How To Be Great

6 · Ricky expounds the cultural context of ancient honor systems and reconstructs the disciples' argument about greatness, showing how they were competing for rank within Jesus' coming kingdom using religiously respectable metrics

First point, where greatness is found. Where do you find greatness? Now, in the ancient world, greatness was pretty obvious, even more so than in our world, right? The greater you were, the richer your clothes were, right? The more titles you had, the more people surrounding you, right?

There were all these rankings of people in the Jewish culture or in the Roman culture, and the more accolades, the more statues, the more stuff. And the disciples are caught up in this way of looking at the world. And they're thinking, when Jesus' kingdom comes, I mean, obviously he's gonna have the main statue. But what about the statues nearby? Like, where in the statue garden will I be?

Of course, obviously Jesus will be on the throne, but who will be, like, next to him, you know? I will be next to him. No, you won't. I'll be. No.

So they're beginning to argue and they're beginning to think. And here's the thing, they're using— they're arguing about this in probably religious-sounding ways, you know, saying, well, you know, when we were casting out demons, I think I cast out A good number. I mean, not to brag here, but it did seem like there were at least 12 I cast out. We're like, well, listen, not to brag either, but I think I did 14. You know, and you're beginning to, like, hear this stuff.

You know, I can— well, I don't mean to brag, but I was one of the 3 guys that Jesus took up the mountain. You know, we weren't supposed to mention that, but I mean, just FYI, there was a big thing that happened. You guys weren't there, and I was there, so I feel like I'm going to be up there. You know, and the other people, well, 'Well, I remember all of his teaching. You don't even get the parable of the Samaritan right.

You always, you know, confuse it, like, and I get all the teachings right.' So they're beginning to argue. Jesus knows this, and so Jesus brings them out and says, 'What were you discussing on the way?' Can you imagine the look on their faces? Like, 'Nothing.' You know? Nothing.

7 · Ricky applies the disciples' struggle to contemporary American culture, naming specific arenas (work, relationships, parenting, status markers) where people seek greatness, then introduces Jesus' radical redefinition: to be first, you must be last

Now look, in our world today, I think in America especially, we're better at sort of masking our desire for greatness at times. But there are always areas in which we are trying to be the greatest, right? We have arenas in which we want the adulation of people. Maybe for some folks it is work, right? You wanna climb the ranks at work.

You wanna have the best performance reviews. You wanna move up the rankings. You want that VP in front of your title. You want the doctor in front of your name. You want to become, you know, known and valued, and you want your family to rejoice over what you've done and be proud of you.

Or you just, you know, you want that one jerk in high school that said you would never amount to anything to be proved wrong. Look at me now, Frankie. Like, yeah. Or maybe we don't pick the vocational world. Maybe we pick family or we pick relationships.

We want to be the most desirable, the most attractive. We want to— Date the best people. When you're swiping through dating sites, you're like, not them, not them. What are you looking for? People as attractive as you, right?

And you wanna be that person everybody's sending requests to and you're turning everybody down. Or maybe you just want the wholehearted love of one person, for them to think you're everything. We do this in other ways too. We could even do this with parenting. I want little Jimmy or little, you know, whoever to be the best student.

Soccer player on his stupid JV team, right? Like, or you're gonna be great at ball like your old man, right? Or the best academically, whatever your area is, we all pick an area. My kids are best behaved, my yard is the cleanest, my Call of Duty ranking is climbing daily. Like, whatever it is for you, we all want to be great.

And so Jesus says, okay, great, you do, you wanna be great, here's what you do. 'If anyone would be first,' Americans, 'he must be last of all.' You see what Jesus is doing? He says, okay, there's a ranking in the world in all these different areas, and we all wanna be at the front of the line. And Jesus says, you wanna be great? Don't go to the front of the line.

Don't pursue being the front of the line. Don't strive after the front of the American line, the attractiveness line, the wealth line, don't, that shouldn't be your goal. In fact, if anyone would be first, you must be last. What Jesus is saying is that there are two totally different ranking systems.

8 · Ricky exposes the temptation to baptize worldly rankings with Christian language, then establishes Jesus as the definitive example of the opposite ranking system through Philippians 2, showing that Jesus voluntarily went to the back of every human line

Now, sometimes what Christians do is they say, well, the world ranks people like this, and so we just sort of baptize that and make it sound more Christian. You know, I wanna make as much money as I can, you know, for the Lord, obviously. Or something like that, you know, like I'm gonna be the best at this, but of course in order, you know, to serve my family or something. We baptize these categories and think, yeah, the world system is essentially right, just a little bit pagan, so we're gonna splash some holy water on that. And the Lord uses essentially the same ranking.

The people who are close to him are the successful people, the wealthy people, the powerful people, the cultural shapers. Those are the people, and we do this all the time. Right? Every time there's some Christian that, some celebrity that may or may not be a Christian, we're all like, 'Oh, who's a Christian now? He's a movie star.' You know, like, and why do we click on that article?

'I wonder who it is?' You know, because we are using the same ranking system. And Jesus is like, 'No, totally different. In fact, opposite ranking system. That is what I'm advocating,' Jesus says. And Jesus is a living example of this opposite ranking system.

Philippians 2 tells us about Jesus and how Jesus got to where he is and how he got to be this traveling carpenter teaching people with no rank or title in a backwater part of Judea. It says, Philippians chapter 2, Paul encourages us to have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But, or held onto or clutched at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Paul is saying that Jesus was at the front of every human line. Jesus, it would have been easy and natural for Jesus to have been born to a ruling family, a culturally powerful family.

He could have been wealthy. He could have been the strongest. He could have been the best looking. He could have been at the front He could have gone to the front of every human line, but he chooses to go to the back of the line, to empty himself, to be born in the likeness of men. And not just any man.

Isaiah says that there was no form or thing that attracted us. He wasn't especially good looking, right? He was a blue-collar guy. He was born to parents in a backwater town in his country. This is Jesus.

Jesus is telling the disciples, you're missing the point. You're missing the point. If you want to be first, you must be last. So friend, think about yourself and your own life. Where do you look for greatness?

In Isaiah 66, verse 2, God says, 'This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.' God's attention is not at the front of the human lion. That is not what draws God's attention. What draws God's attention is humility, choosing willingly the back of the lion, in a sense. That's where you find greatness.

9 · Ricky unpacks Jesus' command that greatness involves being a 'servant of all,' emphasizing that this is not temporary dues-paying but a permanent vocational identity—staying at the bottom rather than using it as a stepping stone

Point number 2, what greatness does. What greatness does. And then he tells them, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. Of all. Now I wish that the verse said something like, he must be last of all and do some deeds of service, or last of all and sometimes serve. He doesn't use a temporary conception of servanthood.

He speaks of it almost as a vocation, as a lifestyle, as a defining characteristic of your life. Now here's a concept we have in our culture, right? You gotta pay your dues, right? So somebody starts at the bottom of a company. I was just talking to somebody who got put in, is a good company, starting at the bottom.

We all are like, you gotta pay your dues. What does that mean? That means sometimes you gotta work at the lowest level of the warehouse. Sometimes you gotta do the worst task. Why?

So you can move up. Not what Jesus says. Jesus says, 'You do that and stay there.' That's different. It's different to say, 'I'm gonna start at the bottom of my company and work my way up,' versus, 'I'm gonna start at the bottom of my company and be there forever and love it.'

10 · Ricky illustrates vocational servanthood by contrasting temporary waitstaff with career waiters who know every regular's name and order, showing what it means to embrace service as a permanent identity rather than a stepping stone

You know, my grandfather was a distinguished, kind of a, he had the vibe of a distinguished Mexican businessman. And he would go to some of these old El Paso restaurants that were a little nicer, and at these restaurants, they had waiters that were different than the other waiters that I encountered in El Paso. A lot of people in El Paso, everybody's been a waiter, waitstaff at some point in their life. You do it for a season, you know, maybe you don't stay there forever, okay? But these waiters were guys who had been there for like 30 years, who had made a profession of being a waiter, right?

This is an old-school model of this, meaning that their job was to know each regular as they came into the restaurant, to know what their order would be, to have their drink waiting for them, to know about their families and ask and inquire about them, to be able to, you know, to do this, not just, look, if you think you're gonna be a waiter for like a month, you ain't learning anybody's name. Right? Like, I think it's that same guy. I don't know, whatever, right? But if you're thinking, this is my job forever, then you're like, hello, Mr. Stevens, or whatever, you know, would you like another of your iced teas that you love?

That's half, you know, half sweet, half unsweet. Jesus is saying that's what he's calling us to do, to think of service as a vocation, to think this is your life now.

11 · Ricky unpacks the scope of Jesus' command—servanthood extends to 'all,' not just those above you in rank, which inverts the normal cultural pattern of selective service

And notice who he says this life of service will be applied to. You must be a servant of who? Of all. Now traditionally in America, we're used to service jobs, but the service jobs stop at your rank. So you serve all the people above you in the ranking system, not the people below you.

12 · Ricky illustrates selective service through corporate conference behavior where people gravitate only toward those above them in rank, exposing how we naturally calculate who deserves our attention and contrasting it with Jesus' call to serve all

We were at a conference a few years ago as pastors where there was a pastor's conference and then there was, like, a tech conference nearby that they were busing the people out of the hotel to this big tech conference. It's a huge Fortune 100 company, and I won't tell you what it is 'cause I'm gonna say something not super complimentary, and if somebody works there, I don't want you to get mad at me. So here's what I noticed. While people are waiting for the bus, and the great thing is everybody had to take the bus, right? Even if you were super high VP or whatever, this is the transportation system, you're using buses.

So everybody shows up, and some people would show up, and it would just be like, people would look over and be like, yeah, whatever, you know? And other people would show up and all of a sudden, everybody waiting would kind of turn and would kind of gravitate over and like, oh, hey, Mr. Johnson, how are you? Mr. Rodriguez, it's so good to see you, and how is your family? And you're like, there's a little crowd around them. And you start to notice like, what's the difference here?

Are these guys just the popular guys at the company? And I realized, no, no, no, I don't think so. As I observe them, I realize that these are the guys ranked higher. Right? These are the guys with an Italian leather briefcase, right?

And all the guys in little like JanSport backpacks are like, hey, Mr. Rodriguez, how are you? You know why? Because this is a guy, he's making, he's hiring and firing people, man. You want this guy to be on your good side. And so they came quickly over to serve people above them.

But if somebody comes in, you know, they may, I even watched several people just look lost. Like, is this the boss? I don't know. And the people around them are just like, yeah, Who's that guy? I don't know.

Right? What are they doing? They're making a calculation. I serve the people above me, not the people below me. What Jesus is saying is this: Be a servant of all.

There is no one below you that you will not serve.

13 · Ricky grounds the call to servanthood in the gospel, showing that Jesus' call to serve all is modeled on his own service to undeserving sinners through the cross, and clarifies that Christianity is not moral improvement but transformation through belief in Christ

And friends, what Jesus calls us to do is exactly what Jesus has done for us. In Philippians chapter 2, it says, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born 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.

There was no person, no person too low for Jesus to serve in his ministry. You see this again and again in the patterns. He would serve the outcasts, the Gentile, the disabled, the woman, The notoriously sinful woman, the traitor against the country that he was in, that all of those people Jesus came to serve. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. And he did that ultimately by going to the cross.

Man, there is no greater example or statement of ultimate servanthood than the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus went to the cross and not a single person he went to the cross for deserved it. He was under no obligation to go pay for the sins of anyone. See, when humanity stands before God, our hearts are exposed. All the things we try to hide, all of the moments of 'you clap now' in our life are exposed before the Lord.

And, in fact, what is sin? The essence of sin is saying, 'I'm going to refuse to serve God. I'm going to refuse to serve others. I want people to serve me. And we see that again and again and again throughout our lives, and all of it is exposed before the Lord.

And yet Jesus, seeing all of that, still went to the cross for his people as the servant, humbling himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, the most humiliating form of death imaginable, Jesus humbled himself there to serve us. And friend, if you don't know the good news of Jesus, I want you to hear something really clearly. This message is not a message of, like, hey, you should be a good person like Jesus was a good person. We're all good people, so try to be a better person this week. No, this is much deeper than that.

This goes to our very core. This— the message of Christianity at the core is you're not a good person. None of us are. But in Christ, you can find forgiveness and transformation if you will turn, believe, and follow him. That's what we're inviting you today.

14 · Ricky transitions from theological exposition to concrete application by summarizing the definition of greatness (serving all) and signaling that he will now address specific life domains

So let's ask the question, what does a truly great person do? They don't make big decisions with huge numbers of, you know, huge amounts of money. They serve. And they don't just serve some, they serve all. That's the application we're being called toward today.

So let me just hit a couple areas here.

15 · Ricky applies servanthood to family life, contrasting the cultural transactional model of marriage (meeting mutual demands) with Jesus' model of mutual self-sacrificial service, and calls listeners to examine their patterns of service at home

First, think about our families. In our families, often our families are the people with whom we have the least filters, right? What comes in our heart usually comes out the most with our family just 'cause we're around them the most. We can fool people at work, we can fool people on the street. Have you ever done this when, you know, you're correcting one of your kids and somebody calls you, now you need to stop, you need to, Hello?

Oh, hey Gary, how are ya? Stop it right now. You know, this is because we don't want our hearts to be exposed, but our hearts are exposed before our family. And so often, the way our culture does marriage and relationships and family is that it says, it advocates this, that the way you do marriage and life and family is you show up and you say, these are all my needs, these are all my demands, can you meet those? Dating right now in America is very much, these are all my demands and things I want, can you fulfill that?

And the other person going like, well, these are my demands and this is what I want. And you kind of find somebody, you're like, well, I guess I could do some of those things. I could do a few of them too. But then the second they stop doing it, you're like, hey, you didn't do it, the contract is broken, you're dead, you know, you're out, I don't like you anymore. Right?

Jesus takes that model and flips it absolutely turns it upside down. What does he tell husbands in Ephesians 5:28? He says, 'Love your wife as Christ loved the church. Love your wife as you— care for your wife as you care for your own body.' That you head into family and into marriage as saying, 'How can I serve you? What are your needs and how can I serve you the way Christ 'has served me,' and the other person says, 'No, I want to serve you the way Christ has served me.' Which one of those models do you think is going to be more successful over time?

I don't think it's the world's model. So ask yourself, do you have a pattern of servanthood with those closest to you in your family, in your spouse, with your kids?

16 · Ricky applies servanthood to the workplace, exposing the hierarchical service pattern (serving up, yelling down) and challenging listeners to serve all colleagues the way Jesus serves them, regardless of rank

Think about your work. Work is a huge area here. Do you relate to the people in your job as a servant? Do you only relate to to the people above you as a servant. Look, man, the military guys that are here know exactly what I'm talking about, man. I mean, one of the guys told me one time, essentially, in the military, you yes, sir, and yes, ma'am everybody above you, and you yell at everybody below you.

And you just kinda grow the number of people you can yell at, and shrink the number of people that can yell at you. Right, that's kinda your goal if you're in here for 20, 30 years. Or maybe you live in another type of vocation where that's true.

Do you relate to everyone around you the way Jesus relates to you? Do you only serve those who can give you something in return? Do you only serve those who have a performance review role in your life? Or do you serve everyone? Man, that's going to be such an example if you change the way you think about it.

17 · Ricky applies servanthood to church life through personal confession, admitting his own reluctance to serve in community group when he felt needy, and testifying that serving others paradoxically resulted in his own encouragement

And then even, I just want to briefly say, this is true even in church. Sometimes I think in church, we're like, okay, I'm gonna like and relate to people that I think will give me something. I mean, there are times that I don't want to go to community group, even though it's in my house and it's hard to avoid. I don't want to go to community group because I'm thinking, like, oh, I'm dealing with all these problems in my life, you know, and I'm tired and I have all these things, and I don't want to go 'Cause I'm just gonna, you know, none of those people can really help me. And it was almost like this a couple weeks ago.

We had a community group and I was just like, man, I'm tired. I need this and this and this and then this. And the Lord just convicted me and said, what if there are people coming to your house that you need to serve? What if these people can't serve you but you're called to serve them? I was like, oh man.

And you know what, here's the crazy thing. As I tried to serve other people, I found myself served and encouraged.

18 · Ricky signals the shift to the sermon's third major point

Point number 2. Point number 3, what tests greatness? What tests greatness?

19 · Ricky expounds the cultural context of children in the ancient world as the lowest social rank, reconstructs the scene of Jesus welcoming a child, and establishes the theological principle: the test of greatness is how you treat society's most overlooked

Jesus gives us a living illustration of what this looks like to live this way. And it's an interesting countercultural example. He took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, Jesus said to them, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. Now, the situation here is probably that Jesus is in somebody's house, they're staying with somebody, And the person is there, the host of the home, the owner of the home is there, and maybe him and his wife are there, and the disciples are right there with Jesus, and Jesus is beginning to teach them. And so maybe some of the neighbors and friends are kind of listening in, but they're a layer back from Jesus and the disciples.

And maybe some other folks, maybe the servants are kind of behind there, you know, like trying to listen in to what Jesus is saying. This famous rabbi is here. You know who's at the very back, the last circle? In this town, the kids. Now in America, we prize kids 'cause we prize youth, right?

We love, and so we're like, oh, kids, they're the best, I'll do everything for them, I'll rearrange my schedule. If I have to take you to T-ball and guitar and violin, and then, you know, like, we're gonna do whatever we need you to do. Dude, we want you to be a baseball-playing violin virtuoso, Jimmy, so like, how do we make that happen? I'm just kidding, okay? Some people were like, hey, like, just, Just relax, I'm not taking on anybody in particular here, okay?

But in the ancient world, kids were the lowest rung of the social ladder. Not to be, like, overly harsh, but 30% of kids did not make it, 30% of infants did not make it to age 1 in the ancient world. So people had a lot of kids, and you only started to care about your kids as they became adults. So kids were in the back, we'll see how it goes. And Jesus takes one of these kids and in the middle of this important meeting at this guy's house, he brings him right up into his lap and says, 'Whoever receives someone like this receives me.' What Jesus is saying is that the real test of whether you're a servant, the real test of whether you get what Jesus is saying, the real test of true greatness is how you treat those that society considers least important, considers lowest rank, considers most overlooked, that whatever society most ignores, that is the true test of whether you're truly great.

20 · Ricky establishes a pattern in Jesus' ministry of welcoming the least, and identifies this as the moment Jesus exposes the disciples' hearts—their service to the powerful was performative; their treatment of children revealed their true character

In the gospels, Jesus does this again and again and again, welcoming the lowest, welcoming the least. Jesus goes straight at almost this, this place in their society where their hearts were exposed. Maybe they were deferent to the rabbis, maybe deferent to the Romans, but the way they treated their kids was the real test of whether they were servants or not.

21 · Ricky applies the test of greatness to contemporary categories of the overlooked: the disabled, the elderly, the poor, and the messy, exposing American culture's tendency to ignore these groups and calling the congregation to see them as Jesus does

Here's the question, guys, we have to wrestle with. Do we treat the most ignored, the most overlooked, the least of these among us as servants? Do we regard them, do we press in to love them? You know, a huge category for our culture, I think, are the way we treat those with disabilities and those who are elderly. Our obsession in 21st century America with youth leads us— youth and beauty leads us to ignore and devalue anyone who is not beautiful, anyone who may be disfigured.

Anyone who may make us uncomfortable. And even our obsession with youth causes us often to disregard the elderly, to begin to fade them out of our lives, you know. My kids had the privilege of, in preschool, they went to a preschool that was kind of half typically developing kids and half kids with Down syndrome. And in getting to know some of the parents there, they were so happy to have a school that valued their kids because their experience was— one particular parent I remember just relating with tears— their experience was that in another preschool, often the teachers themselves would not look at their child. It was almost like a sign, like, this teacher, you care about that kid because they're trouble and they're hard to work with.

I'm going to care about the rest of the kids. But we do the same thing in our lives, don't we, guys?

Another category is the poor, right? The homeless, the financially struggling. These are people who lack resources, who have little social standing, who could be overlooked and exploited. The Scripture again and again brings up the category of the poor, and especially in places like Isaiah, and says that our eyes as Americans naturally drift to those who have wealth and power and influence and drift away from those without it. Do we see them?

Do we see them? God does. And last, I'll just say the messy. There are people in our lives who are messy, who are, Just a variety of things can be here: battling legal, battling mental illness, having legal problems, so always engrossed in some kind of family drama. It could be easier for us just to be like, 'You know what?

It'll be easier for us just to not have that person in our life.' These are the people that Jesus takes note of. These are the tests of whether we are truly great and following the pattern of Jesus as a servant.

22 · Ricky clarifies the relationship between receiving the least and receiving God: it is not a works-salvation scheme but evidence of a gospel-transformed heart that has been welcomed by Jesus and now welcomes others

Fourth and last, and this is very brief, what defines greatness? Jesus ends by saying, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but him who sent me.' Jesus— now, I want to be clear here. Jesus is not saying that if you receive a child and do a good deed, then God will receive you and you'll be saved. This is not about salvation. This is about evidence of salvation.

It's about evidence of a changed heart because no Notice the phrase, if you receive a child in my name, meaning that because you've encountered Jesus, because you've encountered Jesus, your own heart has been rearranged. And what changes your heart? The fact that Jesus welcomes sinners to himself, that Jesus brings in the outcasts like us. And when that happens to you, that there should be a change in your heart. There should be a reordering of your loves and priorities.

And therefore, if you live that out and welcome the least of these, it's evidence, it is a confirmation of you're the kind of person that God will ultimately welcome. Jesus welcomes us, changes our hearts, we welcome others, and Jesus looks at that and says, 'That's it. That's evidence of my change. That's the kind of person that the Father himself will welcome.'

23 · Ricky brings the sermon to its climax by exposing the irony that what we chase at the top of worldly rankings (acceptance, love, identity) is actually found at the bottom with Jesus, and issues a final invitation to abandon the pursuit of worldly greatness and find true greatness in servanthood

And here is the irony, guys, here is the irony. So often what we're chasing when we're chasing rank and stature and greatness is there is something up here that we desperately want. And often it's even a relationship. It's often that, you know, maybe you're chasing a career or money or whatever, because you think, man, if I get this, then my parents will finally be proud of me. Then I'll finally be impressive and have a good spouse, you know, then, that this person will finally approve of me.

And you gravitate up here because you want acceptance, you want love, you wanna be known, you wanna be affirmed. But the irony Jesus says is that's not to be found up here, that those paths are empty. It's not gonna happen. You know where that will happen? Back here with the lowest of the low near where Jesus is.

Because in our heart of hearts, the thing that we most long for This freedom to be known and accepted and loved is only found in God himself. And the irony is the further away we move from God, the more we chase the things of the world, the further away we actually get from the thing that we most want. So Jesus is saying, come over here, come down to the lowest rung of the ladder. That's where I am. That's where you're gonna find love, identity, acceptance.

You'll be known and loved in the way that you most long for.

Jesus says, 'Come.' Do you want to be welcomed by the Father himself? Do you want your creator himself, your savior himself, to rejoice over you, to say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant'? Do you want that? It's to be found here. In the lowest rung of the ladder, the furthest away from the world's adulation, that is what Jesus offers.

He says you're chasing it in the wrong place altogether. Join me, be the least of these, serve all, and receive the welcome of God himself.

When we live as servants, we don't truly give up anything. Anything that actually matters. When we live as servants, we gain all that actually does.

24 · Ricky closes with a prayer of gratitude for God's welcome through Christ and petitions for specific transformation in the congregation's view of greatness and servanthood

Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that those of us who are the least of these, the outcasts, the rebel, those whose hearts are exposed before you, you welcome to yourself through Christ. Lord, we are so grateful that this is the way that you have acted toward us. And Lord, I pray as we leave, you'd give us some specific areas of life that you're calling us to change, that you're calling us to transform our view of what it means to be great. You're calling us to take on the mindset of a servant, and you're calling us to drop in the world's rankings, but in so doing, get closer and closer to you and your heart.

Pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Ricky, thank you for preaching.