Daily Blast - The Book of Matthew: Chapter 19
Scripture
“25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Reflection
In this chapter, we once again see how Jesus challenges the status quo – the “normal” way of thinking in His culture and in ours.
Firstly, Jesus responds to a question about marriage and explains that God’s intention for marriage is different from the cultural norm. In fact, God’s standards are much higher, but we will leave this for another time.
Secondly, He prays for children when people bring them to Him. His disciples thought the children were distracting Jesus from doing “important things”. Jesus responds by showing how highly He regards the children, by telling His disciples not to stop the children coming to Him. How quickly they have forgotten His words in the previous chapter when, if you remember, Jesus told them that to enter God’s kingdom, you needed to have the same humble, innocent attitude as a small child.
The final section is an encounter with a rich young man, who asks what he needs to do to enter the kingdom of God. In that culture, the rich were admired and had privileges that the poor didn’t have. In other words, people thought that the rich had a much better chance of being accepted by God. Jesus turns this completely on its head by challenging the young man to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. When the young man “went away sad”, Jesus’ disciples were astonished. We can see this by their response, which was basically, “If he can’t get into God’s kingdom, how can anyone?” Again, Jesus surprises them by saying that what seems impossible is actually possible with God. Jesus wasn’t writing off the rich young man, or the poor people either, Jesus’ offer was open to all – “follow me”. Jesus sums it all up with a famous but cryptic quote about the topsy-turvy values of God’s Kingdom: “those who are first will be last and those who are last will be first”.
Challenge
Are there people we look at and think: “they wouldn’t follow Jesus”? In our hearts have we written them off? If so, we need to think again. We need to look at people in the way that Jesus would, and not the way our culture does. What society says is success is contrary to the values of the Kingdom of God.
Let’s check our hearts to make sure our judgments are Godly and full of grace. We need to carry on from the thoughts of yesterday’s Blast and make sure we are humble and loving towards those around us who don’t know Jesus yet. Remember, no-one is too rich or too poor, too old or too young to respond to the Good News that Jesus died to save us. Remember the promise that anyone who leaves behind things they value to follow Jesus “will inherit eternal life”.
So ask yourself this: “Is Jesus’ promise for me”?