[RECAP]  Jesus needs leaders who want to be their best, but He will stop power-players who want to be “the” best. There’s a big difference between being the best and being your best  [END RECAP]

Across the years of my life, fifty years of ministry, I’ve wrestled to learn that difference. Do I need to be the best? Absolutely not. What difference does it make? I’m going to die. It’s done. It’s over. One of the things you learn as you get older that a lot of the things you wrestled with and fought for, argued about, never mattered, never mattered. They never mattered in the first place and they don’t matter now. What a waste of life. And in the mean time, things that matter pass you by. Anything you need to use a power-play to get, doesn’t matter. But if you will become a slave as Jesus says, as He goes on to say to these men, “the Ten became indignant”, they were very offended, and “Jesus called them all together and said, “You know,”” in verse 42, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and exercise authority…” They come down on them. That’s the image in both words. Coming down on their followers. But look what Jesus says, “Not so with you…” (Mark 10:43). “Not so with you,” that’s not leadership! If you’re a come down kind of leader, you are a come down kind of leader, you are not a leader. You’ve stepped down from leadership. You may be a lord but you’re not a leader. You’ve left leadership. You’re using power but you have no power. It’ll go away; it’ll go ‘poof’. It’ll be gone. You can hang on maybe. Hang on, hang on, hang on. Just, yeah, hang on. To what? Open your hand and what do you have? You don’t have anything.

“Not so with you,” it’s just not the way life is. It’s just not the way leadership is. Leadership is not about power for you. Oh yes, leaders need power. I understand that. But power does not come by competing. Power does not come by grasping. Power does not come by making a play for it. Power comes by loving, serving, praying, weeping. Power comes by Jesus.

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your slave, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:43-44). Because it says, “even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and give His life” (Mark 10:45). Do you know where power comes from? Power does not come from grasping for it, reaching out for it, accumulating it, bringing it close to yourself. Jesus had all of that and He did not think of it as something to be grasped. Power comes from giving your life. So the second symptom, a shameless use of power to get what we want.

Now let’s go back, Luke 22, at 14. This is an amazing, amazing passage. “When the hour came,” the hour for the Passover, absolutely. But more than that, the hour for the cross. He reclined at the table, and He says, “with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. Because I’m not going to eat it again until it’s fulfillment in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15-16). Now, the men had no idea what He was talking about and they couldn’t. There was no way they could. They had no concept of two thousand, more than two thousand years. They just couldn’t grasp that. But what I think they should see, they could see, is the vulnerability of Jesus. ‘With desire I have desired, you are my most precious friends.’

Passover was a special time. It was either eaten with families or in this kind of setting, like this, with a teacher, a rabbi and his followers who had become so close. These are His most precious earthly relationships. And He’s saying to them, ‘I have so looked forward to this time. You have no idea what it means for Me to be with you right now. Right now before I go to Gethsemane. Right now before the soldiers come and take Me and I go to Pilate, and I go to Herod, and I go back to Pilate, and I go to Golgotha.’ No, they don’t know what that means. And He pours His heart out to them. He is so vulnerable to them.

And then, as we observed, He institutes the Lord’s Supper. And then, right in the middle of this profound, this amazing moment, Jesus says, “But the hand of him who is going to betray Me is with Mine on the table” (Luke 22:21). Wait a minute, this betrayer He’s been talking about, it’s not some Roman, it’s not some Pharisee, it’s one of us. One of us will betray Him. One of us will trade Him for 30 pieces of silver. One of us will trade Him for power. One of us will trade Him for success. One of us will trade Him for position. One of us will trade Him for influence. That’s what’s going to happen. One of us will trade Him. Even one He longed to eat the Passover meal with. He will betray Me. And look, look what happens: “They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this”  (Luke 22:23).

And then in verse 24, “a dispute arose among them as to which one was considered to be the greatest.” Do you see what’s going on? Isn’t this amazing? Isn’t this overwhelming? Can you imagine this? Can you think of anything more insensitive? That’s the third symptom, an insensitive arrogance that blinds us to the vulnerability of others. An insensitive arrogance that blinds us to the vulnerability of others.

You know, a lot of us as leaders have a very hard time with vulnerability. It’s almost like it’s a disease, ‘we don’t want this disease. I mean, wow. I could catch it. I could have to admit that I don’t know where my company is going. I could have to admit, I might even be the CEO, I don’t have any idea of what I’m doing. I could have to admit that to somebody.’ Not necessarily to somebody in my company, but to anybody. I need to go to my professional meetings, I need to go to pastoral conferences, I need to go to my parachurch gatherings. And I need to go and walk in and show that I know what I’m doing. I know where I’m going. I can’t say to anybody, ‘I have no idea what I’m doing.’ Even though I don’t! Because vulnerability is weakness.

And Jesus is weak. He is vulnerable here. He starts with telling them how much He needs them and how much He loves them. That’s what He’s saying to them. He goes deeper when He talks about the betrayer. And then when they get up and leave and go into Gethsemane, He says to His chosen handful, Peter, Andrew, James, John, ‘Come with Me and pray with Me. My soul is sorrowful unto death’ (Mark 14:33-34). He’s so vulnerable. The Creator dependent on His creatures. And they sleep.

Well, I’m one of them, I’m afraid, who sleep. If you’re afraid of vulnerability. If you run from it. If you sit in a meeting and somebody makes a mistake of being vulnerable and the first thing you do is move the agenda, keep things going. ‘Let’s get going, let’s move on. We can’t have any of this.’ Now, it may be that it’s out of order in this particular meeting. Perhaps. But is that individual just pushed aside? Or is there a place, a followup? Symptom number three, arrogance, drivenness, power, insensitivity.