Camels And Kingdoms

Last week we began looking at what it means to follow Christ and be a disciple.

This morning we are going to continue upon that same theme.

Just in case you don’t remember last week,

or you weren’t here, I’ll just recap.

I said there are two roads we can take in our journey with Christ.

the road of the spiritual tourist and the road of the spiritual immigrant.

the immigrants you may remember take the road that lead to life and the kingdom of God,

because the immigrants to God’s Kingdom are disciples.

Well today we are going to walk the immigrant road someways with Jesus

And while we are walking, we are going to learn some more of what it means to be a disciple by looking at two incidents.

The first incident we are going to look at involves the disciples, Jesus and some small children.

In your Bibles the incident is called Jesus blesses the little children.

What happens is quite straight forward.

Some parents are seeking to bring there children to Jesus for a blessing,

this was the normal custom in Judaism when a teacher of great stature was in town.

However the disciples object to this and do all they can to prevent these children coming to Jesus.

Part of the problem that the disciples had with the Children coming to Jesus was to do with how they saw this new Kingdom.

You see the disciples were a bit confused as to what this new Kingdom would be like,

for about the past two years Jesus had tried to give them insights into the kingdom

but they always failed to see what Jesus meant.

They had heard Jesus speak,

seen him perform miracles,

and even recognized him as the messiah,

but one thing they lacked

and that was they had failed to capture the spirit of Jesus work,

they failed to realize the true nature of what God’s kingdom was to be like.

To the disciples Jesus was a busy man who was going around trying to establish a new kingdom,

this was true but they failed to understand that the foundation of this new Kingdom was not power like they secretly sought but Humility,

humility that can be seen in the child like innocence of the Children who came to Jesus to be blessed.

The first disciples had absolutely no idea of what lay ahead for them and so they plodded on living under Murphies law.

Murphy law says that any thing that can go wrong will go wrong

For the disciples it meant that anything they can get wrong they will get wrong,

you could guarantee it,

every time a coconut,

if there was a chance that the disciples could get it wrong they would.

So when they see little children coming to Jesus they see time wasting

time that could be put to use in the building of God’s kingdom.

Here’s the first lesson for us to learn today God’s kingdom is not built on power,

but rather on the lack of it.

Jesus even spelt it out to the disciples when he said whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.

And so Jesus blesses the little children,

another lesson has been taught to us and the disciples, and so we move on and carry on our Journey this morning with Jesus.

A little while later Jesus and his friends are on the road to Jerusalem again,

the children have been blessed and the disciples have been taught another lesson on the road of life.

Of course It doesn’t take long though before someone else approaches Jesus,

this time it is not a distraught parent seeking a blessing for their child,

but a full grown man.

That was not an unusual occurrence,

as people used to approach Jesus all the time,

he couldn’t walk the street without somebody or other approaching him seeking a blessing

or asking for a disease or ailment to be cured.

But this man was different,

firstly he was a very rich man,

a self made man who answered to no one

and who every one looked up to.

The sort of man who would click his fingers and see people jump.

The kind of man who spent his days wheeling and dealing,

all above board of course because he was also honest in his business,

but if their was a profit to be made

you could guarantee that this man approaching Jesus was involved.

And yet despite all his wealth this man was not fulfilled, he had a gaping great hole in his life,

a hole like so many people have,

Like the disciples this man new that there was more to life than meets the eye,

Like the disciples this man got frustrated with the ho hum 9 to 5 of life.