Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

In the last passage we looked at, there was much emphasis on the fact that the Gospel is meant for everyone, even the Samaritan’s and Gentiles.

Then, last week we looked at the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple.

The key verse here was:

The overall theme, then, seems to be that God shows no partiality towards race, culture, or social status.

Rather, He looks at the posture of the heart.

Luke organized the pericopes of the last journey to Jerusalem in such a way that we are seeing many social norms in Israel cast aside.

In alone we see that a tax collector is justified over a Pharisee, children are the prime example of who enters the kingdom of heaven, a rich young man does not inherit eternal life, and a blind beggar receives sight and praises God.

So, it seems as if Jesus is flipping the whole world upside down, but rather, He is flipping it right side up.

The classes were split up into (2) and there was no middle class.

The poor were looked down upon spiritually for several reasons.

First of all, the people saw poverty as sign that you did not have YHVH’s blessing upon you.

They read all of the Psalms and Proverbs that spoke of the prosperity that God would give to the righteous, but they neglected the verses that spoke of how they were to treat the poor and the outcast.

Secondly, the poor were many times too poor to even keep the ritual observances in the temple, so they were even further seen as unrighteous.

On the other hand, the rich were seen as righteous for the very same Psalms and Proverbs that speak of the blessings to the righteous.

Again, they neglected much of the condemnations that the prophets brought on the rich who neglected God.

Secondly, the rich had the means to observe all of the rituals in the temple due to their wealth, so they were seen as even more righteous.

They had it all twisted.

They had taken on many of the philosophies of the Graeco-Roman world as they were more beneficiary to them.

“Based on the Old Testament (especially ), the crowd assumed that the wealthy will come into the kingdom of God.

Conversely, many thought the poor were in their situation due to lack of diligence (; ; ).” had stuck in their minds very much.

However, the Pharisees had made light of the prophets, and Jesus was the Prophet.

Luke tells us that a ruler asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.

Luke is the only one who points out that this man was a ruler.

BDAG says specifically that he would have been a member of the Sanhedrin.

However, this word is also used of synagogue leaders.

The fact is that it is not specified over what it is that he rules over.

The emphasis is that he is a man of authority, and he is rich, and he is young (we know this from Matthew).

Obviously, this young man would have been highly admired by most people.

He was probably the model of what a righteous person was thought to be.

He asks Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”.

It is interesting that he uses the word “inherit” here, as he probably had inherited much of his wealth too.

He probably thought himself righteous in asking this question.

Who knows, it may have been a very generous question.

He does ask specifically what he must do to inherit eternal life.

I wonder if he realized the contradiction in his question.

The very nature of an inheritance is that you don’t do anything.

I won’t harp on the translation as “inheritance” though, since it could simply mean receive.

Even this, though, shows that it is given.

To him, the question was, “What must I do to merit eternal life?”.

We are not given the motives.

Therefore, we must take the question at face value.

This man is asking how he can live forever.

He wasn’t even asking about entrance into the kingdom.

He wanted to know how he could live on into the ages - the ultimate blessing from God.

Maybe that is his mentality, “I’ve acquired all of these other blessings from God.

How can I acquire the ultimate blessing from God?”.

In response, Jesus first corrects the man by asking him a rhetorical question, “Why do you call me good?”.

He is not saying that He is not good, but He wants the young man to think about his words and why he is calling Him good.

After the rhetorical question, Jesus points out that no one is good except God alone.

In essence, Jesus was breaking down this man’s words of flattery.

Jesus saw right through it.

If there was flattery, then perhaps the man’s motives in asking this question were not pure.

He probably did think that he had nothing else to do and just wanted Jesus to confirm the fact that he was on the right path to heaven.

Jesus (and Paul) think very little of empty words.

He wanted him to mean what he was saying.

Jesus was pointing out that if he meant what he said, he was putting Him at the status of God.

He would have been correct in this, but he didn’t know or mean what he was saying.

Did Jesus pull this out of thin air?

No, for says, “There is no one who does good, not even one.”

This would mean that God alone is good.

Therefore, if this man did not believe that Jesus was God, then he shouldn’t be calling him good.

By implication, Jesus was pointing out that this man did not believe that He was God, therefore, he had no place to be calling Him good.

His words were empty.

After correcting this, Jesus tells the ruler that he knows the commandments.

This is probably where the commentators assume that this man was a ruler in some religious capacity.

That very well may be the case.

However, the commandments that He is about to list out would have been very well known.

Jesus proceeds to list 5 commandments.

These are all commandments which we know to be “horizontal”, which means that they deal with our relations to one another.

However, there are 6 of these horizontal commandments, and Jesus left this one out, perhaps purposely.

These are some very lofty commandments, especially if one understands all of the spiritual implications.

Even if they were just speaking to the outer actions, they were very lofty.

The young man responds by telling Jesus that he has kept all of these from his youth.

These are very hard to keep, but if we think about them purely in an action based environment, without Jesus’ expounding in the Sermon on the Mount, then perhaps it is possible that somebody kept them.

I, however, find it hard to believe that this young man had always honored his father and his mother.

This is so hard to do!

It means that he never disrespected them.

Regardless, this man believed that he had kept this commandment and all the rest that Jesus listed.

And he actually said that he had kept all of these since he was a child until then.

Luke 18:21-22

Luke 18:

Once Jesus heard the man say this, he told him that he still lacked one.

“Thing” does not exist in the Greek.

Jesus may very well have been saying that he still lacked one of these horizontal commandments.

I’m not going to be dogmatic about this train of thought though, because then I might try to force the “Thou shalt not covet” command into the horizontal relationships category, when it isn’t necessarily so.

He did have a problem with coveting, though, as we will see here.

Actually, if coveting is strictly seen as wanting what belongs to another, then Jesus may not even have been thinking about this commandment, as the rich young ruler already possessed all these riches.

However, the word that the LXX uses for covet is not just tied to wanting what belongs to someone else.

BDAG says, “to have a strong desire to do or secure someth., desire, long for w. gen. of the thing desired (Hdt.

2, 66; X., Mem. 1, 6, 5; ; ; , ; EpArist 223; TestSol 16:2; ApcMos 6; Jos., Ant. 12, 309) silver, gold, clothing .”

This is for the word “epithumeo”.

I believe that this young ruler did have a problem with the heart of this commandment.

Jesus tells him the one that he lacks: he needs to sell all he has and distribute it to the poor.

This will then earn him treasure in heaven.

Then he is to come and follow him.

Jesus gave him 4 commands here and 1 promise.

Imagine being commanded by Jesus to sell everything: your house, your car, your guitars, your computer, your phone, your clothes, your shoes, your books, your surfboards, and everything else and then taking that money and giving it to the poor.

Jesus literally wanted this man to make himself destitute.

Why? Had all of the disciples done this?