Part One of Dragons 1 : The Dragon Under The Mountain

Welcome/Intro

Good morning everyone! I’m glad we’re all here. Due to my unhealthy obsession with fantasy, I’ve read many stories which include dragons; its actually my favorite part of fantasy. My favorite stories growing up were of people befriending dragons and flying with them, but unfortunately, that is not the story I’ll be sharing today. Instead I’ll be talking about more classical version of dragon- The Dragon under the mountain. I’m sure many of us are familiar with the story of The Hobbit written by the king of nerds everywhere, J.R.R. Tolkien. The main antagonist of the Hobbit is the great fire dragon Smaug. He took the dwarven mountain full of the incredible wealth they acquired from their mining. Smaug forced them out and took up residence for no other reason than the riches within the mountain. Smaug is in love with his riches, they comprise the sole focus of his life and purpose. Smaug’s love was for his wealth, not spending his wealth, not giving his wealth, not for anything but his literal bed of riches under the mountain. Now the Hobbit is a wonderfully entertaining story in its own right, but like all truly great stories, it is also an opportunity for us to reimagine ideas in our own reality so that we can better understand them. Behind the story is a warning, “Be wary of greed and selfish desire owning your heart, else you will live a lonely, terrible life; do unspeakable damage to those around you, and all you’ve fought for will be go on to someone else.” In this story, the dragon is the one who has made their wealth their god. In this same way, I’d like to point out a dragon in scripture that I believe will teach us a similar lesson.

Intro To The Text

The text we’re reading from is probably familiar to some of you and new to others, but it is well-known passage because of its challenging lesson, but also because of some of the confusion it causes. I personally have heard this passage preached at least 5 different ways. Now I couldn’t tell you exactly was different about any of those sermons but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the time I only have long term memory of bad sermons because, well, they’re bad, and whenever I read the text that sermon was on, the sermon comes to mind in a jarring way. On the other hand, I usually don’t remember good sermons, in the long term at least. Now, it very well could be that I just don’t pay good enough attention, but I like to think that good sermons don’t always have to be grounding breaking to my biblical knowledge. There are definitely exceptions as the Bible is wonderfully confusing sometimes but much of the time, good sermons are simply trying to explain the lessons of the text as anyone could understand them by reading the text. Today I hope I’m not breaking any new ground but simply trying to show you what I find to be the important lessons of this story. Turn with me to Mark 10: 17-22 and lets read about Rich Young Ruler.

17 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?”

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked him. “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 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.”

21 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.” 22 But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.

Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Mk 10:17–22. The young man is the first to ask Jesus the most important question. How might I receive eternal life? Up to this point, not even the disciples had come to Jesus with this question. He recognizes that Jesus is the “Good teacher” who might have the answer to his pressing question. Jesus’s answer of saying “No one is Good except God alone” isn’t a way of blowing the young man off, instead it is a set up for the rest of the passage. You see, in verse 18-19, Jesus gives the man a moral exam based on the most fundamental moral code, the Ten Commandments. As this is Jesus’s initial response to the question, the young man probably felt a little relief. If keeping these commandments is all that’s required, then the young man is confident in v20 that he has kept all of these since he was young. Accepting this as true, Jesus finally gives the man the actual answer to his question of “How can I receive eternal life?” v21 reads “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.”" Now I know that right now we’re all Christians and we know Jesus is God and all of that jazz but just take a second and imagine if a respected evangelist, preacher or whatever asked this of you. My favorite Christian author is absolutely C.S. Lewis, I love his books! Now I know your all thinking, “Danny, have you made a Tolkien and C.S. Lewis reference in the same sermon?” And the answer is yes I was home schooled but only for one year. Regardless, I was able to talk to Lewis and ask him for wisdom, and his response was to sell everything I owned… I’m not sure I would have taken him up on that offer. So lets just think about this young man, coming up to this teacher who you love and respect, with all the trust and hope that he’s got the answer to this question that’s been eating you alive, and seems to even recognize that your a really stand-up guy, yet asks you to sell all of your worldly possessions, give them to the poor, and follow him. Now also understand, for many people at this time, they understood their wealth as a blessing from God rewarding their righteousness. And this man, wants you to give it all up. This is probably not dissimilar to the situation the Rich Young Man found himself in. Of course, Jesus new this. He was aware of how ludicrous this request sounded, but you see, he was talking to someone who was already thinking ludicrous things, thinking a Rabbi would have the secret of eternal life. To most other people, Jesus’s request would have been met with laughter, but this man was dismayed, filled with sorrow. He knew this man called Jesus had his answer, and once he hear it, he knew that he couldn’t pay the price. The Rich young man had lived his life pursuing holiness, at least, in his works. He didn’t kill, or steal. He didn’t cheat on his wife. He was probably in synagogue every Sabbath, worshiping, paying his tithe, but internally, unbeknownst to him he was becoming like that horrible dragon Smaug, making his bed in his wealth. His wealth meant his home, his security, heck its even how he is identified more than 2,000 years later- Rich Young Ruler. When Jesus gave the young man the moral test, I want us to notice two important things.

Exposistion

1. The first half of the commandments are missing; those most obviously with loving God directly. The very first commandment is that we would have no other gods before the true God, and the second is that we would not worship man made idols. Jesus didn’t need to ask the young man if he had broken these laws because the young man’s refusal of his invitation was proof enough. This young man, this terrible dragon, had made his wealth his god, and it would prevent him from loving God and neighbor with everything.

2. Jesus quotes the 10th commandment as “Do not defraud.” Now, as many of you know, the way we memorized the 12th commandment was not as “do not defraud” but was instead, “do not covet.” Jesus is not rewriting scripture here, but is instead quoting the 10th in the way it was interpreted at his time. Defrauding was a reference to rich people coveting the possessions of others and them. You see, the command against coveting is an interesting one because of how its given in scripture. In Exodus 20, when God first gives Moses the Ten, the word used for coveting is directly referencing the desire of someones things that would lead a person to taking it from them. However, in Deuteronomy, another word is added that specifies the desire itself. This isn’t a contradiction in the scripture but is an added emphasis. The first word could maybe allow someone to say “well if I don’t actually take someone else’s possessions than I can still internally want them,” but the second word dispels any such thoughts because it makes clear that the act of wanting is dangerous in and of itself. This still doesn’t seem to obviously fit with the guys problem though. Why emphasize defrauding? This young man hasn’t admitted to any theft or mistreatment of the people around him, no, what this man admits to without saying a word. Is that his desire is not for other people’s possessions per say, but it is that he would have a large amount of wealth while others had so little. I believe Jesus is pushing the bounds of this law against coveting/defrauding. The young man knows about not having a desire for his neighbors possessions. He even knows not to be unjust in his dealings with the poor. What he doesn’t know is that he has replaced God with the Idol of his own wealth. You see the Ten commandments work in this weird way, where if you break any of them, you’re inevitably breaking the first commandment, to have no other gods. When you break Sabbath you see yourself as greater than god, when you murder you take life that only god gave, when you commit adultery you break the covenant that God made between you and your spouse, they all interconnect, but for the Young, Rich, Ruler, he broke the law of coveting, not of other’s possessions, but of his own. Again, he broke the 1st commandment.

Today I’ve got my own questions for you all based on Jesus’s conversation with this young man.

The first is, Is your confidence found in your ability to do good works? I know this is personally a challenging question. I find myself too much of the time tempted to slack off on my personal spiritual disciplines because I believe my works have me set. You know the things we have whispering in our minds, I’ve been so kind to my cruel co-workers today, I can just get some early sleep and pray tomorrow, or, I’ve been so good at denying my sexual temptation, I can watch this TV-MA show with zero repercussions to my spiritual health. Or to take that one even further, I’ve been so good at denying myself, just this once won’t kill me. Notice that all of these thoughts attribute our success to our own wills. Come on People of God! Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that we’re anything but totally and completely dependent on the one true God to empower us in our fight with sin and temptation. Remember who you were before Christ, the one who dragged you from the pit.

My second question is this, Do you have any physical possessions that have become replacements for God? Are there secret things that in your heart of hearts you rely on more than God, you find your security in them more than God. We don’t become like the rich young ruler over night. We don’t just become dragons. We become dragons when we live and die for our material possessions. When we’re willing to do unspeakable evil against others for the sake of our greed. Likewise, we become like the rich young ruler when even eternal life is not a great enough prize to give up that wealth we’ve worked so hard for. Now this doesn’t just apply to people with wealth. Greed and covetousness are symptoms of sin in people’s lives across all socioeconomic boundaries. Just as a rich person can be tempted to find their confidence in their wealth, so to can a poor person be confident that if they just had “x” amount of money, they would be content.

The truth is that the love of money over God includes having faith that money or the material things of this world will be able to satisfy our anxieties in this life, but just as Christ invited the young man to give up his possessions for eternal life, so to does Christ invite us to hate the things of this world that we might having our desires oriented upon him.

If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then I’m happy to say that you can give up these false idols. This passage isn’t about a universal law mandating Christians to live lives of homeless poverty, but it is saying that if wealth has become your god, then you must do away with it completely. And this goes for any material thing that we use in an attempt to satisfy our desires. However, the problem is not only with us finding our satisfaction in the material, it is even more so that we ought be the most willing to give everything up for Christ. Are we feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the widows and orphans? In our own local church are we aware of the problems of our brother’s and sisters and willing to meet their needs?

[ MOVE INTO TIME OF RESPONSE]

Today I will open up the altars; calling specifically for those of us who feel the conviction of the Spirit to repent from our idolatry, and reorient our desires towards God and the riches he has prepared for us in glory.

Closing