Proper 23 (October 13, 2024)

Jesus offers us an incomparable treasure which no money can buy and no thief can steal. The thing we most set our heart on is our highest treasure. Material wealth will shackle us to this earth unless we guard our hearts and set our treasure on God and his everlasting kingdom.

GOAL: Make Eternal Life Your highest treasure by setting your heart on Jesus by faith.

Eternal Life our Highest Treasure

How does one obtain this treasure?

See Christ who loves You

Shed the things that get in the way

No one can do enough to inherit eternal life.

God provides a solution to our problem.

Christ has done everything necessary to earn eternal life for us.

Embrace the gifts Christ gives

When we resist the message of the cross.

When we want glory for ourselves.

When our worldview does not align with God’s.

Jesus points us to God, for nothing is impossible with God. The proper response to Jesus’ words is to cast aside all things that separate us from God, including our self-righteousness, and cast oneself down before God in mercy.

Confess Sin

Cast oneself down before God seeking mercy.

Follow Christ.

Yes, the Law hurts—of necessity, so that we learn to let go of it for our salvation. For sinful humans—and that describes us all—keeping the Law is no way to arrive at eternal life, because we do not and cannot keep it. So the Law is no answer for us. The Law only drives us to the true answer: the Gospel. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The full answer is give by Jesus: “Come, follow me.”

To follow is to understand that I am no longer in charge. I have given up control. There is another who leads the way to eternal life. I will follow that One, and in following I am given a gift. The gift is being with him forever in eternity. It is all caused by his grace, his love, his life, death, and resurrection. He invites us to follow him, and then he gives us the gift of being enabled through the Spirit’s power to do that!

Saint Paul knew this. Struck down by the Light from heaven, he is commanded to follow (Acts 9). His excellent knowledge of the Law, gained at the feet of famous Rabbi Gamaliel, meant nothing at that point of encounter with Jesus. Paul’s desire to keep perfectly the Law of Moses turned out to be a futile attempt that he had to abandon forever. Paul was no longer the master but the slave, waiting anxiously to hear what the Lord would have him do with his life.

What Paul learned he tells all generations, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:8–10).

To the question “What must I do?” there is but one answer: “Follow me.” The relationship of following is created by God’s grace through Jesus Christ.

It begins with a word from God in heaven, the Gospel, by which he calls us to be his own, unworthy though we are—a call that is seen perfectly in what Jesus, God’s Son, did for us and for our salvation.

What he did for us is all seen in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus kept the Law perfectly. He did for us what we could not do. His perfect righteousness is given to us as a gift. By his death on the cross, he died for our transgression of God’s Law, and we are thus freed from its condemnation. This is the Good News; this is the Gospel that saves. And by that Gospel we are called. The Spirit of God takes that call and by means of it enables us to follow Christ into eternity.

There’s the true answer, young man!