Chapter # 10 Paragraph # 5 Study # 4
October 17, 2023
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: God's ambition for men is radically different from their own ambitions.
Introduction: In our last study, we considered the "ambitions" of James and John as being completely wrong-headed. Their ambition was to dominate others; the Kingdom is rooted in the desire to serve others.
Luke 10:17 reveals how much enthusiasm the seventy expressed over their ability to dominate, but Jesus makes the attempt to turn them from that to what is really a basis for exulting.
This evening we are going to consider the ambition of God for those who are His.
- I. Round Two: The Kingdom's Requirement Of Servanthood (10:32-45).
- A. Part One: The King's Example; 10:32-34.
- B. Part Two: The Disciples' Complete Absence Of Understanding; 10:35-45.
- 1. The "approach" of James and John to Jesus.
- 2. That it is James and John who are directly involved as "the sons of Zebedee" is also to be regarded with some thought.
- 3. The Kingdom and man's ambition.
- 4. The Kingdom and God's requirement for man's ambition.
- a. Jesus responds with the declaration that James and John "do not (emphatic "ouk") know (have a clue; "oida") what you are asking for yourselves".
- 1) This declaration is rooted in two expressed realities.
- a) The previous texts regarding the disciples lack of comprehension of Jesus' coming death and third-day resurrection tell us that they had no idea of the actual nature of the Kingdom as sacrificial.
- b) The culture of the teaching of the Jews had no place for the actual concept of "sacrifice" as an essential of the Kingdom.
- i. Their immersion in "sacrifice" by virtue of the constant sacrifices of the temple priests had only required of them "sacrifices" that they made out of their abundance -- with special adjustments for the poor.
- ii. Their grasp of "sacrifice" did not reach into them as "total loss".
- i) The "tithe" was seen as the only real constant, and it was only ten percent.
- ii) This explains their shock at Jesus' declaration that the rich could only "be saved" (10:26) by an exceptional work of God Himself (10:27).
- iii) Even the claim by Peter ("we have left everything") is about sacrifices of possessions, not oneself, and it had to be buttressed with promises of a "hundred fold" return in this present time.
- iv) Even Jesus' words in 8:35 did not register beyond sacrifices of stuff.
- v) At a later time, the disciples seem to have realized that their physical deaths might be involved as the boasts that "I will die for you" reveal; but those were empty boasts, not expressions of a commitment to the Kingdom's requirement of total selflessness.
- vi) This also exalts Paul's exhortation in Romans 12:1-2 to the level of "Kingdom Characteristics".
- 2) Jesus' choice of words in "you do not know" indicates a lack of the comprehensive grasp regarding the Kingdom's most crucial characteristic.
- b. Then He asks, "Are you able to drink the cup which I am drinking or to be baptized the baptism which I am being baptized?"
- 1) In Mark's record of this "cup" (14:36 and context) he records Jesus' declaration of the deep level of "grief in His soul" (14:34).
- a) Luke's Gospel declares "bloody perspiration" (Luke 22:44) and an angel to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43).
- b) And all of the records tell of the complete obliviousness of the disciples who go to sleep.
- 2) This question identifies "baptism" according to its "regular nature", i.e., "being immersed into" so that "identity with" is the outcome.
- a) Jesus' "baptism" was circumstantially the cross.
- b) But the "identity" issue of the cross was "punishment for wrong doing" and the New Testament claim is that Jesus was fully identified with our sin(s) so that His death was rooted in His having become Sin for us that we might become "righteous" in the reckoning of God.
- c. And, finally, He declares that James and John will, in fact, participate at this level, but that even that will not make it possible to be given their ambition.
