go. Verse 37: “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
Now, before we’re too hard on James and John, there’s some good stuff about this. They realise that one day Jesus will be in a position of great glory. Perhaps they think he will be the next king of Jerusalem. There is faith articulated in those words. But what is not good is that they want to be number one and number two. They want to be the most important people in Jesus’s kingdom.
And Jesus replies to say that they do not know what they are asking. And boy, do they not know what they’re asking — that is true at so many levels.
Verse 38: “You do not know what you’re asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink, or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?”
Now that is Old Testament language. Let me just fill it in for you. The cup — that is the cup of God’s wrath, God’s righteous anger at sin. So the picture is that there is a cup full to the brim of the anger of God at what people have done wrong. And the day will come when God will make people drink from that right down to the bottom and face the consequences of the things we’ve done that don’t please God.
Now we had Isaiah 51 read. Isaiah 51 describes how God will take that cup out of the hands of his people and give it instead to the hands of his enemies. And God’s enemies will drink it instead. And here comes Jesus, and says that he will drink it. Effectively, Jesus will become God’s enemy so that he drinks from that cup, so that we don’t need to. That’s the cup.
The second picture is baptism. In secular use — not in religious language — in that time, the language of baptism was used to speak of being completely swept away, overwhelmed by disaster and trouble. And in Old Testament language, the picture of a deluge was another picture of God’s judgement. Some of the Psalms speak of God rescuing his people out of deep waters. So, no, James and John really didn’t know what they were asking.
They still don’t know what they’re asking, even as they say, “Yes, we can do that,” because they were all going up to Jerusalem, but only Jesus would die for the sins of the world. James and John could never do that. But yet Jesus says, verse 39: “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with.” You’re associated with me, says Jesus. So yes, you will suffer. Not for the sins of the world, but you will suffer.
And it’s not the same for everyone. This is James and John, two brothers. James is executed by Herod in Acts 12, very early in the history of the Christian church, probably before AD 40. John dies an old man, but having suffered much for his allegiance to the Lord Jesus. They both suffer, but in very different ways.
We have to get our expectations right as we follow Jesus. The songs that we sing in church, they come and they go. Fashions change. Music styles change. What sounded great thirty years ago sounds awful today — but we loved it back then. And we learned better how to write good words. There was a song doing the rounds when I was a teenager about the victory of Jesus. And here was one line from that song: “In his presence, our problems disappear.” True or false?
Let’s be charitable. I think I know what the songwriters meant. I think they meant: when you have many, many problems and you bring them to the Lord in prayer, in his presence there is a renewed perspective, there is a transformation, and you can see that what is a crushing problem for you is no problem for God — and so they disappear. I think that’s what they meant. But I’m not convinced that’s what people meant when they sang it.
If you follow Jesus, your life is wrapped up in the one who suffered and died. So you are signing up for more trouble, more problems. It could cost you relationships with some of your friends. It could cost you relationships with some of your family. It could cost you your job, or at least the chances for promotion. In parts of the world, it could cost you literal imprisonment and death.
Jesus must suffer, and so will we.
But before we move on from that theme of suffering, let’s just be clear that doesn’t mean that God owes us. You see, verse 39 is followed by verse 40: “But to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. Those places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
You will suffer, James and John, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve earned those prime positions that you seek.
You may know that in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells a parable about some people who went to work in a vineyard. Some of them began work at six o’clock in the morning and worked right the way through till six o’clock in the evening. Others only started working at five o’clock in the afternoon, when it was getting cooler, and they just did one hour’s work. And the people who’d been working all day thought that they would be paid more than those who had only worked for an hour — not unreasonable, you would have thought. And they were surprised and offended when the owner of the vineyard paid them the same amount as the people who had only worked for one hour. It felt so unfair.
It turns out, in the parable, that the owner has actually been incredibly generous with all of them. So yes, it’s unfair — he is unfairly generous.
And how easy it is to feel that way. “I’ve paid my subscription. I’ve done my time. But for what?”
And we learn from that parable, and from here, that Jesus’s kingdom is all about grace. Yes, we will suffer, but that doesn’t mean that God owes us.
But then we start to think, don’t we: I’ve worked for Jesus. I’ve served his cause. I’ve suffered greatly. It’s cost me so much. And yet there’s nothing really to show for it. What has he done for me? He hasn’t seen it. He hasn’t thanked me. He hasn’t rewarded me. I’ve done all that.
But let me tell you from experience: if you start to develop that attitude, it really eats you up, and you can end up deeply embittered and resentful and exhausted. Whereas what God wants to do is to say, “I just want to be generous. Is that okay? It’s not fair, but it’s good.”
So: Jesus must suffer, and so will we, but that doesn’t mean that God owes us.
Jesus served, and so must we
And then secondly, verses 41 to 45: Jesus served, and so must we.
So 32 to 40, all about suffering. 41 to 45, all about service.
Now at this point you might think Jesus actually is not doing so badly. We watch James and John — pretty embarrassing blunder on their part. But that’s just two of the twelve disciples. At least only two are the failure rate. Ten out of twelve had a healthy vision for Jesus and for discipleship. Until you read on.
Verse 41: when the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. That word “indignant” is a strong word. It doesn’t just mean shame — they were really furious, absolutely livid with them. It’s the same word, by the way, we get in verse 14, where Jesus is furious that the disciples are trying to keep the children away — it makes him really, really cross. And the ten disciples are equally fuming that James and John got there first. When he’s dishing out the prime positions in the kingdom, he’s now not got a blank picture in his head — they’ve put an idea in his head. He’ll naturally think of them. We’re now at a disadvantage. They’ll be on the shortlist. Why could they get in first? That’s not fair.
In other words, the other ten are just as bad as James and John. They were just late to the party.
Now Jesus knows what they’re thinking, so he wants to talk to them about this. Verse 42: he called them together and said, “You know how those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.” He reminds them how political leadership works. People in positions of power and authority know that this gives them various perks and benefits, and they milk it as much as they can. They want to derive all the benefits of their position. They are more important than you — and what’s important is that you know it — and they get lots and lots of perks from it.
And Jesus says we are to be different. This is all about how we use our greatness, our privilege, our position. We thought about this last time, in Mark chapter 9: the mark of true greatness is that we serve. We walk into every situation and we ask the question, “How can I help?”
Why do we do that? Why is that what true greatness looks like? Because of verse 45.
Verse 45: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
So partly we’re like this because Jesus is the Son of Man — he’s the great king from Daniel chapter 7 in the Old Testament. He is the greatest of all time. And if he came as a servant, surely greatness will look no different for us.
But there’s more going on than that in verse 45. Our service is even more tightly tied to what Jesus did than that. The language “ransom for many” comes from Isaiah 53, the fourth and longest servant song. So let me read the last verse of that, from Isaiah 53 verse 12: “For he bore the sin of many.” There’s that “many” language. But Isaiah’s “bore the sin of many” becomes, on the lips of Jesus, “a ransom for many.”
Now we know the language of ransom from the realm of hostage negotiation — one of you has this as their line of work — where someone wealthy is kidnapped and the hope is that their relatives will pay a large ransom to secure their freedom. And if you pay it, you hope they honour the deal, because there are no guarantees. Or maybe you’ve been unfortunate enough to have your computer affected by software that is called ransomware. And the idea is that the hackers lock you out of your own computer until you pay them a large sum of money — again, hoping that they are both willing and even competent to reverse their damage if you do that.
In the year 1190, King Richard I was kidnapped by Leopold V of Austria. You might ask: the king of England, kidnapped by a king from Austria? Stuff like that doesn’t happen in modern history — but it does. The ransom demand was for 150,000 marks of silver. Well, I don’t measure my silver in marks; in fact, I don’t have any silver, but I have no idea what a mark of silver is. Apparently, 150,000 marks of silver is thirty-five metric tons — roughly two and a half billion pounds in today’s money. Amazingly, it was paid. And equally amazingly, they released the king, rather than keeping him for a second round.
But in the ancient world, ransom was from the slavery context. In a war, someone could be captured in the hope that someone wealthy would maybe buy them back. Otherwise they would be a slave.
So here Jesus pays the ransom. He pays the price for our sin, as a result of which — well, he’s paid for you. So we belong to him.
Now you see the exact way that verse 43 phrases it: “Whoever wants to become great must be your servant.” How do you become great? You let Jesus buy you out, and then you’re free. Free to serve him, because he paid the ransom. And then we serve King Jesus, and in his name we serve others.
Conclusion: What do you want me to do for you?
We started by asking: what does it cost to follow Jesus? And what do you get out of it?
In the Bible reading, there is a question that Jesus asks two people — the same identical question. This is why the reading ran on a bit further, beyond verse 45. Verse 36, he asks James and John: “What do you want me to do for you?” And then in verse 51, Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Just imagine you have a dream one night. Jesus appears to you in a dream and he says to you: “How can I help? What would you like me to do for you? Go on, ask me your deepest desire. What would you really, really like me to do for you?” What would you say?
The answers here could not be more different. James and John, the sons of Zebedee: we want to be the greatest. We want to be known. We want to be loved. We want to be popular. We want to be important. We want a reputation. We want people to know who we are without wearing a lanyard at church. We want people to know our names.
And then Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. Verse 47: “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Verse 51: “Rabbi, I want to see.” He needs mercy, and the gift of physical and spiritual sight.
So let me ask you: what do you want Jesus to do for you? What would you say if you had that dream?
If you want him to make you great, you don’t know what you’re asking. If you want him to pay you back for the hard yards you have put in, you don’t know what you’re asking. But if you want mercy — if you want him to pay your ransom — then that is why he came. And if that’s what you really, deeply want, he will serve you. And he will give you your heart’s desire. He will serve you and buy you back. And then you will be his servant, and he’ll use you to serve others.