Demands and Rewards of Discipleship

Have you ever had something that you just NEEDED to have perfect? That it was your priority to keep that thing as spotless as possible? Maybe a car, our your kitchen, your office, your lawn. Something that, if there was any imperfection in it AT ALL it would just drive you crazy? The issue with these things is that no matter how much you work on them they will always get dirty, they will always grow weeds, there will always be something to work on. As much as we try imperfections will happen.

Now, in our own lives, we may not strive for perfection but we have each created an idea of what we need to do in order to have eternal life, or be considered a “good” person, to be satisfied in our personal lives and, just like the rich young ruler we will look at today, we will all fall short. This part of Matthew we are calling “Redefining the Kingdom” because in these messages we will see Jesus re-shaping what His disciples and others believe is necessary in order to enter into the kingdom of God. And today Jesus will tell us that we can’t attain our own righteousness and we can’t secure our own reward. So...

Our only hope for salvation is in Jesus righteousness and in Jesus reward.

So as we look at this the first half of this message might seem very difficult. But I hope you will keep your attention till the end. Don’t WAIT till the end, but listen closely to how Jesus responds to our own desire to be perfect and how He has better news for us.

So lets read this passage together...

We can’t attain our own righteousness

We see this young man comes before Jesus and asks a question. “What good must I do to have eternal life?” At it’s heart it is a question we all ask.

-”How Christian do I need to be in order to inherit eternal life?” “Is there a certain amount of of events I need to go to a year? Do I need to read my Bible all the way through so many times? Do I just need to mostly follow the 10 commandments?”

-Now the goal in this rich young ruler asking this question, similar to us, is not a bad question nor a bad goal…to be “good” or “perfect”. It is good to seek to do right things. And this man seems to ask sincerely, and he comes to Jesus which shows he has the maturity to recognize there are things he may not understand. In fact, if all people just “did” the things this man did than the world would be a better place.

But Jesus in His response gets to the heart of the issue, “what is good? There is only one who is ‘good’. Jesus is asking the man “why do you think you can inherit eternal life on your own?”

A few years ago a study was done of people where they asked people if they believed they were “good”. 75% of people believed they were a good person. Now, those same people, when they were asked to compare themselves to others, 46% believed they were a better person than the people that they know.

-They also asked them “what does it mean to be a good person? And the most common answers were kind, giving, and friendly. But when asked what qualities they desired for themselves the most common answer was “successful”.

The Bible tells us this exact thing about our condition. Romans 1-3 tells us that even by our own standards of right and wrong, not even God’s, we are condemned.

Even in this man’s response to Jesus after Jesus tells him the commands he needs to follow we hear this come out. “What else do I lack?” Even as he has followed ALL of these commands he feels like he is lacking, that there is something in his morality list that isn’t there that he thinks needs to be there.

-First, he doesn’t recognize that his true state is as a sinner, that he will never be “good” on his own.

-Second, he is missing the heart of the commands that Jesus tells him to follow. And we see this in Jesus response. Because notice what commands Jesus identifies, they are the commands about how we treat our neighbor, those of external behavior. Because that is what the man is expecting. But salvation by works will always leave us just short of the beauty of salvation by faith. It will hint at it, but it will leave us short.

It reminds me of an old Christian show, the Donut Man. Anyone remember the Donut Man? His song was “life without Jesus is like a donut, it leaves a hole in the middle of your heart.” There is a hole in this man’s heart he doesn’t know how to fill. But where this man is at this moment is not wrong, in fact it where he should be, asking the question “what can I do to be saved because everything I have tried up to this point has fallen short.”

But the man’s response to what Jesus says next is even more sad than his inability to understand this hard truth. Because Jesus tells him “sell everything you have and give to the poor.” and the man turns away in sorrow because Jesus has gotten to the heart of the issue…the idol of his heart. Which brings us to our second point.

We can’t secure our own reward

Give Everything Away

Why does Jesus tell Him to sell everything He owns? Was it because that is the only way to follow Jesus? To sell everything you own? No. What Jesus was bringing into the light was the thing the man had replaced Jesus with, his wealth. Greed, possessions, security. There was something getting in the way of his full devotion to Jesus.

The issue that he deals with here with this man is something many of us deal with.

In one commentary it says this "That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command". If you say "that would be many of us" then I would say "well than many of us have a heart issue we need to deal with."

In divorce hearings there is this phrase a spouse will sometimes use to get more money, that they have gotten "accustomed to a certain way of life". Many of us have gotten accustomed to the way of life of wealth. And we want a divorce from sin but we want to keep the lifestyle!

We think we can enjoy all the benefits that we had when we were married to sin, the experiences we had, the fun, the pleasure, but just bring it with us in the new life. It doesn't work that way.

Or we would like to dip our tows in both water. "God wants me to have these things, God wants me to have my position, I need these things in order to be close to God. But when God calls us to surrender the things of the world we find ourselves surrender God to the things we are holding onto so closely rather than surrendering those things to God.

Now, some of you may say “well I don’t have a lot of money, I give a lot of things away.” Okay…here is a question for you…What, if Jesus asked you to give up, would be terrifying to you?

Jesus will demand of each of us different things as disciples. Jesus knew this man's issue was that of coveting,

But there are two things that Jesus asks him to do “give everything away” but then also “come follow me”. We just looked at how we have a hard time letting go of many earthly things. But Jesus continues His conversation with the disciples what it means to “follow” Him.

Follow Me

Jesus talks about all rich people, not just this one man, and Jesus give an analogy, that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter into heaven. Jesus is using a bit of sarcasm here. Some have speculated there was some type of “gate” called “the eye of the needle” but it isn’t necessary to make that jump in order to understand what Jesus is saying here. That wealth will tell us to follow it rather than to follow God. Because wealth is an earthly security, it makes us feel safe, it makes us believe we can reach our own salvation.

Money poses a risk to our souls, in fact it is the greatest tool of spiritual warfare the devil uses against us. We believe that money comes with no strings attached, that it will only benefit us, that more of it will always be better. But Jesus says it is actually a difficulty, a hindrance to entering into the kingdom. Not that it is an impossibility, but that it will always asks us to compromise, it will always want us to worship it rather than worship God. That we rely on wealth, and we use the excuse "that doesn't apply to me". But having a car, having a TV, a fridge...that already puts us in the top 5% of the world. That we have options of what types of vegetables we want to enjoy with dinner, if we wan't caramel or hazelnut in our coffee, we live in a society that focuses a lot on ourselves because we have been afforded the possibility to choose how we want to live our lives. Many people don't have those choices.

I saw something online about a guy who was told he had a gambling problem and his response was "I have been gambling every day for 20 years and I haven't developed a problem, so I don't think it's going to happen now buddy!" We can think "I've had this relationship to money so far in my life and I don't have a problem" when in fact we have a serious problem.

The disciples were astonished and they ask an important question “then who can be saved?” They considered the wealth to be the most blessed by God, those with the greatest chance of salvation. Their idea of a righteous person WAS a wealthy elite. So their question to Jesus is, “if the people closes to God can’t be saved then who can?!

-Who we consider to be "righteous" is often very different from what God considers. The homeless, the chronically sick, the unkempt person often feel like the sinners to us. We may not SAY it, but our brains automatically make assumptions about the person who seems to be in poverty. That they must have not made the right choices, they must have brought this onto themselves, immediately skeptical of the things they tell us about themselves. So we often are asking the same question.

The rich man didn't recognize that in his heart that was something before God, that he had made an idol out of money. But once he recognized who was the true master of his life, he wouldn't replace it with the right one.

He had made an idol of his position, out of his status. Many of us would rather keep our social status than give everything to Jesus. Who would rather be "good citizens" than citizens of the kingdom. Who would rather be seen as allies to the world than righteous in the eyes of God.

There are many philanthropists in the world, many who give millions and even billions away. There are many who dedicate their lives to doing good for people, in caring for communities, in helping the sick and hurting. But outside of following Jesus not a single one of them will do anything towards an eternal reward.

Sometimes we are worse than this man. Because he is honest, he recognizes that he isn't going to follow Jesus the way Jesus is calling him to. But sometimes we re-intepret Jesus' words to us. "Well...what Jesus really means is make sure to tithe some of your money." "Jesus just means put him first and as long as I do that I can have this other thing." But Jesus says "follow me." And in fact what he says is “All you have is mine”

Now this man sound difficult to us, it may seem like “what hope is there for us?” But Jesus answer is that...

Our only hope for salvation is in Jesus righteousness and in Jesus reward.

And if I had to simplify it I would put it this way.

1. None of us can be saved on our own

2. All of us can be saved through Jesus.

The problem in the young man’s response is that he was asking for a salvation OUTSIDE of Jesus. That he thought that he could be perfect, that he could do all the things that he needed for salvation, but he couldn’t be perfect. He couldn’t be saved on his own. Jesus was response in telling him to get rid of his possessions was to show him that there will always be a hindrance in our hearts to perfection, that we will always fall short of what Jesus is.

And in showing us that we aren’t perfect is to show us that we can never earn our own salvation, that we can’t do it backwards.

So if we will always fall short of perfect than what is our hope? Our hope is that Jesus is perfect.

To follow Jesus means that we now have a new self. As Ephesians 4:20–24 says

“But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.”

What is our hope? That through Jesus we now have a new self, once created according to Jesus likeness, one that find our perfection and our treasures in Jesus. The beauty of the Gospel is that it tells us “you can’t be saved on your own”, but then telling us “you don’t have to!”

Through Jesus we have a new hope, a new joy, a new purpose. Earlier I said that many of us want a divorce from sin but keep all its benefits. But I am here to tell you the benefits of Jesus are far better. That is what Jesus tells His disciples, that they will find with Him something 100 times better than what they would receive on earth.

Often we think gaining power and influence will help us to honor God better. That once we have that house, once we get "settled" with our jobs and our families. Than we can have a true impact. But what Jesus says is those things are all hindrances. We might say "I can't abandon my family, I can't let go of these things, they are important!" But remember that Jesus said "seek first the kingdom and all these things will be provided for you." Jesus says "you have it backwards, seek the kingdom and let these other things fit into the kingdom picture. Don't try to fit the kingdom into your picture of what your life should look like."

Jesus is like a pulley to our souls, it helps us where we are weak, it gives us strength where we didn’t have any. Where our hearts fall shorts it can overcome a thousand times over!