Almost Surrendered

Announcements

Emma comes to Tuscaloosa tomorrow and I got a new Bible since Doug hid my old one

What was the most fun part of GCG? God loves fun. Most of evangelism is just inviting people to a party (Luke 14)

Speaking of, Spring Training is coming up…most of us want to give out invitations to the party but don’t know how and this will help...we need votes in the Group Me on when to meet.

Class on Sunday starting up, “Prayer that God Answers”

Introduction

Pray, then read Mark 10:17-22

Jesus is setting out for Jerusalem

How many of you have heard this story? How many of you is it your favorite? Why not?

Verse-by-Verse Explanation

Mark 10:17 CSB

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

One of the other accounts (in Matthew) says that it was a young man (similar to us)

Look at his commitment! Running, kneeling, calling him good, yearning for eternal life

Do you ever think about the reality of eternity?

Mark 10:18 CSB

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “No one is good except God alone.

Jesus isn’t saying he isn’t God. This isn’t a contradiction in the Bible. He’s questioning whether or not the young man really means what he says. Words can be empty.

Mark 10:19 CSB

You know the commandments: Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; do not defraud; honor your father and mother.”

(I76) Nana, JR and the 10 Commandments/her saying adultery was the one left out

Jesus doesn’t directly answer the question, and he’s not saying that we need to be good enough to earn eternal life (we’ll see that here in a couple of weeks, but you’ve heard it all weekend.) The point of the law was to bring us to Jesus, and this man knew the law and came to Jesus, but not because he realized that he couldn’t follow it. He’s missed the point.

Mark 10:20 CSB

He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.”

I have every reason to believe that he’s mostly right, or at least thinks he is.

Mark 10:21 CSB

Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, “You lack one thing: Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

He loved him. Knowing the rest of the story and that Jesus knew his heart, this is incredible! But if we haven’t read the rest, we might be thinking at this point that he loved him because of the good things he did, but that’s not why.

Exhortation

We often try to rationalize that Jesus wasn’t really trying to get him to sell everything, but there’s no reason to think otherwise. Jesus was homeless and living off the support of others. It’s probably because we try to ease the story for our own sake. We turn into the serpent in the garden, saying “Did God really say?”

Mark 10:22 CSB

But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.

Why was he sad? He still could’ve given them away. It’s because he wasn’t willing to do it. Like the verse I’m going to preach on in a few weeks—Rev. 3:1 “You have a reputation of being alive.”

PNG folks who kept wearing turtles on their necklaces to keep away spirits because they didn’t fully trust Jesus. We look at that and think it’s ridiculous but we do the same thing in other ways.

How did the story end? We’re led to believe he never sold them. Maybe we arent’t told 100% because for us the story is yet to be concluded. No matter how many times you’ve struggled to let go, Jesus loves you like he did the rich young man. At the same time, we need to ask the question while we still can...

Have you made Jesus Lord of every area of your life?

It’s a continual commitment to pick up our cross. Luke 9:23

William Borden — heir of Borden Dairy in the late 1800’s (now worth $2B), Yale and Princeton grad, who started a prayer movement at Yale that grew to 150 (as a Freshman) and then 1K (as a Senior), convicted by the words of Samuel Zwemer at the SVM conference in Nashville, left it behind to take the Gospel to Muslims in Western China, wrote in his Bible “no reserves”

(I23) Dad from Bentonville — what would the slide show of next week look like?