LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 89

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Joy in Jesus’ Service
MARK 10:45

LCMS Second Vice-President Rev. Dr. Scott R. Murray
67th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod • July 25, 2019 • Matins
Jesus finds all His joy in service. He does not stand on
ceremony. He comes to serve. The Bible spends little time
praising God; instead, it focuses almost exclusively on
proclaiming the divine work of Christ for the salvation of
the world. He is the Savior we need, who talks little about
Himself and does everything for us. He seeks not His own
honor and glory, but our good, our salvation, our
righteousness before God and our eternal life. Jesus
spends no time saying, “Hey, look at me! I’m God.” In fact,
during most of His ministry, He commands the people not
go about trumpeting that God has come into the world in
His person (Mark 7:36). Jesus had no desire to be
acclaimed God so that He would be carried off on the
shoulders of the crowd like a footballer who has just
scored the championship goal. His joy is not in His victory,
but in us; His joy is not in His praise, but in our salvation.
Jesus is about doing the works of the One who sent Him.
If you look at what He has done for you, you will have no
doubt about who He is. Go where the Lord of glory offers
Himself into crucifixion for you, and you will see into the
heart of God. Look into the sorrow-streaming eyes of the
Son of God hanging on the cross, and you will see your
salvation. The crown of thorns, pressed upon His head by
the weight of the world’s sin, caused delicate rivulets of
blood to run down His temples. Only God was crucified
for you. Only God looked with sorrowing eyes upon you.
Only God bore the weight of your sins. What He does tells
you who He is.

of Calvary, we see only the cross, suffering, weakness,
death, blood and water flowing mingled down, and in
these we see God’s true glory. Later we see face to face.
Now we see only the backside of the cross. That is God’s
hiding; in that hiding, all is revealed. Under the veil of that
sorrow, all joy is revealed.
Jesus gives Himself to benefit us, to give us joy. Luther
says, “[Christ] is present in the sacrament … not really
because he wants to be worshiped there, but because he
wants there to work with us and help us; just as he also
came to earth in the flesh not that men should worship
him, but to serve us” (AE 36:294). If we fritter away our
time seeking to give Jesus the praise we think He wants,
we will miss the joyous fact that He came to serve us.
His ministry is not exemplary, but exculpatory — that is,
it does not show us how to avoid sin, it takes our sin away.
His whole life, death and resurrection are atoning for us
sinners. So, Jesus comes not to demand but to do, to give
up and not to take (Mark 10:45). He does not reiterate the
law, as a new Moses (John 1:16–17), but He comes to bring
grace and truth to us poor sinners. His great compassion
is literally a suffering with us and in our place. He who was
born of a woman placed Himself under the law (Gal. 4:4–
5), experiencing both its burden and its ultimate sting:
death. Jesus’ joy in service gives us the joy of being served
by Him.

God has proven Himself, but only in the very signs of
weakness that we despise. He hides us in the cleft of
Calvary that we might see his “backside” on the cross. He
passes by as the Suffering Servant that we might see Him
for what He truly is: the God who does not come to be
served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for
many (Mark 10:45).
In so doing, He saves us from our worst enemy: ourselves.
For while our desire to see God face to face is an exalted
and blessed desire, to see His face and its full glory now is
to sign our own death warrant. Now He shows us only
what we need: our salvation in Christ. We see the back of
God torn by our sins. We see His shoulders weighed down
by our sorrow. We see His countenance marred beyond
human semblance that we might see God’s face. A nailscarred hand is thrown up before us that we might see the
truth of His glory passing by only in His death. In the cleft
Convention Sermons

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2019 (67TH) LCMS CONVENTION | 89