Every king has an army.
A king without an army is no king at all.
You can tell a lot about a king just by looking at the size and quality of his troops.
There are certain countries in the world that have a massive army at their disposal. It would be silly to wage war against them.
On top of that, many of these armies have weapons and vehicles. Helicopters, horses, chariots, bombs, and all sorts.
See, having an army is a no brainer. There are other people that do not want you to be ruler and want to take over your kingdom. How are you going to defend your kingdom is you do not have anyone to fight for you?
Now here’s the thing : Jesus is a king too. But he’s an Upside Down King.
That leaves us with a curly sort of question:
Who was Jesus to pick for his team? Everyone was waiting for this super Messiah king to come and to take down the Romans. Well, he needs a great team. He needs swords, he needs armour, he needs horses and chariots….
But we have seen that Jesus does not fight with the tip of the sword but with the tip of his tongue. Not with the words of man but the words of God.
So, let’s have a look at the people that Jesus picks to be in his army.
Who did he pick? A tax collector! They were the traitors! They were stealing money from the good people and giving it to the bad Roman guards! Jesus told him to follow him?
But then something even more strange happens.
Matthew brings Jesus over to his house for a meal! Jesus comes! Along with Jesus being invited there are many more tax collectors and sinners. “Sinners” was a term that you used for, hmm, prostitutes.
So these are the people that Jesus is hanging out with? Can you understand why the teachers of the law were confused?
”Jesus, if you want to build an army, these are not the type of troops that will change the world!”
Oh yes they are. Because Jesus’ kingdom is a lot different to what they were expecting.
So Jesus goes on to pick 12 disciples. There were many other disciples but these 12 were his go-to team.
But have a look at what we know about each disciple.
This is not a dream team! This is a nightmare team!
Fishermen? Do you realise how yuck and mucky these guys are? Jesus picked a few of them! There’s a few that we don’t even know their occupation. No names! Average Joes!
The strange thing is that Jesus picked a known Terrorist in his 12. Do you know what they wanted to do? Simon the Zealot wanted to take down the Roman army. But Jesus picked a tax collector, Matthew, in his team also. The tax collectors were funding the Roman army.
Umm, is that a good idea to have these two on the same team?
Probably the most infamous of the bunch is this guy called Judas.
A traitor, a thief, a turncoat. He made the team even when Jesus knew that he was a devil.
See, people thought Jesus would be picking an A list sort of team. Something like this:
Jesus did not choose an Upright team.
He chose an Upside Down team.
Not only did he have a ratbag team of disciples, he had a group of women following him around too! This was just not done! A king would never, back then, go into battle with a group of women on his side.
But Jesus went even further.
Here’s a few others that followed Jesus around:
See, Jesus sums up the type of troops he is after in this verse.
He is looking for those who are last, not those who are first. To enter this team of Jesus you need to be a loser, not a winner. An upside down person, not an upright person.
Now team Jesus had a lot of weird disciples and some weird followers. He even went a little further than just having Israelites in his team. Have a look at the verse just before our previous one:
Did you catch it? Where do these troops of Jesus come from?
All over the globe. Jesus will have upside down troops from any sort of country. This was such a scandalous idea! Jesus is picking an unclean gentile team to win his battles for Israel! What is he doing?
Well, his kingdom is not really just Israel, it’s the whole world. And it’s not like the other nations. His kingdom is not of this world.
So we are left looking at this important question:
Paul the apostle sums it up in his letter to the Corinthians. Listen to how he describes these “troops” of Jesus.
No may were well known, not many were in the paper or tv or rich or powerful.
The overwhelming majority of them
were underwhelming.
Who did Jesus pick? The weak things. The foolish things.
The losers.
Why? Because he is an upside down King.
His kingdom is different. It’s an upside down Kingdom. And he will have his army fight for him in an upside down way. Not by force, but through loving words to their enemies.
