We are continuing to explore how Christ lived and served the Father. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Two weeks ago, we looked at this from the aspect of how baffling this concept was to the Jews, because they were looking for a conquering king who would restore Israel. Then last week, we considered this verse from the service aspect of how Jesus is a King, yet He did not come to be served. Now, we are going to take these two aspects and mold them together to see how the Jews’ misunderstanding of the kingdom affected their understanding of service.

They rejected Jesus as King (John 1:11), yet this was not the fi rst time they had rejected God’s leadership. In First Samuel 8, Israel rejected God as their King and asked Samuel to appoint for them an earthy king so that they could be like all the other nations (1 Sam. 8:5-7). God told Samuel to warn His people that this king would take their children to be his servants and take their lands and livestock for his own, yet despite this warning, they still insisted on having a king. The king Israel desired was not a servant; he was a ruler who demanded to be served (1 Sam. 8:11-17).

Israel lived for so many years under the rule of these earthly kings, they no longer understood what it meant to live under God’s rule. They forgot that God had instructed their kings to be humble servants who feared God and kept His commandments (Deut. 17:14-20); therefore, they did not recognize Jesus as their King (Phil. 2:5-11). The Jews did not understand the spiritual nature of God’s Kingship; therefore, they asked for an earthly king (1 Sam. 10:19), and God obliged them.

When Jesus later came into the world as a humble servant, they rejected Him through their own willful ignorance, because they just would not accept the concept of a servant king. Their desire for an earthly king had corrupted both their understanding of the kingdom and of service. This problem, which began in the Old Testament, continued through the life of Jesus, and sadly, continues to be an issue today.

This mindset has caused our society to have this same corrupted idea of leadership. So often, church leaders are appointed because of their worldly successes, without meeting the qualifi cations given by God (1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9) and because of this, they become rulers instead of servants, who look out for worldly considerations rather than spiritual ones. When we appoint church leaders in this manner, we continue to reject Christ as our King, because we are rejecting the idea of leaders being servants.

We talked last week about how Peter was struggling with this same problem. He wrestled with letting Jesus wash his feet and cut off the ear of Malchus to try to keep Jesus from being arrested, all because of the same erroneous view of Jesus as an earthly king. By the time he penned his first epistle, however, he understood that leaders were to be servants and examples to the fl ock.

As we live and spend time in the study of God’s Word, we should grow in the same understanding of this, just as Peter did. Church leaders are not to be lords over those entrusted to them but examples (1 Peter 5:1-4). This was the error of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the leaders of the Jews during Jesus’ time—they were not willing to be an example to the Jews but instead wanted to lord it over them; therefore, Jesus harshly rebuked these leaders (Matt. 23:1-36) Church leaders need to let Christ be the Head, making decisions for them, and they servants, implementing the Master’s rule.

If we desire to be served rather than serve, we reject Jesus’ leadership and substitute our own. How we view Jesus as our King and our attitudes toward serving one another define us. Just something to consider.