Are We Doing Enough?
Notes
Transcript
We live in a world that is obsessed with performance. We are a busy culture. So much so that your value as a person can be attached to your perceived productivity level. What is your life producing? What is your work producing? What is your 80 hour work week producing? There seems to be an incentive culturally speaking for being one who can work a lot of hours and produce a lot of things. If we are not careful, this same attitude can enter into the church and we can begin to take a performance based attitude toward ministry.
There are a considerable number of people, Christian or otherwise, who are concerned with whether they are doing enough to get into heaven. There is a prevailing idea that there is something we must do so we can feel secure enough in our future hope. The passage we are going to look at is a story about a man who had a similar outlook.
And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?”
And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness;
Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.
The conversation begins with the wrong question. The rich young ruler wants to know what he can do to inherit eternal life. He seems to be looking for one thing that will guarantee his ticket into heaven. We probably can’t fault him for it. He is a product of the messaging the religious leaders have taught his entire life. If you want to go to heaven, there are 613 laws you need to follow. When you make a mistake, you need to make a sacrifice to atone for it. So this young man has heard his entire life that his eternal life is performance based. Yet it seems that he is not entirely content with that idea. We see this further in the conversation.
Jesus points out that no one is good but God. In the versions of the story in Mark and Luke, the young ruler addresses Jesus as a good teacher. This could be a form of flattery, respect, or might speak to his own opinion he has formed about Jesus, but Jesus felt the need to address that no one is good but God. This is not by mistake. He wants to ask the question to lead the man to a point. The point is this:
God is the standard for righteousness, and his righteousness is reflected in the commandments.
God is the standard for righteousness, and his righteousness is reflected in the commandments.
Jesus points this man back to the commandments. Specifically, Jesus points him to some of the ten commandments, commandments five through nine. Why didn’t he mention the others? We will consider that in a moment. What we want to grasp here is that Jesus is appealing to the law as the foundation for a relationship with God. If we want to go to heaven, we must be righteous as God is righteous. We must measure up to his standard.
The ruler hears this and feels as if he has met this standard. He’s kept all these things since he was a boy. He hasn’t lied, stolen, killed anybody, disrespected his parents, committed adultery, and he has even loved his neighbor as himself...or at least that is his own view of himself. But this doesn’t seem to be enough. “I’ve done all these things.” the man says. “What do I still lack?” There is something eating at him, revealing that maybe he hasn’t done enough. He is aware there is a problem, but he is unaware of the solution to the problem. He seems ready for hope.
Jesus replies, “Sell all you have and give it to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven, then come follow me.” That’s the moment this young man’s heart sank. He walks away sad, because he has a lot of stuff.
Before we move on, what’s the problem here? The rich young ruler was looking for one thing that would give him eternal security. He wanted to know for sure that he had done enough to make it into heaven. Don’t we all? Don’t you want to know for sure that you will be in heaven with Christ when you die? We can identify with the rich young ruler here. But Jesus shows the man the truth. So why didn’t he mention the other five commandments? Four of those commandments govern one’s relationship with God. Have no other gods except God. Don’t take God’s name in vain. Don’t make god into an image (or idol) for the sake of worship. Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Now, what does telling a rich man to sell it all and follow Jesus accomplish? It reveals where the man’s heart truly is. The point here is not that the man could have actually sold everything to follow Jesus and do the one thing that would get him into heaven. The point is our true values are revealed when we face the reality of loss.
The man was saddened because he did not want to lose the life he had built for himself. His wealth was more important than following Jesus, the very one who could save the life he was afraid to lose. That’s why Jesus responded with this:
And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?”
And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Is it impossible for a rich person to enter heaven? I told you last week that following Christ does not require we take a vow of poverty. It is to ask and answer the question, “Who does your stuff belong to?” The Bible teaches that everything we possess is not truly ours. Everything belongs to God. He calls us to manage these resources wisely on his behalf, not to stockpile things to make us comfortable. If you are here today with significant wealth, you shouldn’t feel guilty for having it, but you should also remember it belongs to God for you to use to advance his kingdom on earth. If it were to disappear, would you still love him?
The disciples are blown away by this. They were under the assumption that material wealth was a sign of God’s favor on someone. So material wealth in their minds equals God’s blessings. So when somebody lost material wealth (Job, for example), the assumption was that they were being judged by God. There must have been some sin the person committed that they had not confessed, and therefore the consequence was judgment from God. For Jesus saying this shook the disciples. Surely the wealthy can be saved! But Jesus reveals it is not a wealth issue. It is a heart issue.
The thing that Jesus wants all his followers to understand is that everything centers around him. No one can earn his way into heaven because we all fall short of the standard of the only one who is truly good: God himself. So our lives must become centered around Christ. But what is the cost?
Peter is concerned about this when he says this:
Then Peter said to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?”
And Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.
“But many who are first will be last; and the last, first.
Now, Matthew is the only one to record specifics about the rewards the twelve disciples will get for walking away from everything and following Jesus. But for the rest of us we have to remember that according to last week Jesus is not literally demanding that we cut ties with all our family members and possessions to follow Jesus. We are just counting them as loss for the sake of knowing Christ.
Salvation costs us nothing, but salvation costs us everything.
Salvation costs us nothing, but salvation costs us everything.
That seems like a self-contradictory statement, but let me explain. As the Bible teaches, salvation is provided to us at no personal cost. We have all fallen short of God’s perfect standard. None of us are 100 percent good. If being with God requires being like God in that we need to meet the same standard that is his character, we stand no chance on our own. But God sent his Son Christ to live a life perfectly according to God’s design, then he offered up his life to die in our place, a death he did not deserve. He rose from the dead three days later victorious over death itself. When we place our faith in Jesus, a miracle occurs. His righteousness, that is his perfection, is credited to us. We have no righteousness of our own, but when we stand before God, we don’t stand on our own. Christ stands with us saying, “I paid for this one’s death.”
When we come to terms with what Christ has done for us in eternity through salvation, today through his patience with us as we learn to obey his commands, and his perfecting work in us one day in the future, we understand that following Jesus costs us everything. When we understand that our salvation cost Christ everything, we begin to understand submitting ourselves to him costs us everything. It may not cost cutting ties in every relationship. It does cost our letting go of dictating where that relationship is going to go. You don’t have to part with your land. But what if God has a purpose for your land far greater than what you have considered thus far? What if God has a greater purpose for your stuff than you do? Would you allow him to touch it? Would you allow your assets to become tools in the hands of a master craftsman to reach more people?
I have watched a man’s acreage in Houston slowly become a nationally, if not globally recognized entity for serious religious academic study. Mark Lanier, the owner of the property started the Lanier Foundation with the purpose of advancing God’s kingdom through academic research and more recently equipping pastors and other church leaders. This is an amazing example of what it looks like to surrender one’s assets to the Lord’s control.
What would it look like for you to surrender everything you have to God’s control? Why do you think God has allowed you to have what you have, whether a lot or a little? What would it look like for you to let God determine the direction of all your resources? Maybe last week you had to relinquish control of one thing. Maybe this week he is bringing up something else. Is your life being lived in total surrender to his authority? Are you pursuing the business of God, or are you pursuing your own business?
