Treasure (2)

Mark 10:17-27

Intro

My name is Ty and i’m one of the Pastors here

My primary role is to oversee the Student Ministry

Me and my wife Rachel are very thankful God has brought us here to be a part of this church

We moved over here last February from Seattle with our beautiful pup Grey

(Show pic of family)

Scripture

Today we’re in Mark 10:17-27

And before we get into it let’s remember everyone has something to teach us if we have the humility to learn and the discernment to figure out what the lesson is. Some people come into our lives and they serve as a positive example where, because of God’s grace and the wisdom that they enjoy, they’ve got some great lessons to teach us. Other people, it is not positive, it’s negative. They operated out of folly, not out of wisdom. And as a result, we can learn vicariously through some of their tragic decisions and experiences. And so Mark teaches us this way vicariously letting us eavesdrop in, look at Jesus having conversations and relations with various people. And today we’re gonna see Jesus have a conversation with a rich ruler, and we’re gonna learn vicariously through his own sin: idolatry, foolishness, and sadness.

And we’ll just read it all and then unpack three questions.

Mark 10:17-27

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 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.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is[a]to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him,[b] “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

Pray

Who is Jesus?

The rich young man

Here is a man, here’s what we know of him he is rich and he is a ruler. So he is wealthy and powerful, two things that you and I probably all, to some degree, aspire to. If someone came to you and said, “Would you like to be powerful or powerless?” I vote powerful. “Do you want to be poor or rich?” I vote rich. He has attained success.

He’s the kind of man in that day and our day that is widely admired. What a successful person. What an achievement his life is. He’s the kind of person who becomes a celebrity, becomes famous, becomes looked up to and admired and emulated.

He has this conversation with Jesus. In it, he reveals his own estimation of himself. He comes to Jesus and he asks a question that is not a bad question, but it’s asked in a bad way. He doesn’t ask, “Jesus, what must I experience, receive to inherit eternal life?” Instead he says, “Lord Jesus, what must I do to inherit or receive eternal life?”

His question is basically, “How can I save myself? “What religious work, what large check, what sacred pilgrimage do I need to commit myself to so that, in addition to all the other fantastic achievements and accomplishments of my life, I can add to my resume, ‘He saved himself. He merited, earned his salvation. He was pleasing in the sight of God.’”

He starts with arrogance, not with humility, and he starts by not coming to Jesus empty-handed to receive the gift of salvation. He comes with his hands full of his achievements and accomplishments, asking Jesus what else he could do to show how fantastic and worthy he was. And that’s his view of himself.

Because Jesus says, “Well, let’s start with the Ten Commandments.” There are 613 commandments in the first five books of the Old Testament alone. They’re summarized in Exodus 20 in the Ten Commandments. So Jesus runs through some of them. Don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie, honor your mother and father. Jesus runs through some of the commandments.

And the guy says, “Well, I know them. Thankfully, I’ve obeyed them fully since I was a little boy.” What he’s basically saying is, “I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty close. I’m not sinless, but some might think I am. That’s how close I have come.”

What’s his view of Jesus? His view of Jesus is a “good teacher,” that’s the language he uses. Some of you would want to put Jesus in that same category, good teacher. Many do, many other religions, philosophies, and spiritualities put Jesus in the category of good teacher. “He’s like Mahatma Gandhi “or he’s like a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or he’s like an Abe Lincoln or he’s like a Mother Teresa or he’s like a George Washington. He’s a good leader. He’s a good teacher. He lived a good life. He helped people. He’s a fantastic example. Not a Savior, but an example.”

This man looks at Jesus and says, “You’re a very good teacher.” And Jesus rebuked him, as Jesus would rebuke you. Friends, don’t do this, don’t do as he did, try to reduce Jesus to someone that he’s not. Jesus is a good teacher, the finest, most extraordinary teacher in the history of the world. But he’s far more than just a good teacher. He’s also God become a man. And Jesus says, “Don’t call me good unless you think I’m God because only God alone is truly good.”

We tend to think on a scale from really bad person to really good person. And that somewhere along that continuum there are people that are really bad, pretty bad, sort of bad, sometimes bad, not too bad, pretty good, really good.

The rich ruler looks at Jesus and he says, “You’re good.” Jesus says, “Only God is good.” Cause see, God has a different category. God doesn’t have a sliding scale from really bad to really good. God has two categories: sinner, sinless. Two categories. Jesus says, “The only person in the sinless category, in the really truly good category is God. So don’t say I’m good unless you think I’m God.” Jesus Christ alone is without sin and he is in a category unto himself.

Here’s the big idea: Jesus is not the best among us.

He’s not the supreme of our kind. He’s not the most achieved and accomplished in our category. He’s in a category unto himself. He’s not just a good man, he’s the God-man. He didn’t just live a good life, he lived a sinless life. He’s not just better than most, he alone is perfect.

Jesus makes this strong claim, and he makes it so that we wouldn’t fall in the same tragic error as the rich ruler. And some of you would just want Jesus to be in the category of one of the best among us, a fantastic teacher and moral example. And Jesus says, “I reject being categorized, rather, in that way. I’m God or I’m not God, but don’t just disrespect me, dishonor me, disregard me and call me a good teacher. It’s not like I’m a philosophy prophet at a university. I’m here to atone for the sin of the world, not just throw out good moral truisms.”

So they’re having their conversation. And his question is, “What must I do to save myself?” Had he come to any other religious leader but Jesus, he would have gotten a very different answer. He would have been told, “Do this, don’t do these things, “obey, make sure you give, take a sacred pilgrimage to a holy place, do these things and you could save yourself.

What’s an Idol?

Jesus doesn’t have that kind of conversation with him. Jesus instead moves into the conversation about idolatry, And so Jesus says, “Well, you know the commandments. ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your mother and father.’ What about the commandments?” And the man says, “All these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus then proceeds. He says, “One thing you still lack.”

And what Jesus is doing here is he’s getting to the heart of God’s commandments. Some of you say, “I haven’t stolen.” But have you covet or become jealous or petty or bitter when someone has something you don’t? Then you’re guilty in your heart.

Some of you say, “I’ve never committed adultery.” Ah, but Jesus says in Matthew 5, if you lust in your heart, you’ve committed adultery by intent. God cares, yes, about our actions, but also about our motivations.

Here Jesus sees his heart and his mind as Jesus sees your heart and your mind and my heart and my mind. Jesus says, “Outwardly you’ve kept the commandments, but you’ve not kept the spirit of the commandments. You’ve not kept the essence of the commandments.”

It’s like a guy who would say, “I take my wife on date night every week.” Yeah, but you don’t love her. And she knows that. You check the dutiful box, but you don’t have the emotional commitment.

Here’s the key about the Ten Commandments. Martin Luther, one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world, has phenomenally helpful insights on the Ten Commandments. He speaks of them in places like his “Heidelberg Catechism.” He says, really, there are two commandments and then implications and applications of those two commandments.

And the first two commandments are these, Martin Luther rightly says, and again, we’re speaking from Jesus who here mentions roughly half of the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is there’s one God alone. The second commandment is you are to only worship that God alone. Martin Luther rightly ascertains, if we obey the first two commandments, we will not disobey the rest.

We want to do counseling the way Jesus does it. Because were this rich young ruler to walk into the office today of a behaviorally based moral psychologist, the counselor would ask him, “So tell me about your life.” “Well, my business is going very well. I don’t have any addictions. I don’t have any sexual sin. I don’t have any gambling problems. My health is good. I’m very rich and very powerful.”

The counselor would say, “I don’t think we need a follow-up appointment. You have a fantastic life. You have no addictions. You have no sinful, wicked, destructive proclivities, compulsions. You’re not harming anyone. In fact, you should be the counselor.”

Today, we all evaluate people based upon their outward moral behavior. And if they’re not behaving rightly, we want to change their behavior. And the issue here is Jesus isn’t trying to change the man’s behavior, he’s trying to change the man’s God. So it’s far deeper. Yeah, the man doesn’t have addictions and proclivities, but he worships the wrong god, which is a bigger problem.

Here’s how it plays in the Ten Commandments. If you commit adultery, your problem is not sexual, your problem is that you’re worshiping the wrong god. You’re worshiping sex or pleasure or convenience. And as a result of worshiping the wrong god, you committed the worship act, idolatrous worship act of adultery.

If you’re someone who overeats and you’re a glutton, your problem is not food and gluttony, your problem is worship and idolatry. You worship food. When you’re sad, you go to food for comfort. When you’re happy, you go to food to rejoice. When you’ve done something good, you reward yourself with food. It’s all worship act. And so food is idolatry. Your god is your stomach, Paul says in the New Testament. So you don’t have a food problem, you don’t have a refrigerator problem, you have a worship problem, you have an idol problem.If you worship God, you won’t worship food. If you worship God, you won’t worship sex.

If you lose your temper, you get violent, you’re angry, mean-spirited, perhaps it even escalates into murder, you don’t have an anger problem—you have a worship problem. The issue may be control. Your issue may be selfishness. Your issue may be that you worship your anger. You feed it and stew on it and through bitterness you empower it.

You could look at someone and say, “We want to modify your behavior. So we’re going to give you principles of anger management,” which could be helpful. But then all we might do for you is change your idol.

So, “Oh good, you don’t worship anger anymore, now you worship control. And because you now worship control, you don’t lose your anger. Oh, this is so good. We’ve exchanged idols, but at least now we found an idol that the rest of us prefer.”

This is where John Calvin says rightly that the human heart is an idol factory. We’ll give up one idol to get another idol or we’ll pick one idol to control our other idol. But at the end of the day, it’s not about behavior modification. It’s about worship alteration, that’s what it’s about. So Jesus is saying, “Let’s find your idol. Let’s not look at your behavior.”

Some of you would walk in here and say, “I feel like I’m a pretty good person. I don’t have any massive behavior problems that are out of control.” And I would say, well, let’s lift up the rock of pride. There may be something there.

But furthermore, is there one God and do you worship him alone? For this man, he was his own god, and that is the god that most of us worship. “Look at my success. Look at my achievements. Look at my accomplishments. Look at my possessions. Look at all that I have done. Look at who I truly am. It’s pretty fantastic.” And it was all for his glory, not God’s glory.His whole life was to glorify himself, not to honor the God who made him. He’s an idolater. And he also idolizes his status and his success.

So let’s talk a little bit about more idolatry. Idolatry is often a good thing that becomes a god thing. Idolatry is usually a good thing in a bad place. It goes from something that the Lord gives to functioning as a substitute lord.

It becomes the most important person, thing, experience, possession, achievement, accomplishment that we have in our whole life. It becomes central, preeminent, paramount.

And here’s the truth—we all worship, all the time. Everyone is made as a worshiper. We all worship unceasingly continually. We’re pouring ourselves out to someone or something that is essential, central, preeminent, prominent to us. Usually a good thing.

And worship acts are sacrifices. We sacrifice our time, we sacrifice our health, we sacrifice our money. We say no to some things because we idolize one thing.

And here’s the truth about idols: they lie. They promise something that only the kingdom of God can ultimately provide.

That’s where Jesus transitions the discussion here to the kingdom of God. He’s saying, “If you give up your idols, I promise you what you’re seeking will only ultimately be satisfied in the kingdom.” See, this man is worshiping his possessions. Why? Because it gives him status.

Jesus says, “Let go of your idol, let me give you status that lasts forever.” He worships his success. And Jesus says, “It’s not about success. It’s about God who loves you and adopts you and cares for you, so let go of your idol and receive the love of God.” See, idols lie to us. They give us an identity. “I’m pretty. I’m smart. I’m funny. I’m successful. I just don’t care.” Those are all identities.

See, idols want to give us comfort, peace, security, meaning, value, purpose, fun, identity, and community. And they lie because they over promise and under deliver. This man worships himself and he cares about his status, his comfort, and his convenience. When Jesus looks at him and says, “You don’t think you’ve broken any of the Ten Commandments?” “No, I don’t think I have.” “Okay, then sell all your stuff and give it to the poor.

You can have me as your greatest treasure or you can have all your stuff and your standard of living. You willing to go down to a smaller place to live, simpler lifestyle, and downsize to follow me, you're homeless God?” It says, “The man left very sad because he was extremely rich.” Jesus found his idol.

What would you be unwilling to give up to follow Jesus? What would you cling to as you walk away from Jesus, grieved because ultimately your idol had been exposed?

Let me tell you this, friends. We oftentimes do not know what our idol is until we face the prospect of losing it.

Some of you say, “I don’t have an idol.” You may. In fact, I would say, you do. And because your idol is safe and secure, you’re unaware that it’s an idol. But as soon as there is the prospect of losing it, that’s when everything changes. And that was the situation is in this man’s life.

He comes to Jesus, “I don’t have any sin and I don’t have any idolatry that is motivating my sin.” Jesus says, “Well, then give me your stuff. Or rather, sell it and give all the money to the poor.”

Today the equivalent would be, “Take your car, take your clothes, take your technology, take your furniture, put it all on eBay, throw it on craigslist, and give all the money to someone who’s poor. Hand it all to some single moms to help them out. Downsize your standard of living. Upgrade your standard of giving. Take the bus. Sell your car. Follow me.”

How many of you say, “Yeah, that would be hard.” Some of you say, “No, I could give up most of my stuff.

But there’s a couple things that, you know, if the house was on fire, I would grab them. The rest I could live without.” And that is probably where your idol lies.

Let me tell you a few things about your idols.

Number one:

idols consume our life as we pursue them. They become all-consuming because idols need to be worshiped like God and they replace God.

This is why some people can’t stop working, can’t stop eating, can’t stop drinking, can’t stop gambling, and/or can never be single, have to always be in a relationship.

It’s all-consuming, all-consuming.

Number two:

many of us seek to manipulate God to give us our idol. There are even theologies that’ll teach this.

“You’re broke, you want to be rich, you worship money? Come to our church, come to Jesus. Jesus is an idol giver. He makes people rich.”

Right? Or “you want to be healthy and you’re sick? Well, come to Jesus, he’ll make you healthy. He’s an idol giver.” “You’re single, you want to be married? Walk with Jesus, he’s obligated to give you not just a spouse, but a fantastic one.”

Usually an idol is a good thing that becomes a god thing, and we seek to manipulate the real God and he cannot be manipulated to give us our idol.

Number three:

if we get our idol, we become consumed in keeping and preserving it.

You’re the student who worships your grade point average, you have to get a 4.0. You’re consumed by it. You don’t have friends. You don’t have a job. You don’t have time for church. Why? “I’m going to get a 4.0. I worship success, accomplishment, achievement.” You’re consumed by it. “God, please help me. God, please let me. God, please assist me. I got it. I got my report card: 4.0, yes!” But now you’re obsessed in keeping it. Now you got to get a 4.0 the next quarter ‘because your identity and your righteousness is tied to your grade point average and if you lose it, it’s not just grievous, it’s devastating.

And number four:

if we lose our idol, we become devastated and destroyed. Not just grieved, devastated and destroyed, possibly even with God. “How dare you? You took my treasure.”

And Jesus here is saying to this man, “Give away your treasure.” And the man says, “I am grieved.” And Jesus says essentially, “I am grieved as well because I’m supposed to be your treasure.”

See, we should have a treasure. Our treasure should be Jesus. We should worship our treasure. And that treasure should be Jesus.

If you idolize one thing you demonize the other

Jonathan Edwards says this in his book called, “The Nature of True Virtue” what happens is if you idolize one thing, you demonize the other.

So if you idolize your spouse, it’s only a matter of time before they disappoint you because your spouse is not a good god. If you idolize a dating relationship, if you idolize a job, if you idolize a home, if you idolize a car, if you idolize a standard of living, if you idolize peace, comfort, security, if you idolize fun and pleasure—eventually it’s going to fail you because idols what? Idols lie.

And you’ll end up demonizing them. You’ll hate everything that has disappointed you. And the problem is not in the things, the problem is in our heart. We worship someone or something that is not God and then we want to destroy it when it fails us rather than repenting of turning a good thing into a god thing.

This is the hard conversation that Jesus is having with this man. The man walks up smiling, “Jesus, I am so glad to meet you. I’ve heard you’re a good teacher.” Jesus says, “Well, how are you doing at keeping the Ten Commandments?” “Well, since I want to save myself and I want God to be pleased and I want to have a moral, compliant, obedient life, I am happy to report that I have kept the commandments since I was a little boy.

My life is fantastic. You want to see my car? You want to see my house? You want to see my friends? I really appreciate the life God has given me.”

“Then sell your stuff.” “Oh, well now I’m very sad, because you’re talking about me driving up in a beater car or a bus. People aren’t gonna look at me the same. And if I can’t live in that house, I gotta downsize. I’m gonna be with a different class of people. I really like the food that I eat and I really like the drink that I drink and it just seems like you’re asking a lot. After all, I’ve worked hard, I’ve accomplished it, I’ve achieved it, and I feel like I deserve it.”

Jesus says, “Me or your stuff. You can’t have both. Pick one or the other.”

And the guy says, “Yeah, good luck with that. That’s funny. You’re a homeless guy. You don’t understand.”

Is Jesus your treasure?

Is Jesus your treasure? Now, we move on to money. One of the surest ways to find your idol is to follow your money, right? ‘Cause where you put your money, Jesus says elsewhere, that’s where your heart is. So you can’t say, “I love the Lord, I just don’t give to him. I love my family, but I don’t feed them,” right?

“I love single mothers and I really feel for them. But you know, I’ve got to have a bass boat and I’ve got to have a golf game and I got to have tools in my garage and I got to have a flat screen TV, so I mean, I love them. I just, you know, I don’t have any extra. I just can’t, you know, show it. But don’t judge me. You don’t know my heart.” No, I do know your heart ’cause I followed your wallet. Your wallet is an indicator of your heart.

Let me tell you a few things about money. Number one, you don’t need to be rich to have money as your idol.

You could be poor and obsessed with money, consumed with money, playing the Lotto, gambling, making foolish investments, trying to get rich quick, doing things that are illegal to get more money. Always thinking about money, stewing over money, not being generous with money, and coveting the money of others. You don’t have to be rich to have money as an idol.

And Jesus is not here saying, “Everyone should sell everything because the less you have, the closer you are to God.” This is not asceticism. Asceticism is if it’s physical, it’s bad. If it’s spiritual, it’s good. So get rid of everything that’s physical. That comes from Platonic dualism in ancient Greek philosophy. It doesn’t come from the teaching of the Bible. “God gives good gifts,” James says.

What would have happened had this man said, “Okay, Jesus, that’s it. I’ll sell everything and give my money to the poor.” I don’t know, maybe Jesus would have allowed him to because it was his idol. It was between him and God.

Jesus whips out some sarcasmThis may be unexpected. Comedy? Okay, I want you to hang in there with me.

There was a Canadian researcher, Marshall McLuhan, some years ago he said, “The medium is the message.” Meaning, how you say something is really what people remember.

The question is, how did Jesus say this? Do you think he said it furrowed brow? “Idolatry, money, sell all your stuff! I know your heart.” You think he was angry? You know, furrowed brow, pointed finger, Mr. Burns-kind-of-looking guy. Was he like that? Was this like an IRS audit and he showed up with his shirt and tie, saying, “Hello, I’m from the kingdom of God. I know you tried to hide some of your assets. I happen to see and know all. And I’m here to collect,” right?

And see what happens when Jesus says, “Oh, it’s gonna be easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get you into the kingdom of heaven,” religious commentators don’t think Jesus had any sense of wit or humor or irony or sarcasm.

So they all sat around in committees, and I see ‘em with suits on. Just sort of, “Hmm, okay, what could this mean?” There’s somewhere a guy with a hat and he’s ultimately going to render the final verdict. I kind of see it like that.

So then commentators come up with things. They say, “Oh, well, perhaps there was a needle with a hole and a certain particular kind of unusual thread called camel thread. And perhaps,” I’m not making this up, “perhaps camel thread was thicker than normal thread and it wouldn’t fit through the hole. Perhaps that’s what the Lord was speaking of, was camel thread.” There’s no evidence of camel thread. It’s like flying unicorns and honest politicians, right? It just doesn’t exist.

So then others come along and they say, “Well, there was this wall around the city of Jerusalem and then there must have been a little doorway called the eye of the needle and then perhaps the camel would shimmy through a little hole in the wall—shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, shimmy, shake—and that’s how you got your camel through the wall into the city. It was the eye of the needle.” There’s no evidence of that at all. Not at all. How many of you have heard that? It doesn’t exist.

Jesus here is telling a joke. He’s telling a joke, he just is. He’s making a funny. In that day, they would have understood it. We’ve got our own cultural colloquialisms, and humor tends to be very culturally contingent.

So sometimes because of the difference between our culture and that culture we don’t get the irony, sarcasm, wittiness, the cleverness. Jesus wasn’t making fun of the guy, but he was inviting the guy to take himself less seriously.

Two ways to find your idols

Follow your wallet

Figure out what’s not funny to you

Conclusion

Here’s the big idea: whatever is between you and God, you need to get rid of it.

I don’t know what it is for you, the Holy Spirit can highlight that.I know what it is for me, right? For each of us, it’s something different.

Whatever your thing is, if it’s between you and Jesus and following him, which is the whole point of the story, you got to get rid of it.

So maybe Jesus would look to the guy and say, “I need you to get all your stuff, put it on craigslist, eBay, give all the money away, downsize, simplify, follow me.” Maybe he would have allowed him to do that.

Or maybe he would have looked at him like Abraham looked at Isaac when he was gonna sacrifice him and said, “You know what? Now that we see what’s in your heart, no need to do that. It’s not about the stuff, it’s about me and I am your treasure.” I don’t know.

How about you? What is between you and following Jesus faithfully, wholeheartedly, consistently? What is it? It needs to go.

And if you say, “I can’t let go of it,” it’s an idol.

So you say, “Well, I can’t let go then they need to be in the right place.

Jesus needs to be your treasure, and they need to be a gift that He gives but not a god that you worship.

What are the things in your life that you treasure more than Jesus?

Next Steps

I am choosing to follow Jesus.

I realize Jesus is God and Savior.

I will rid my life of idols.

I will reflect Jesus in my finances.