Expectations
Like many other people, I was brought up to believe that hard work, a responsible attitude and decent behaviour towards others, would bring success and resulting reward. I entered adult life full of positive expectation.
For 20 years of consistent diligence and highly profitable work, that’s been the general pattern. Fifteen of those years was with my last company who made me redundant 15 months ago as I speak, I haven’t worked since and there’s little prospect of work.
My positive expectations proved to be unrealistic and my present outlook is tempered with a some negative expectation, so that I hope now my expectations are realistic.
For twelve years I have been a Christian. I came to the Christian life with expectations too. And this time of trial has not been easy in that respect either – God has not brought any miracle solution to the redundancy problem – at least not yet.
If you are a Christian, do you have realistic expectations of your life? If you are someone who has not yet submitted themselves to Jesus as Lord and Saviour, what realistic expectations are you to have of the Christian life when it starts?
Good news: the Bible tells us the Christian will survive condemnation on the Day of Judgement and live in eternal paradise with God because of the work of Jesus.
Bad news: the Bible also tells us the Christian must take up their cross and follow Jesus, and that it will involve some suffering. The Lord is very clear about this, but the suffering is only temporary and short-term. The glory will be permanent.
Our passage today, deals with learning this lesson and it does so within the context of discipleship. The reason for that is simple – to be a Christian means literally to be a disciple of Christ. The word disciple has positive connotations for us, but it is very closely related to the word discipline that has negative connotations. There will be no eventual gain without a little short-term pain.
THE CONTEXT OF DISCIPLESHIP
Let’s look at the Context in which our passage comes.
Remember, the first half of Mark’s gospel account has dealt with the question, “who is this historical person, Jesus of Nazareth?” In 8:29 we discover that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah – God in the flesh.
The second half of Mark, where chapter 10 sits, deals with the question, “What has Jesus (God in the flesh) come to do?” Tied in with this second question is another, “What does it mean to be a follower (in other words, a disciple) of Jesus?” Verses 32-45 confront these issues head on.
In the first 31 verses of the chapter, Jesus has encountered three groups of people:
- Pharisees, little children and the rich young man...
- The respective subject matters have been relationship, status / power, and wealth...
- Three things that undermine Christian discipleship. Keep our focus on worldly values.
The lesson? God’s expected standard of discipleship is simply much too high for any person to attain. The pass mark in 100%
Come verse 26 the disciples ask , “who then can be saved?” and in verse 27 Jesus tells them, “in effect, no one can”. At least, no one is capable of saving themselves. Humanity needs a saviour – to be saved by someone else - and that means God.
In verse 31 Jesus introduces us to the fundamental nature of discipleship, ’the first will be last and the last will be first’. That comment is the little carrot, the cryptic clue to encourage us to keep reading for the answer as to what he means.
In verses 35 to 41, we see that two of the closest people to Jesus are not learning the lesson of these stories - they are struggling to understand discipleship at all clearly. They see and they listen first hand and yet their expectations are off beam, their thinking about the future is quite muddled.
What a warning there is for us! We too see and listen as we read our Bibles, but despite open eyes and open ears, are we, like the 12 disciples, walking the wrong way? Are our expectations off-beam, our thinking muddled?
Up to verse 41 Mark has illustrated discipleship by giving us four negative examples. The chapter ends with two positive examples; Jesus himself and, Bartimaeus, the disciple who gets it right. You will notice Bartimaeus is asked exactly the same question by Jesus as are James and John. “What do you want me to do for you?” Mark is inviting us to compare the answers given and to learn.
So what exactly constitutes effective discipleship? What expectations are we to have?
THE ROAD OF DISCIPLESHIP
The Way
People have a talent for getting lost. It’s kept the map makers in caviar and champagne for many years and will continue to do so.
Life is a journey and we need to know where we’re going and that is applicable to every facet of our lives. You’ll have noticed when problems strike, people say things like, “I don’t know where this relationship is going anymore?”, or “Where are we trying to get to with this project?”, or “Where does that kind of morality take us?” We have a built in need for direction and destination.
In verses 32 and 33, we find Jesus, with resolute determination, leading the way to Jerusalem for the final time and the disciples dutifully following him, as any Christian should. The early church called themselves Followers of the Way. In John 14 Jesus says, “I am the Way....”
First fundamental of discipleship is this. If we call Jesus, “our Lord”, then where Jesus goes, we go. He chooses the direction, and he is the destination…of our lives.
The Destination
God is a speaking God, in 33 and 34 Jesus tells the 12 where he’s going. The details are confusing, and worrying even, but the disciples understand that following Jesus is the right thing to do. Whatever their other failings, they step out in faith, trusting that it’ll all turn out well in the end. It’s what we as Christians do too.
Their immediate destination is geographic - Jerusalem – a place where they expect problems. The ministry, and in particular the teaching, of Jesus has made him public enemy number one with the religious authorities.
Jerusalem is a dangerous place to be, both for Jesus and for anyone who aligns themselves with him. Imagine Osama Bin Laden walking into Washington DC with his 12 closest allies. Politically and religiously Jesus and his friends are outlaws. Jesus says quite bluntly to them in verse 33-34 he will be arrested and executed. No mention of his followers you notice.
However, when in verse 34 Jesus talks of resurrection, that infers that somehow an ultimate glory will come from this. Beyond being a geographic destination, Jerusalem promises to be a destination of a different sort, tied up with establishing God’s kingdom. What we might call a spiritual destination.
Like us, they know their Bible and the prophecies about Jesus, the servant priest-king to sit on David’s throne for eternity and Jesus calls himself Son of Man in verse 33. They know this refers to Daniel 7 and prophesy of the Messiah as God’s judge. They know of Genesis 3 where “son of man” refers to the serpent crusher, the one who will come to destroy Satan and all the evil in the world and bring the restoration of eternal peace. Jesus fulfils that prophesy too.
Let's just remind ourselves for the first fundamental of discipleship is this: If Jesus is Lord then. Where he goes we go. He is the direction and destination of our lives.
THE EXPECTATION OF DISCIPLESHIP
Things are going to happen on the Christian road...
The hero of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent, in one of the follow-up books by the late Douglas Adams, visits a planet where is to be found God’s last message to creation. It reads, “We apologise for the inconvenience”. Adams grasped the point that life never proceeds smoothly and that humanity likes to blame it on God.
If he didn’t invent it, elsewhere Adams uses the related idea when he writes, “Expect the unexpected.” It would have been good advice for James and John.
If Jesus has to suffer and die when they reach Jerusalem, how are the Old Testament prophesies going to come to fulfilment? It’s all very puzzling. Like us, James and John don’t want to think about the immediate pitfalls. They shut their minds to it and focus only on the glory. They don’t want to think about the road of discipleship but only the destination.
Now, taking Hebrew 11 as one example, Christians are commended for having high expectations of God delivering on his promises. Let’s commend James and John – they get a lot right – they’ve got high expectations.
The trouble is they seem to have a mistaken idea about the what this glory is, when it will come about, and how it will come about. That last question, how, is quite important because it involves a personal cost and answers the selfishness problem.
In verse 38, Jesus gets to the heart of the matter with his question asking them to assess their own suitability as disciples deserving such high honour. Cups and baptism have positive and negative connotations.
You drink life-giving water from a cup, but cups in the Bible are identified with God’s discipline and judgement. Baptism is picture of new life - that is, when you’re coming up out of the water, but first you go down into the water and that signifies death.
In the physical sense, all Christians will die before they are brought into the heavenly city. Even Jesus will die before he comes to his heavenly throne, and so will James and John.
In the spiritual sense of baptism, before physical death happens the believer dies to self and is born to Jesus Christ – you put aside your own wishes and instead serve God’s agenda summed up in the 10 commandments. In other words you walk the Christian road.
Jesus has not come to defeat the Romans and establish a new earthly kingdom where they will be important people for a change. Jesus has not come to defeat our problems and put us at the top of the worldly ladder of honour and wealth for a change.
He’s talking something much more important. Jesus is teaching them that being an honoured disciple of God means loving God first, then service to others, then death, then glory in heaven. That’s the direction we are to go and those are the real destinations. Be realistic, he tells us.
James and John seem to have missed the two middle bits, the negative bits, and we would rather block them out if we’re honest. We don’t want the inconvenience and trouble of serving others and we don’t want to suffer. I could easily have spent the hours it took me to prepare this talk in some idle diversion and I don’t want to be unemployed, thank you Mr. God.
When you look at what James and John are asking, it betrays a materialism and selfishness which is contrary to their Christian calling. Their perspective appears to be short-term and it’s very human.
But God expects them to put aside their immediate ambition, to take a longer-term view where the spiritual matters more than the materialistic. Stop being selfish, start serving others, accept the suffering that will come inevitably. Be realistic, he says.
It is all too easy for us to come to the wrong conclusions about God and what he will do as we follow his lead in our lives. Too many believers are like James and John. We expect God’s absolute protection from illness, from redundancy, from money troubles and broken relationships.
Then, when these things do come along, as come they will, we pray like mad for God to take them away. That is our expectation, and when God doesn’t mend the situation, our faith crumbles all too easily. We lose sight of the road and lose sight of the destination.
Some of you probably went to hear John Arnott, minister the Toronto Airport Fellowship and a leading Charismatic, when he visited Stevenage last year, as I did. I wanted to hear, first-hand, what the Charismatic movement is teaching. I was not encouraged. We Evangelicals have a lot of work to do in persuading Christians to learn the very lesson we’re looking at this morning.
Sadly, like John Arnott, some Christian leaders are actively encouraging believers to expect God to cure their worldly ills as a right. They say, you can appropriate God’s power personally and solve all your worldly troubles. In effect they are saying that you need not suffer on the Christian road as you follow Jesus, and in doing so they try to bring heaven to earth. I suggest that is a tautology of Scripture that gives absolutely false expectation to believer and unbeliever alike and is quite unrealistic.
Jesus has no intention of establishing heaven on earth, at least, not until after Judgement Day – Christianity is not a spiritual analgesic, and it is not triumphant over troubles and full of continual happiness. These things are only promised to us at the moment. We are not in heaven yet, even if we have the passport in our hands already.
But let all of us here today learn the lesson of 10:42-45.
The Charismatics, in wanting heaven now, are thinking the way the world thinks. Jesus startles us in these verses by turning our natural inclination on its head. God’s way is exactly opposite. Worldly humility and weakness brings ultimate honour and glory as a reward. You do not grasp it greedily and selfishly, for then you will lose it.
Rather, we have to copy Jesus by putting aside our privileges as God’s people to another day and set about serving others wherever that takes us. St Paul always says, copy me as I copy Christ’s example, and Jesus went to glory via the cross. James eventually suffered execution and John was imprisoned on Patmos for serving Christ and others with the gospel. The true Christian means accepting at least some suffering until the day we’re called to heaven. Let’s have realistic expectations.
Finishing Questions
As we close, let me ask you some questions.
· First, if you are a Christian, are you following Jesus?
o Are you doing your bit to talk about Jesus, or are you finding it too embarrassing?
o Are you put off saying something because people are offended by the gospel, offended by your dogmatism?
o Are you afraid of losing face and of losing friends because of talking about Jesus?
o Are you putting yourself or others first?
o What do you think Jesus would want you to do?
· Secondly, in the short-term, are you strong enough in your faith to withstand the suffering of trials when they come? Are you sure enough of the destination to hold on now?
· Thirdly, based on the way you walk your Christian road, are you ready for glory do you think?
Finally, for those of you who might not yet be believers, a comment.
Christianity is the only thing that makes sense of what life is all about, and I thoroughly encourage you to accept Jesus. You will not regret it. Being a Christian is the only way to ensure you end up on the winning side and will eventually have all your problems solved, but...
Have realistic expectations about the short-term: Christianity is not a quick fix answer to all your problems. It’s much more profound than that.