Daily Bread Luke 9

Daily Bread Luke 9

Who Will Be the Greatest
46An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 47Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. 48Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest."

Observation:

In this chapter we have many instances of Jesus equipping the disciples for ministry. As Jesus sees his time coming to an end, he realizes that these will be the men that he will be entrusting His mission to. He sends them out and gives them power and authority to heal and drive out evil spirits.

When the disciples are overwhelmed by the crowds and ask Jesus to send them away, Jesus says, “You give them something to eat!” As they offer up what they have and breakdown the groups into fifties, there is enough for everyone to eat and even leftovers.

But as they experience the many miracles Jesus reminds them of what true greatness would look like. True greatness is welcoming a little child. With all of the powerful things that Jesus did and now had equipped the disciples to do, he wanted to make sure they knew what true greatness was, welcoming a little child, the least of these.

Application:

Who are the least of these in your life? Maybe, it is the janitor at the office. The single mom just struggling to get by. Or, the kid (or adult) who has no friends on the playground. When we reach out to anyone who would be considered least in our world, Jesus said we just did something great and are becoming great in his eyes.

How do you measure yourself? Is it through God’s eyes, or the world’s eyes? At the end of our lives we will not be measured by our trophies, the size of our 401k, or how famous we were, but how we helped the least of these.

With all of the changes and uncertainty in our economy it is a good time to reassess what we are living for. Jesus said the greatest among you is the one who serves. As we serve those that God has placed in our lives, we are on the road to true greatness! And as we do, we will be following the model of our Lord Jesus, who always had time for the least of these, including the little children.

Prayer:
Gracious God, thank you that you took time to minister to us when we were in the least category. Help us to learn true humility from your model as we serve the least of these. Teach us what true greatness is all about. In your name we pray, Amen.

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