Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Morning Devotions: Day 2

Who is the greatest Greek who has ever lived? I’ll give you a hint, the word Great is in his name...




So the answer is Alexander the Great, if you didn’t know. He became the “great” by, well, killing a ton of people. He was a military beast. He marched from Greece to India and hit up Egypt on the way, conquering as he went.

The greatest Roman, Persian, or Viking was always measured by the military dominance you showed. Kingdoms were all about great military victories.

Jesus teaches us that His Kingdom is at hand, and His disciples take Him seriously. They take Him so seriously that they want to know who is going to be the Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Read Matthew 18:1-4

At this point Jesus does something interesting, He calls a child into the gathering. The disciples are expecting Jesus to march to Jerusalem and kick some Roman hinny. They are expecting Him to violently overthrow Rome. Jesus does something totally radical, he calls a child up in front of the disciples. “You want to be great in the Kingdom of God? Be like this child.”

If Jesus is the King of a real Kingdom, and His Kingdom calls for our allegiance, what does he mean to have child like faith?



How do we, as Christians, place more value on the “Alexander” type of greatness and not the “Jesus” kind of greatness?



How would we as Christians act if we followed Christ in the way of weakness (the child), and not the way of strength (the soldier)?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think it's "hiney", but what would a tobacco picking country boy know?

:)

I like what you've done to transition from the "If Jesus did set up a real kingdom on this earth what would that mean for us?" to the "here's how that kingdom looks in relation to how our historical perception of grandiose kingdoms have looked."

I wonder if it wouldn't help to substantiate the fact that Jesus' kingdom is indeed here and now (even if you just do the already and not yet) in either devotional reinforcement or in your other teaching opportunity. I've told you already that I have a hard time understanding "Gospel" without "Kingdom", but it took some strong Biblical substantiation to get me out of my "it's all about me and Jesus" to bring his Kingdom (even over Covenant) to the fore in my thinking.

Just a musing.