OUR FATHER WHO SENT HIS SON TO INITIATE THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH

Matthew chapter 8 verses 8 - 22 says this;

18 And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side.

19 Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.”

20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

21 Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”

22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

Crowds of people surrounded Jesus and He instructed his disciples to set sail to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Before they left, two men wanted to join Him and approached him. To the one who declared “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go”, Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

This enigmatic statement points to the natural realm on the earth where residences are given to all creatures but when a scribe from the established society decided to follow Him, Jesus let it be known that to follow Him meant that he had to be prepared to abandon his residency among the comforts and accoutrements of this world and be as a vagabond in the same way that Jesus was.

Another man decided to follow Jesus but only after he attended to the funeral of his father and Jesus said to him that to be part of the kingdom of God meant abandoning the engagements of the perishing world and putting all his attention on seeking first the Kingdom of God.

In both cases, a serious decision to following Jesus meant an immediate detachment from their lives bound to the earth in order to ascend into the spiritual life of the kingdom of God.

Amen.

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