“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Matthew 20:16
I wonder if you feel less than, do you feel like there’s a party somewhere and you’re not invited?
This is how our world works, it puts us all into categories of acceptance, power and success. Depending on where we are on the world scale, being the right person in the right place doing the right thing will depend on who the world defines us to be.
If this is you, if you are feeling less than, you are the very person Jesus is inviting into his Kingdom. In Jesus Kingdom, you will be considered first, you will be embraced as God’s lost child, the one who went looking elsewhere but realised you are made for something greater than yourself or for more than the world has to offer.
When we feel less than, we can fall into the trap of thinking that we have nothing to offer this complex, fickle world. For some of us, we may be brave enough to think bigger, to have the ambition to take us beyond the world’s definition.
However, when we get there; the place we consider is the end goal; the place of success; those of us who have eyes to see soon realise there is still something missing, there’s still a place we were made for but we can’t quite put our finger on it, it seems like we are grasping air but we somehow know there’s something and somewhere we belong.
Jim Carey, the American actor, once said: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer”.
In the book of Matthew Chapter 20 Jesus teaches his disciples how his kingdom differs from any other ideas the world has dreamed up. Jesus tells us the last will be first and the first will be last. Jesus turns upside down how we think things should work or how we’ve made sense of the world so far. You may be less than in this world, but through Jesus eyes, you are more precious than life itself.
Matthew 20:17-19 ‘Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!” This is the new life that Jesus is offering to you today.
Jesus goes on to demonstrate how power works in his kingdom, verses 26-28 ‘Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.
We are not to use our power to lord it over others to get what we want, but to use it to serve others. If we feel less than, there will be someone in your world who feels ‘less than’ than you. How do you respond to them, with compassion or are you tempted to think they deserve to be less than? Maybe we consider them less than because they don’t try hard enough. Our Lord and Saviour who is ‘more than’ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords gave his life for our benefit so that we are no longer defined by self, the world or the devil.
And finally, the chapter closes as we are told in verse 30 about two blind men crying out for rescue, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us”.
These two men may have been physically blind but they were spiritually insightful; they could see and accept who Jesus is – the long-promised Son of God who came to rescue us from ourselves and bring us into his kingdom that God originally provided at the beginning of time. Throughout the Old Testament, we are told of the promised one who would come to rescue humanity from itself, the world and the devil.
This is what success looks like in God’s kingdom, that as we see who Jesus is, as we realise our need of him, regardless of whether we think we are less than or whether we attempt to use our power for our own gain, Jesus cries out on the cross, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’. This is Jesus’ invitation to every single person God created.
Jesus is the only one who is the right person, in the right place, doing the right thing – are you ready to come into his kingdom?
What do you need to bring? Everything you have. All your doubts, all your fears, all your anxiety, all your failures, all your successes, all your wealth, all your nothingness, all that you are.
And in this moment, you will discover the greatest joy ever, the place that you were always made for……
Jesus himself. He is the one who makes sense of who we are and why we are here. Jesus is the one who defines us, this is what true freedom looks like……
Come and see for yourself.
Living His Word 