Gospel Teamwork (Mark #31)

Father, in my own failings and my prideful doubts, let your word shine through. Let truth pierce our hearts, so that we come to understand the words we read as we pick them up daily — and so that they change us from the inside out. Thank you for this gift: your word, your presence, and all the people here. Amen.

Think of That Person

Have you ever worked alongside someone who does the same job you do, but does it completely differently?

Not just a different method — genuinely different. Same outcome. Same goal. Entirely different approach.

Take a second and think of that person. Who came to mind? Hold onto them as we read today.

The Northeast Titans

My own example comes from recruiting. I served as a National Guard recruiter in this area for about five years, and it was simultaneously the best and worst job I’ve ever had.

Before my family moved back up here, I was putting in around sixty hours a week — alone in my office, staying at my parents’ house while we looked for a place. Not all of it productive. But a lot of hours.

I worked with a team spread across northeast Iowa, each of us assigned to high schools and colleges in our region. We all had our own way of working, but the goal was identical: enlist people into the Guard.

My boss kept it simple. He’d ask what I did that day, I’d give him a list, and he’d say, “Did that put somebody in the Guard?” And I’d say no. And he’d say, “Stop it.”

So I’d do something different.

But how we went about it was as varied and nuanced as there were students in those schools and members on that team. My first sergeant named us the Northeast Titans.

Why Couldn’t I Celebrate?

We’d hold meetings where enlistment numbers and school engagements over the past month determined who ranked among the best.

And we’d advise each other on the how — how to reach the goal. In those group meetings, whoever had the most success that month would stand up and deliver their version of success, presented as a kind of moral: you ought to do this. Follow these steps and you’ll find success, like I did.

Reaching the goal is what we were all supposed to be doing anyway. These were my teammates. When they win, we all win.

So why did their success — which was also our team’s success, an obviously good thing — bring me no happiness or satisfaction?

Why couldn’t I truly celebrate someone else’s success?

I found myself thinking about myself. My mission. What I wasn’t doing.

Was it because the win wasn’t mine? Am I really that petty and small? Were all of us?

It was a deeply fulfilling and deeply frustrating season of my life.

The Passage

Mark 9:33–42.

Jesus and the disciples come to Capernaum, and once inside he asks what they had been disputing on the road. They keep silent — because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest.

He sits down, calls the Twelve, and says: If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

Then he takes a little child and sets him in their midst, and taking him in his arms says: Whoever receives one of these little children in my name receives me; and whoever receives me receives not me but him who sent me.

Then John speaks up: Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he does not follow us.

And Jesus answers: Do not forbid him. For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterward speak evil of me. For he who is not against us is on our side. And whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ — assuredly, he will by no means lose his reward.

And then the warning: But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

What They’d Just Been Told

Look at what immediately precedes this. In Mark 9:30–32, the disciples have just been told that their teacher — the man they’ve been traveling with, the one they’ve come to trust — is going to be delivered up and killed, and will rise on the third day.

And our New Testament heroes, the men who act in Acts and pen the epistles, immediately begin arguing about which of them is the greatest.

The Silence Says Everything

I love it when Jesus asks people questions in the Bible.

You’ve heard someone say they ask questions for your benefit, not their own — so you can learn. He’s Jesus. He’s God. He already knows the answer. And it’s wonderful to think about.

In a crude way it reminds me of cornering my own kids when something has gone wrong or gone missing. Who did this? And they start counter-accusing and defending themselves.

But what’s far more telling is when they say nothing at all. The silence means they know they’re caught and there’s nothing to be done.

That’s the disciples here. The argument, and then the silence after the question, shows they completely failed to grasp the lesson in Christlike humility they had just been handed.

He Sits Down

Here’s an interesting detail: when Jesus sits down and calls his disciples over, that is precisely the posture a rabbi of that day assumed to deliver formal instruction to his pupils.

He’s taking the teaching position. And from it he says: if anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.

Christ knows our fallen nature. He understood how these men were tempted — so tempted that they discussed the inglorious topic of self-aggrandizement the whole way to Capernaum.

Notice What He Doesn’t Say

And here’s something worth noticing. In correcting them, Jesus does not say it’s wrong to want to be the best.

That’s worth examining another time, and I’d encourage you to discuss it with each other — proper placement in God’s kingdom. But don’t take it as permission to crush people on your way up, at work or at home. Glorious accomplishment belongs to God alone.

Instead, Jesus redirects them to the proper way of attaining that status. Because the truest form of status is to be great in the kingdom of God — not in the halls of men.

The Heroes Do Not Have It Together

In preparing for today, several teachers I listened to made the same point: how frequently Scripture narrates the terrible failings of the very people we’re reading about.

Like this petty, prideful argument captured right here.

The heroes of the story do not have it all together. They struggle to understand, exactly like we do. And Jesus breaks it down for them — and for us.

Which applies to a morning like this one. Never think for a moment that the people who come up on this stage — myself included — have it together. We don’t. We’re doing what God requires of us in obedience, even if we’re nervous, even if something went wrong that morning. Don’t assume those people have it figured out.

An Imperative, Not a Feeling

Look at the grammar in verse 35: he shall be last of all and servant of all.

That’s an imperative. You will act like this.

His instruction is short, pointed, and succinct — perfect in that way. This is what we do in God’s kingdom. Act like this.

It isn’t a feeling. It’s something they were told to do.

And that is humility. As a side note worth remembering: I’ve heard it said that the moment a person begins to feel humble is the exact moment they are not. And if these men were arguing about piety and standing, they certainly weren’t.

The Only Leadership They’d Ever Seen

Consider the leadership culture surrounding them: untouchable monarchs, unapproachable governors, unrebukable religious teachers. Men who lorded over others, typically in the worst possible way.

The Twelve’s entire understanding of greatness was shaped partly through that lens.

And when you take time to reflect on the examples this world provides, they can look genuinely perverse — simple, coercive inversions of God’s method for greatness.

Then He Picks Up a Child

Jesus has just taken a seat. Now he picks up a child.

Another point of cultural context — and note he isn’t speaking about one’s own children; Scripture addresses that elsewhere. He means children generally.

In our modern setting we elevate children enormously. People in this room — and I include myself — have had to be warned against effectively worshiping their own kids.

That was not the case in Jesus’s day. Child mortality was high. Usefulness was low. Social value was limited.

They had no achievement. No ability. No merit. No power. No greatness. They were dependent and vulnerable to a fault.

Does that sound like anybody?

The Object Lesson

Christ lifts up this little one and gives a deeply meaningful object lesson. He draws a line between these children and the believer — a child of God.

As we so often find in Scripture, the models of existence in the kingdom of God are not the models the world tells you are good.

And verse 37 is about how you treat others. This isn’t well-wishing. This is what you actually do for people.

How you treat other believers is how you have treated Christ — because he dwells in them.

John Can’t Let It Go

This lesson must have stirred something in John — that gut-wrenching feeling — because his response brings today’s real subject into focus.

Verse 38: Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him — because he does not follow us.

So there are other people in the world. Plain and simple.

Scripture doesn’t reveal much about the incident John recalls, but we know it happened. And earlier we saw them arguing about greatness within the group — and now we learn this isn’t the first time personal pride was on their minds, and that the ugliness has extended outward to genuine miracle-working followers of Christ in a different circle.

The Rest of History Is Still Happening

This fascinates me personally. We read the Bible and forget that the rest of history is still occurring.

This particular narrative teaches us something specific — but other things are happening simultaneously, and the text makes reference to them. Other people in the world. Followers who aren’t elevated on any altar, simply doing the work they were sent to do.

Those adjacent stories are remarkable.

Is This Man Legitimate?

Reading this, my mind went straight to Matthew 7 — and maybe yours did too, to those who cry “Lord, Lord.”

But I want you to see the comparison, and why we can know this man is genuine.

In Acts 19 we have the sons of Sceva — men incapable of working miracles. In Matthew 7 we have phonies who do not do the will of the Father. Matthew 7:21 says not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom, but the one who does the will of the Father. And Matthew 7:18 says a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit.

Now compare that with what we read here: John says this man is doing miracles.

And Jesus responds in verse 39: Do not forbid him. For no one who works a miracle in my name can soon afterward speak evil of me.

Jesus says stop it. Don’t do that.

This verse confirms the genuine nature of a true follower of Christ.

I also tend to forget about the seventy sent out in Luke 10 — I have to go back and reread it sometimes. They’re sent, and they return telling Jesus they could genuinely cast out demons. It’s astonishing. Keep that in mind when you read that the laborers are few.

There It Is: Our Teamwork

That’s today’s lesson. The genuine workers out in the world are not to be thought ill of. There is diversity in the kingdom.

Verse 40: For he who is not against us is on our side.

Very simple — and it draws an all-too-familiar line. Our team is defined this way. The people we lean on and trust.

You are either of God or against him. There is no middle ground. No impartiality.

The world will try to poison that idea, but it is clear — not nuanced, not special, entirely straightforward. Matthew 12:30 says the same thing from the other direction: he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.

Cherish Your Teammates

There are other people of God out there, and therefore they are to be cherished.

They are gospel teammates. Co-workers. Partners. Family members.

There is no competition among members of your own family, of your own team, looking out into their own communities.

So are we genuinely celebrating the good work of the churches around us? Let that be right and true — the other gatherings of disciples across our region and beyond. Different communities, different cultures, different content and people. And within them you will find individuals who know the truth and tell their friends and neighbors.

That is a wonderful model of evangelism — the people closest to you.

A Reward

Verse 41: whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in my name, because you belong to Christ, will by no means lose his reward.

Reading things repeatedly brings emphatic understanding. Go over this several times and you’ll see there is something done and something given.

Doing the will of the Father in true faith and obedience is the aim here. And in terms of reward, it is our eternity with him.

The world offers a very different set of rewards. Which is exactly what Jesus warns about in the Sermon on the Mount — that we shouldn’t perform our charitable deeds before others in order to be seen, or we’ll have no reward from our Father in heaven. Don’t sound a trumpet the way the hypocrites do in the synagogues and streets so they may have glory from men; they already have their reward. Instead, when you give, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing — so that your giving is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And a Warning

Verse 42: whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble — it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

I’ve used this before to defend children, and I think that’s right. But it is in defense of the believer — something more precious even than our worldly understanding of what our own children mean to us.

My mind goes first to pastors and elders. Perhaps that’s simply where my mind goes; the passage doesn’t say so explicitly. It’s broad in scope and implication.

What it offers is the painful death of execution by drowning — for the one who would cause a child of God, a believer, to stumble. To fall. To be enticed or trapped or led astray.

That person is damned. It is clear and to the point. Christ does not pull punches. You can almost see his face while he says it.

With much severity and seriousness — which I often forget to bring to Scripture where it belongs.

The Same Seriousness Toward Ourselves

This verse brings an equal level of seriousness to how we evaluate ourselves — and how we regard kingdom teammates we aren’t even aware of, who are not “of us.”

Because we know these words are true.

So when we see attendance rise at another church, we celebrate. When a neighboring congregation holds a prayer night or hands out food, we engage and serve. When others begin to stray, we warn — in obedience and to the glory of God, not our own.

There is a powerful sense of unity in this teamwork, and a realization that we do not struggle alone. That is genuine comfort.

There is a powerful unity in our common vision of Christ.

So let us be glad in the defense and care of one another — even those whose service, whose teamwork, whose methods look nothing like our own, but whose outcome is the same.

A Prayer

Thank you, Father, for the gift of this time. For the people who come to serve — and those who serve from home, who send out and coordinate and schedule and plan. For every elder, every teacher, every person who walks through the door yearning to know the truth.

Help us not to think poorly of another person’s less-than-glorious attempts to serve you — because it is in the serving that greatness is found, and that is the model your kingdom provides, rather than our own notions of how it ought to look or feel.

Let your word go out into the world and return to you having accomplished exactly what you sent it to do. Amen.