Prepare: What are child-like qualities?
Read: Luke 18:15-30
It was the custom in Palestine for mothers to bring their children to some distinguished Rabbi on their first birthday that he might bless them. Such small children have not lost the sense of wonder, and are trustful. They are naturally obedient and have an amazing faculty of forgiveness. To keep alive the sense of wonder, to live in unquestioning trust, instinctively to obey, to forgive and to forget-that is the child-like spirit, and that is the passport to the Kingdom of God.
In all the Jewish religious literature there is no record of any Rabbi being addressed as, "good teacher." It is not a sin to have much wealth-but it is a great danger to the soul and a great responsibility. The rich ruler's god was comfort, and the thing he really worshipped was his own possessions and his wealth. 'For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?' Matt 16:26
It is said that beside the great gate into Jerusalem through which traffic went, there was a little gate just wide and high enough for a man to get through. That little gate was called the needle's eye, and the picture is that of a camel trying to struggle through that little gate, which is impossible. Similarly, it is impossible for a man whose heart is on his riches, to enter the kingdom of God.
Respond: Once someone, thinking of the trials David Livingstone had endured, the sorrows he had borne, how he had lost his wife and ruined his health in Africa, said to him, "What sacrifices you have made!" Livingstone answered, "Sacrifices? I never made a sacrifice in all my life."
Read: Luke 18:15-30
It was the custom in Palestine for mothers to bring their children to some distinguished Rabbi on their first birthday that he might bless them. Such small children have not lost the sense of wonder, and are trustful. They are naturally obedient and have an amazing faculty of forgiveness. To keep alive the sense of wonder, to live in unquestioning trust, instinctively to obey, to forgive and to forget-that is the child-like spirit, and that is the passport to the Kingdom of God.
In all the Jewish religious literature there is no record of any Rabbi being addressed as, "good teacher." It is not a sin to have much wealth-but it is a great danger to the soul and a great responsibility. The rich ruler's god was comfort, and the thing he really worshipped was his own possessions and his wealth. 'For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?' Matt 16:26
It is said that beside the great gate into Jerusalem through which traffic went, there was a little gate just wide and high enough for a man to get through. That little gate was called the needle's eye, and the picture is that of a camel trying to struggle through that little gate, which is impossible. Similarly, it is impossible for a man whose heart is on his riches, to enter the kingdom of God.
Respond: Once someone, thinking of the trials David Livingstone had endured, the sorrows he had borne, how he had lost his wife and ruined his health in Africa, said to him, "What sacrifices you have made!" Livingstone answered, "Sacrifices? I never made a sacrifice in all my life."
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