After divorce we come to gentler ground. People brought their little children to Jesus for Him to pray for them and bless them. This annoyed the disciples. Maybe they felt somewhat chastened by Jesus response to them on their views on marriage and were trying to reassert themselves. When someone is acting officiously there is usually some issue behind it.
If they were trying to reassert themselves, it didn't work! Rather it just led to them getting another lesson from Jesus on how they needed to radically change their attitudes. For the kingdom of heaven belonged to the children.
Next we get the incident with the rich young man. He wanted to know how to inherit eternal life. Now we need to note that "eternal life" does not simply mean "going to heaven when I die". It is about a whole new way of life, which will indeed not end at death, but it is much more than just avoiding the unpleasant consequences of death. So when Jesus say "if you want to enter life ..." He is talking about living now, as well as in the future.
So Jesus tells the man to keep the commandments. The man then asks "which ones". Jesus quotes the ones that apply to human relationships, rather than the immediately God directed ones. We were created to be a blessing to other people, and this is what the man needed to deal with.
The man claims he had done these things, and there is no reason to doubt that he had fulfilled the letter of the law on these matters. So Jesus then told him to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. This would make him truly rich. The young man went away sad. It seemed that he was being asked to give things up. In reality he would have gained so much more (not necessarily financial).
Not for the first time the disciples were shocked. They thought that wealth meant God approved of you, and this man was a good man. So who then could be saved? Jesus' answer reminds us that salvation is the work of God, not the work of man. We cannot save ourselves by our own good deeds, it depends entirely upon the work of God.
The disciples are then concerned about the fact that they had left everything: homes, livelihoods etc. Maybe they had done this thinking it would earn them salvation. Was it now all for nothing? Jesus assures them that it will be all worthwhile. Jesus calls us to follow Him, and He is leading us to a much greater life. At the "renewal of all things" the transformation will be amazing. All the silly things we think and worry about just now will be seen for what they are.
The kingdom of God works on different principles than the world, and we need to readjust our lives to those principles.
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