Category Archives: Ministry

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Two kinds of leaders—Mark 10:42-45

I’m going to talk about two kinds of leaders in Mark 10:42-45, but the discussion will make fullest sense if I spend some time in the rest of Mark’s Gospel setting the stage for this.

Jesus throughout Mark’s Gospel displays one kind of leadership. Some scholars like to play Jesus’s “Messianic secret” (his invoking silence regarding much of his ministry) off against his signs or glory. But they are envisioning the wrong dichotomy. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is healing and delivering others, even at risks to himself. (His times with the marginalized would not commend him to the elite.) He is not seeking his own honor; his acts of healing are part of his being a servant to others. Jesus spent time with the disabled, and moral and social outcasts—he’s not looking to get the powerful to back his cause.

There are also other kinds of leaders in Mark’s Gospel. These include some of the scribes and Pharisees, whose confrontations with Jesus show them more committed to their stringent interpretations of Scripture than they are to the desperate human needs Jesus is meeting. Still more unlike Jesus are the Jerusalem elite, who flaunt and sometimes abuse their honor and power. Like tenants in the vineyard in the parable Jesus tells in Mark 12, these leaders forget that God allowed them to be caretakers. They do not want to relinquish their power over the vineyard of God’s people.

We should expect the disciples to be different. Jesus is training these relative nobodies to be leaders in his kingdom. Most of them are from modest or poor backgrounds; most of them were also probably not well-educated (although at least the tax collector should have had basic writing literacy). They were Galileans, whom Jerusalemites sometimes viewed as country bumpkins. They should understand that Jesus is about helping those in the greatest need, not about self-exaltation.

But soon the disciples, expecting places of honor in Jesus’s kingdom, begin looking like the other kinds of leaders rather than like Jesus. They try to protect Jesus from being bothered by children (10:15); other followers want to protect him from a blind beggar (10:48). After the disciples try to keep away the children, Jesus has to repeat a lesson he had already given his disciples about receiving children (9:36-37; 10:14-15)!

And before the lesson of 10:42-45, they become even deafer to Jesus’s message. After a rich man refuses to surrender his wealth for the kingdom, Jesus again reminds his disciples that the first will be last (10:31) and that Jerusalem’s elite will precipitate his death (10:33-34). Instead of contemplating this sobering warning, James and John immediately ask to be greatest in the kingdom (10:35-40). (After all, they were just on the Mount of Transfiguration with him and Peter, while the other disciples were failing in an exorcism below the mountain.) This ploy makes angry the other ten: James and John are butting ahead of them in line (10:41)! The disciples had already been debating among themselves who was the greatest, and Jesus had already responded that the greatest would be like a child (9:33-35). His message, however, has obviously not yet sunk in.

So Jesus gives the lesson in 10:42-45. Here he contrasts two forms of leadership. For the first, he speaks about the world’s way of power, exemplified by the “rulers of the gentiles” (10:42). (Keep in mind that, for Jesus’s Galilean disciples, gentiles did not exactly epitomize moral ideals.) This was the sort of raw power that allowed Pilate to hand Jesus over for execution or for the Jewish tetrarch Herod Antipas to have John beheaded (though both Pilate and Herod succumbed to others’ demands in these cases). By Galilean standards, Herod even seemed a “king” (6:14, 22, 25-27).

This differed from the ideal kind of rulership, the reign of God, his kingdom, proclaimed by Jesus (1:15). This divine kingship would someday be manifested in the glory that God’s people were expecting (14:25; 15:43), but it first came in a hidden way—the humble “secret” or mystery of the kingdom I’ve already mentioned (4:11-12). It is a kingdom that belongs to children (10:14-15), inimical to power based on wealth (10:23). And the language of king, besides the pseudo-king Herod, clusters in Mark 15, when his enemies mock Jesus as king of the Jews (15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32) and crown him with thorns (15:17).

The rulers of the gentiles exercise authority in self-seeking, abusive ways (10:42). By contrast, Jesus exercises authority not like the scribes (1:22), but for driving out demons (1:27) and forgiving sins (2:10). He delegates this authority to his disciples—also to drive out demons (3:15; 6:7), waging war against the enemy kingdom of Satan (3:24-27).

In contrast to the power of gentile rulers (10:42), Jesus offers a contrasting paradigm (10:43-44). “This way of the gentiles—that’s not how it must be among you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be slave [doulos] of all” (10:43-44).Jesus uses power to heal the sick (5:30), not to help himself (15:30, 32; cf. Matt 4:2-4).

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Jesus had had to offer this lesson: he has to keep reminding them! In 9:33-34, the disciples had been discussing who was the greatest among them. Jesus then warned them in 9:35 that whoever wants to be first will be last and servant of all. Now again James and John had sought to be highest in the kingdom, and Jesus has had to repeat the lesson. Our habit of competing for honor or attention dies hard.

Yet Jesus is not offering mere abstract instruction. He is offering himself. And insofar as he is our hero, our model of greatness, humbling ourselves must become our ambition! Our Lord is greatest of all, having humbled himself most of all: though being divine, he humbled himself, taking on him the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, even the particularly shameful death on a cross—the ultimate humiliation. Yet God has exalted Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe! (Phil 2:5-11).

And so Jesus gets specific, in 10:45 essentially adding another passion prediction that brings them back to the subject that preceded the quest for greatness (10:33-34): Jesus, the Lord himself, must die. “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.”

Mark’s entire Gospel shows Jesus serving, a servanthood that climaxes in Mark’s lengthy passion narrative. “Ransom” (10:45) often meant the price used to buy someone from slavery. Jesus by his own life offers himself as a slave (10:44) to free us from slavery. We could not have saved our own lives for eternity, but Jesus does. In 8:37, Jesus asks what a person can give in exchange for their soul (antallagma psuchê). Here Jesus says that he gives his own life (psuchê) in the place of (anti) many. He gives his life in exchange for ours.

We whom God had graciously appointed as leaders—some of us from lowly backgrounds like the disciples—have a special privilege and opportunity to serve all the more. May we always remember our Lord’s model: for how can we ever serve as humbly as he has served us?

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Jesus and elites

Why did Jesus keep running into trouble with elites? The scribes, an educated elite, are judging him in Mark 2:6-7, 16, and the Pharisees, a pious fellowship honoring ancestral tradition criticized him in 2:24 and 3:6. Jesus answers evasively and in riddles and parables designed to delay harsher confrontations till the closing phase of his ministry. In 3:22, Jerusalemite scribes accuse him of acting by Satan; although Jesus still reasons with them, his response escalates to a serious warning. Jesus responds more harshly to the challenges of scribes and Pharisees in 7:6-13, even calling them hypocrites. (In 7:5, as in 2:24, they criticized his disciples, inviting his defense. In 10:11-12, Jesus defends innocent parties divorced by their spouses.)

Jesus’s forerunner, John, suffers under a different elite: the political ruler of Galilee, the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who executes him (6:27).

Yet Jesus also warns his followers against acting like religious elites themselves. When his followers want to exclude someone who acts in his name because the person does not belong to their own group, Jesus stands up for the person (9:38-42). When his followers want to protect Jesus from interruptions by “unimportant” people like little children or blind beggars, Jesus reaches out to those “unimportant” people (10:13-16, 48-52). When some disciples want to become most prominent in the kingdom, Jesus reminds them that true leadership ought not to reflect the world’s ideals of power, but servanthood (10:35-44). Our Lord himself modeled this, coming to serve and to die for us (10:45).

Naturally Jesus’s conflict with elites escalates in the region’s elite location, Jerusalem. He fends off challenges from critics in ch. 12 and reveals coming judgment on the temple (and thus the religious establishment that claims to speak for God) in 13:1-2. And finally the chief priests, who doubled as Judea’s aristocratic leadership, hand Jesus over to the Roman governor for execution. Jesus had already hinted as much in his parable in 12:1-11, where he depicted Jerusalem’s leaders as abusing their rule over God’s people.

Jesus welcomed everyone, but he went out of his way for the lowly, not the rich (10:17-25) and powerful. To the extent that any of us have some social advantages in life, to that extent we must humble ourselves all the more to approach Jesus; it is harder for the wealthy to enter the kingdom (10:23) and easier for children (9:35-37; 10:14-15). If we want to follow our Lord’s example, we need to humble ourselves. When we live by the world’s values of celebrity cults and seeking power over others instead of being servants to all, we miss the very point for which our Lord called us.

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Sinful Leaders: Why do some people with powerful gifts live sinful lives?

We hear about lots of (happily not most) ministers falling. This is not surprising, because ministers are human, and the Bible tells us that humans know how to sin. But sometimes we are particularly surprised because someone seems particularly gifted or “anointed” by God; God is using them in people’s lives, and then we discover that they have been living in serious, secret sin the entire time.

Jesus did not say, “You’ll know prophets by their gifts.” He says, “You’ll know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). Some false prophets (Matthew 7:15) even convince themselves that they prophesy and do miracles in Christ’s name, but if they live lives of disobedience, they are not in a relationship with Christ (Matthew 7:21-23).

Then there are those who start well but don’t finish well. God called Samson, and the Spirit empowered Samson. But Samson was playing around with sin. In Judges 16, even though he has just been sleeping with a prostitute, the Spirit of God still empowers him and gets him out of the situation. As the chapter progresses, God’s Spirit is still working in him while he is sleeping with Delilah. But eventually, his sin catches up with him. God is merciful, but he won’t be mocked. Samson “loses his anointing,” though he did not lose it as quickly as some of us might have expected. Ultimately, Samson does end up finishing well, but finishing much earlier than he would have finished he not wallowed in sin (Judges 16:28-31)

Then there are those who manifest the power of the Spirit not because they are people of the Spirit but because the Spirit is strong in that place. In 1 Samuel 16:13-14, the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul and rests on David, and an evil spirit from the Lord (or a spirit of judgment) rests on Saul. In 1 Samuel 18:10, Saul is even prophesying by this harmful spirit. But in 1 Samuel 19:20-24, he sends messengers to kill David. Overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, these messengers fall down and start prophesying. When the first messengers fail, he sends more, and the same thing happens. After two such failed attempts to kill David, Saul goes to kill David himself. Yet he too falls down and starts prophesying by God’s Spirit, while David escapes.

Saul was no longer a man of God’s Spirit, but because he was in a setting that was full of God’s Spirit (because of Samuel and the prophets he was mentoring), the Spirit worked even through him. Sometimes people are gifted because others are praying. Gifts are not given to us in any case because of our virtue: then they would be earned rather than gifts. Gifts are given to us for Christ’s service, so we dare not boast in them. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you didn’t receive [from God]? And if you received it [from God], why do you boast as if you didn’t receive it [from God]?”)

Do not assume that someone is walking with God simply because God seems to be using them. Do not be surprised when some people who seem anointed by God fall. (In some cases, it is partly the fault of followers who put God’s servants on a pedestal instead of supporting them in prayer as brothers and sisters in Christ.) Likewise, do not assume that someone whose ministry may not look big to you is less faithful. Indeed, we don’t know people’s hearts, where they’ve come from or what they’ve been through. Since we don’t know other people’s hearts, we can’t compare ourselves with them as better or worse. Thus Paul says, “I don’t even judge my own self. I don’t know of anything against me, but that doesn’t make me right. It’s the Lord who judges” (1 Corinthians 4:3b-4).

The Corinthians were trying to evaluate whether Paul or Apollos was a better Christian celebrity to follow. Paul warns them: don’t judge before the time (1 Corinthians 4:5). God alone knows the heart, and there will be many surprises on the day of judgment.

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Obedience even before much faith—Exodus 4:18-21

God’s signs had put the fear of God in Moses, enough to make him obey. But Moses’s obedience is still half-hearted, and (as will become obvious in the next lesson) incomplete.

After receiving this astonishing commission and these signs from God, Moses returns to his father-in-law and asks permission to go visit his siblings in Egypt (Exod 4:18). Moses owes respect to his father-in-law (e.g., 18:7), and it was respectful not to take leave of one’s family service prematurely (Jethro is a much friendlier in-law to Moses than was Laban the Aramean to Jacob; Gen 31:27-31). Did Jethro by now (vs. Exod 2:19) understand that Moses was an Israelite rather than an Egyptian? It may not have made a difference, but certainly by Exodus 18:1 Jethro knows, so it is not unlikely that he understood this earlier.

While Moses dare not disobey this God who called him, however, he says nothing to Jethro about God’s commission. He is still half-hearted, not knowing what will happen in Egypt. He says he wants to go to see if his relatives are alive (4:18). (His concern as to whether his relatives remain alive may also be legitimate; Moses is about eighty in this narrative, and his brother and sister are even older; 7:7. Many Israelites Moses knew may have by now passed away.)

Possibly a more urgent concern regarding survivors of his generation is whether those who wanted him killed are still alive. Thus, before Moses leaves Midian, the Lord again calls him to return to Egypt, informing him those who had sought his life are now dead (4:19).

Yet the Lord does not make Moses’s calling easier at this point by watering down what Moses will face. In fact, he warns him up front what he is in for. God will harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21) and Moses is to warn Pharaoh that God will kill Pharaoh’s son for his disobedience (4:23). One needs little imagination to envision how Pharaoh, who fancied himself divine, would take an ultimatum and threat from the god of his slaves.

What God calls us to do often leads through serious hardships. Our hearts may not even be in his calling at first. That can be true whether we are thinking of God’s calling for all of us to make disciples, or of more specific aspects of our calling. But God has a plan, and one dare not disregard God’s commands—as Moses will soon discover. Confronting Pharaoh may be dangerous, but disobeying God nearly gets Moses killed (4:24).

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A commission whether you like it or not—Exodus 4:13-17

As long as Moses is raising logistical problems, God has solutions. But finally Moses is out of objections and simply asks God to get someone else, still more convinced that this is not the job for him than trusting the God who has called him. As Paul later points out, however, if we’re not willing to accept God’s call willingly, as a gift, then we will have to do it anyway, under duress (1 Cor 9:16-17). Life-hardened, old Moses is no young Isaiah, who when touched by God offered, “Here I am! Send me!” (Isa 6:8). Although God has offered to be with him and teach him what to speak (Exod 4:12), Moses responds, “Please, Lord, send just by the agent you will send!” (4:13). In other words, “by someone other than me!”

Honestly, none of us is worthy of God’s service. He doesn’t call us because we’re worthy in ourselves, so we shouldn’t kid ourselves with either pride or despair. We can’t turn down God’s service because we’re unqualified. Referring to the call to proclaim the good news of Christ, Paul asks, “For matters such as this, who indeed is adequate/qualified?” (2 Cor 2:16). He soon answers about his confidence for his calling, “Not that we are adequate/qualified by ourselves so that we should consider anything as coming from ourselves! No, instead our adequacy/qualification is from God, who also has qualified us as ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor 3:5-6). Think, for example, of Gladys Aylward, rejected for service with a major mission to China because her poor academic performance apparently disqualified her from being able to master the Chinese language. Convinced that God was sending her, however, she found a way to China, learned Chinese, and became Chinese, including adopting Chinese citizenship.

Moses’s reluctance had finally crossed the line from reasonable concerns to polite refusal, and God was angry (Exod 4:14). This anger against Moses becomes more evident later when God nearly has to kill him to secure fuller obedience (4:24), apparently because he was more afraid of his wife’s anger than of God’s (4:25-26). Moses’s reluctance will again emerge later when he complains again to the God who called him that Pharaoh will not listen to him because he is such a poor speaker (6:12, 30).

Nevertheless, at this point God simply resolves this final logistical complaint, Moses’s insistence that he should not be the one to speak even if God teaches his lips. The Lord explains that Moses’s brother Aaron, whom God knows to be a good speaker, can speak for him. (God does not make mistakes: he knew exactly who he had called, and knew his family too.) Nor can Moses now try to object that Aaron might not be able to meet with Moses; God had already taken care of that and Aaron was on his way (Exod 4:14)!

Just as God had offered to be with Moses’s mouth and teach him what to say (4:12), so Moses was to provide words in Aaron’s mouth, and God would now be with both their mouths and teach them what to do (4:15). In other words, Moses had gotten out of nothing. His surprise commission still stands, though he now had an assistant, one that God may have already planned ahead for anyway. Moses would give God’s words to Aaron and Aaron would deliver them to the people (4:16).

The reluctant prophet is caught between a rock and a hard place. Confronting Pharaoh is terrifying. But resisting this God who summons Moses is more dangerous still!

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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You’ve got the wrong person, Lord—Exodus 4:10-12

Moses thus raises another objection: even if signs would persuade the people through someone, Moses is not the right one to speak (4:10). Sometimes we may have faith in principle, affirming that God has power to do something, yet deny that God can do that through us. If God should choose to act through us, however, who are we to question his call? Our belief in our inability may be correct, but it dare not take precedence over belief in God’s ability to perform his will—even if he chooses to do so through us.

Moses objects to God’s call that he is not a good speaker; as one who had been near Pharaoh’s court, he knew the sort of eloquence demanded there. Moses is claiming that his ability does not match God’s call (4:10). (He can hardly assume, however, that God simply picked whoever would stop by this bush, rather than set his flare here to call Moses in particular. There were undoubtedly not many Hebrews out here in the wilderness of Sinai. But would a God strong enough to reveal himself in a bush in the Sinai, a desert place in which Egypt’s gods lacked interest, have much power in Egypt?)

Moses’s objection unfortunately and irrationally implies that the Lord has made a mistake, an implication that the Lord immediately yet patiently corrects. God is not dependent on human ability; God is the one who supplied or withheld that ability to begin with (4:11), and he is capable of enabling one to speak, supplying the right words (4:12). (“Heavy tongue” in 4:10 might be idiomatic for speech difficult to understand; the same Hebrew expression appears in Ezek 3:5-6.)

God often calls us to do what we cannot do in our own strength. Later, when Jeremiah (a youth in contrast to Moses’s age) fears that he does not know how to speak (Jer 1:6), the Lord similarly declares that he is with him, that he will give him the right words (1:7-9). Not surprisingly, many of the people God called in the Bible recognized their inadequacy to fulfill their commission; but God is not limited to our ability.

Unable to dissuade God about Moses’s suitability for the task, Moses is about to refuse it anyway (Exod 4:13). And that will prove to be a very big mistake.