Sermon Tone Analysis

Thank you Lena

Intro

Good morning: This week we are beginning a brand new series that I am simply calling “enough”

Why?

Because we live in a society where nothing is ever enough and unless you settle your heart and your life on Jesus being enough for you then nothing will ever be good enough

Our society shapes us to believe that we don’t have enough and that we will always need more!

Every year in some way or another I will give you a small series where money is the focal point

So you might as well just get used to it now!

I will do this because Christianity is a life, following Jesus is a whole life, it can either grow or diminish ....

And whet I have found as a pastor is that when people deal with money in a Godly way their spiritual life & influence drastically increases in stature and when they don’t then it is easy to allow our lives to diminish

And one of the things that can make your life with God diminish fast is this fascination with finding your own value or worth in money!

It is a subtle danger every day

Because it is our world’s value system.

The pattern of our world is to find value in others based on how much money they have

The Subtle danger you face every day is finding your own worth and significance in money rather than the fact that you are a child of the most high king…God....

The other reason why I do this series is not just as a practical matter but as a deeply spiritual matter

The only other God that Jesus mentions by name is the god of Money or “Mammen”

It was true 2000 years ago now and it is true today:

Money wants your attention and Jesus sees it as a rival God

Money gets to be our God quite by accident in life, and you don’t realize it until one day you look back and say, everything I do is in service of money…My money doesn't serve me, I serve it!

So this series is designed for us to do a 3 week look at money.

And I know what your thinking: Of course this is the week that we come to church and the pastor talks about money…See they just want our money here...

And just so you know that couldn’t be further from the truth

As your pastor, what I want for you is your freedom...

What I want to see in you is an allegiance to Jesus first

And what I know from experience is that Money is an ever-present need in our lives and so it sub-tally wins our allegiance

So today flip with me to the book of Matthew...

We are going to be in Matthew 19 today

What we have to understand is that this story is in all 3 of the synoptic gospels, which means it is in Matthew, Mark & Luke...

Which means it is really impotrant and the gospel authors are making a point...

All 3 of these gospels are written to different audiences

But the one thing that is common to whichever audience is reading the bible is that humanity will always struggle when it comes to finding our allegiance in money

First I want to talk about this man

I don’t think this guy was a bad dude

It seems like this man was a religious Jew, He was concerned with keeping the commandments...

In other versions of the story this man says “Good Teacher”

And jesus responds with, “why do you call me good?

don’t you know that no one is Good except for God himself?”

First of all this is a radical thing to say in our world.

Jesus says no one is good!

In our world, the values of secular humanism tend to reign...

and in that world People are basically good...

But this is different from what the Bible says…The bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God

The Bible says that our righteousness is all filthy rags

The Bible says that apart from Jesus we are no good!

But our world wants to say that everyone is basically good…we might just need a few tweaks here and there to our behavior…But

In this version of the story the question is “what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?”

See the assumption is that our salvation is determined by the good things that we do

This was the assumption by this rich young man

And you know what…I don’t blame this rich young guy...

He is just killing it at life, he is rich, he is an influencer but something is missing

And I can not even begin to tell you how many conversations I have had surrounding this exact thing…People figure out how to make it through life financially and then pretty soon they are like my life looks like its all together but something is still missing!

So here we have this rich young guy standing before Jesus

And maybe your here like this guy today…just asking questions…>What am I missing in my life?

What do I lack?

He is asking the right question to the right person!

So Jesus responds that you have to keep the commands...Which is referring to the 10 commandments so this guys says…Okay…which ones?

Which commandments do I have to keep

So Jesus replies with:

The New International Version (Chapter 19)

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’  and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

And the guy must have just breathed a huge sigh of relief because…He was like…Ok good I have done all of that I am good.

Do you notice how Jesus doesn’t challenge this man on the fact that he has kept all of the commandments

First of all…Ok I am pretty sure that most of us can pass the do not murder test…Less people would pass the adultery test…Even less, do not steel…But false testimony…You mean you never lied dude!?

Honor your father and mother?

You’ve never been a teenager?

Come on!

But Jesus doesn't point out this guys flaws, I mean this guy has already come to Jesus with a sense of inadequacy, he apparently was a really good guy but still felt like he wasn’t going to heaven

So Instead of condemning this man, Jesus does what Jesus always does, he goes to the heart of the issue:

And he sets this guy up...

Jesus sites the 6-9th commandments…These are the commands dealing with relationships between people.

There is this instinctive human trait to default to legalism but instead of going with this guy to legalism, Jesus goes right toward the heart

So the commandments that Jesus mentions are the ones that he knows this man has no problem with

So what commandment does Jesus leave out?

Jesus knew that this man’s problem was the relentless craving for wealth

This man didn’t have a problem with murder…He wasn’t an adulterer...

The problem this guy has is the problem that we all have at some point or another

nothing was ever enough for him…he always needed what his neighbor had or else he never felt complete.

So what Jesus says next is highly conterversal…

What about the first commandment

Jesus isn't just pointing out the fact that this guy has an issue with coveting but what has effectively become his God?

It is money

This is why Jesus says

And what we have to understand is this is not a command to the whole church but to this man in particular....Many other places in scripture Jesus comes in contact with people who are wealthy and he doesn't ask them to do the same thing...

What Jesus is saying is go and get rid of this other god that you have and come and follow me

Jesus was tailoring his response to this man whose hangup was coveting

What Jesus was asking this man is will your allegiance be to me or to this stuff?

This is hard!

Then Jesus has this commentary at the end of this interaction...

The disciples see this all happening and I have to just assume that they are a little shook up about this entire encounter

We know they are because Peter is like, “You know Jesus we left everything too”

But Jesus laments

And he says, Its easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven

One of the very early Pope’s of the catholic church said something that academics are all in agreement on, that he literally just made up…And it has made its way into christian teaching

What he said was that the Eye of the Needle was a gate in jerusalem and it was possible for camels to go through but just very difficult …And the reality is that that is just not true

A camel was one of the largest common animals they worked with and the eye of a needle was the smallest opening that they worked with

Jesus is trying to create a word picture that shows you just how difficult

It is hard for wealthy people to respond to Jesus

Why?

Because you have been deceived by your own money: In many cases you built it, you created that wealth…It gives you a sense of security and power and purpose in this world…But it also needs to be maintained and serviced and used wisely so it can become all consuming…And without much effort…It becomes our God