Matthew 19:30

So I'm having my devotions earlier today and was looking at the last part of Matthew 19:30 and I 'm reading the following verse and it says,



Matthew 19:30 ( ESV )

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³⁰But many who are first will be last, and the last first.


It's a familiar verse and one that we have heard a million times or more but it really stood out to me today.  I'm looking at the context and it hits me, this verse is in the book of Matthew. Yeah, thats right Matthew, this is the Gospel of the King and His Kingdom. The main emphasis of this book is to declare Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Yet, Jesus always seems to march to the beat of a different drum. The whole world was crazed with the idea of a king who comes with power and control. (Has anything really changed?) Jesus kingdom though is going to consist of those who have lives that are marked with a servant's heart. This was, and is His heart, even in the midst of talking about His kingdom.

What was even wilder to me though is  the flow of the next chapter.  Look at these verses that follow in chapter 20.

1. Matt. 20:16 So the last will be first, and the first last.

2. Matt. 20:17-19 Jesus will tell His disciples how he must be mocked, and flogged and crucified and "then" He will be raised on the third day. Our world would call these actions, "strange" even though He is the king of kings.

3. Matt. 20:20-28 The mother of the sons of Zebedee wants her boys to sit on the right hand of Jesus. (Her, and her boys, apparently like us, have not been listening very well.) Once again look what Jesus emphasizes in Matthew 20:26-28, " It shall not be among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be a slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

4. Then in the same chapter he ends this by proving the point in verses 29-34. Two blind men cry out to the Lord to have mercy on them. The crowd looks down upon them and rebukes them. (They may have thought their blindness was due to some sin. Sounds like other passages in the Gospels when people  would claim handicaps as a judgment from God.) Yet, I love how Jesus looks at these who the crowd claimed as the out cast, notice these three things, that the King of Kings did.
 a. He says, " What do you want me to do for you?" (This is the Servant King of Phil. 2) b. He does this while STOOPING down to their level. (Which is also what He did for us in Phil. 2) c. He heals them. These ones whom the crowd would have never helped or given a moment's notice.

Talk about a rebuke of a chapter. I so often want my glory or my self to be exalted and I act like the sons of Zebedee. Forging ahead I forget that I am to be a servant to all men. I struggle to be first but what good is that even if I achieve it here on earth.The real question is what  good is that in heaven? (Once again according to the book of Phil. its like dung.)

Lord, my lifestyle needs to be one marked with that of a servant's heart. When the world sees that, then, they see the difference of your kingdom lived out before them.