Mark 10:17-31

Jesus answered. No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. You shall not defraud, honor your mother and father, teacher, he declared all of these I've kept since I was a boy. Jesus looked at him and loved him. One thing you lack, he said, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me at this.

The man's face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples how hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. The disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said again, children how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. The disciples are even more amazed and said to each other who then can be saved.

Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God. Then Peter spoke up, we have left everything to follow you. Truly, I tell you, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children's children and fields along with persecutions and the age to come.

Eternal life. But many who are first will be last. And the last will first and the last first. You can be seated.

And uh, I love even our prayer times together and how we are seeking what the Lord's will is. So where we are in the pastoral search has, God has, uh, I've been on pastoral search teams that, that struggle to find a candidate that's really worth looking at. We have the opposite problem here. God has raised up so many men that we could get really excited about.

And while I don't claim to know God's will for his final outcome here, uh, right now he has raised up three men that we are in ongoing conversations and interviews with. And just for my human perspective, I look at any of the three of them and think this could be the man that God is raising up. So I say that to encourage you that we, I think we are close, but I say that to exhort you, we need your prayer.

The problem with three candidates is you don't God, which one of these three good candidates could it could it be? So we need your prayer for our discernment. Pray for us on your own, pray for us in your family prayer. Join us before the services we, uh, before each service we meet. Uh, those of us who will gather about 20 minutes before each service in the back there and there's an ever growing group every Sunday morning. Who is praying for the pastoral search and the pastoral search team.

Please we need your prayer. Well we are in mark 10 continuing in the passage that Chris just read there based on the first service. We will not get through the entire passage today, but that's all right. Uh, let me set this in context and then relate it to why the speaks to us. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and by that I mean his final journey.

Jesus knows that when he arrives at Jerusalem, he is going to walk to calvary and he is going to be crucified for your sin and my sin that is right up front and all of his thinking, nobody else around him really gets that yet. But that dominates his thinking.

And so in his ongoing conversations with his disciples and then his, his contacts with the people that that God sovereignly sends into his path, he is thinking about that in his conversations more and more the rest of mark are focusing on really what the topic of what I would call discipleship. What does it mean to follow Jesus? That's all these conversations. That's the conversation in the encounter today. What does it really mean to follow Jesus?

And that is an important conversation for us to have today because in our Americanized Christianity, we can so easily fall into kind of that that model that's uniquely American and what I would call decisional salvation. Now there is a place for making an initial decision to begin to follow Jesus. But too often what happens in our culture is people put all their reliance on a decision that was made at one point in their history with no evidence of following ever since that decision.

And that is not the picture that Jesus gives here of what it means to follow him. Discipleship may start at the decision, but it doesn't end with that decision. And so here mark records one of those encounters of, of somebody who comes to him like, like you might come to hims saying, you know, I want to know where I stand, Lord. I want to know where I stand with God.

This man comes in verse 17 we really don't find out anything about him until verse 22 and in verse 22 we're told that he is a man who had great wealth, who hadn't much property. Now you read the parallel accounts of the same episode in Matthew, Matthew, Matthew 19 it tells us, Matthew tells us that he's young and, and you read the parallel account in Luke 18 and we're told that he is a ruler. He is a leader.

And so you know what we have here is a picture of somebody who is really successful in the eyes of his culture. Somebody who would be successful in the eyes of our culture. He's, he's young. You know, he's probably got his looks and he's probably got his health. He is wealthy. So he is prosperous and he's influential. He's a leader, maybe in the synagogue, maybe a in the city where we're not quite sure he has what we would say is the epitome of success.

What we see in the movies, what we see on TV, he is young, he's upwardly mobile, he is successful and yet he senses that he's missing something. He senses in this question in verse 17 that there is a void in his life. He is asking about eternal life.

There is a, there's a hole that his money is not filling and his influence is not filling and his health is not filling and so he comes to Jesus falling upon his knees, asking for what might fill the hole, some assurance that that hole will be filled. Maybe some of you can relate to this man. Maybe you either now or at some time in your past you have attained goals that you had set for yourself in life. Maybe it was your educational goals. Maybe it was your professional goals.

Maybe you got the job that you wanted. Maybe you've climbed the ladder. Maybe you've accumulated the, the material wealth that you have wanted to accumulate. And yet you found in the middle of that, that everything that you thought would satisfy you doesn't fill that hole. There is still that hole. That's this man. So I can relate to this man. I hope you can relate to this man. And he comes in, he asks the question that we see in verse 17 what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Uh, that that phrase inherit eternal life. Mark uses that synonymously and you can see it even in this passage. He uses it synonymously with having treasure in heaven in verse 22 with entering the Kingdom of God and verse 23 with being saved in verse 26 so he's asking, what we might say is this, Lord, how do I know that I'm going to be saved? How do I know that I am going to get to heaven? This man once, what we all want, he, he wants to be comfortable now, but, but he wants peace.

He wants a surety UNSW of heaven. He wants to know that he's going to have blessedness eternally with God. There's something wrong with that question though. At least I think there's something wrong with that question. What must I do to inherit eternal life now? On one sense, you know we see similar questions like that throughout scripture. I think of the question that the Philippian jailer asked of the Apostle Paul in acts chapter 16 what must I do to be saved?

It sounds like the same question and really I think what what what is important is what's the heart with which that question's being asked. What is the mindset with which that question is being asked and you and I can't look in this man's heart or any persons heart and understand the state of mind, the attitude, the attitude of heart that they're asking that question from, but Jesus can.

Jesus being God is omniscient and he looks in this man's heart like he can look in your heart and he can look in my heart and he sees the the state of the heart that is motivating that question and I think he sees that that question is based upon a wrong assumption and here is the assumption, the wrong assumption that I think this man is making and asking that question, this man I believe has a superficial view of goodness.

And by the way, I think that's what many, if not most of us have as well, a superficial view of what it means to be good, at least good in God's eyes. I believe that Jesus sees this in this man from the moment that the man comes up to him, because notice the way the man addresses him. It's a term that is not used. If anybody addressing Jesus in any of the other gospels, good teacher, he addresses them as good teacher and notice how Jesus responds to that.

Again, I think perceiving what's in the man's heart. Jesus responds in Verse 18 why do you call me good? Nobody is good but God alone. Now, here's a little bit of an aside.

I don't know if you've ever had Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, but this is one of the passages that Jehovah's witnesses will use to try and make the case that by worshiping Jesus as God were wrong, they will point to this passage and say, see Jesus, see what Jesus says about himself and what he doesn't say about himself, and what I try to respond to graciously is let's read the words carefully because Jesus never says that he is not good.

It's a test question, but he never says that he is not good. He never says that he is not God. Jesus is asking this question for a very different purpose than trying to establish any truth about the trinity.

Jesus perceives that this man, like most people like me in the beginning of my spiritual journey, like probably many of you at the beginnings of your spiritual journey like maybe even some of you today, Jesus perceives that this man has a superficial view of goodness and that what he's doing coming to Jesus as he wants Jesus to confirm he's good enough. What he wants Jesus to confirm is that yes, you have done enough good things that you can be assured that you will be in heaven.

Do you think of yourself as a good person? I grew up thinking of myself as a good person. There's all kinds of ways that we subtly convince ourself of our own goodness that the tendency in my family, that what I saw pattern, what I saw in my parents was we can make, it was never spoken like this, but here's really the logic of it. We can make ourselves feel that we are good if we point out all the bad things that other people do, so it's kind of goodness by comparison.

Look with the neighbors are doing. Look what those people and in church with us are doing by pointing out how they are not good. There was a way in which I think, you know, you, you try to raise yourself up as good by comparison. There's another very common way of trying to convince ourselves that we are good today. And, and uh, it's very prevalent on social media. It's, it's trying to follow the ever changing standard of what our culture thinks is good. Do you hold the right political opinions?

Do you hold the right social opinions? Are you keeping up with where the culture is on, uh, on what seems to be, you know, the, the, the issue of the day? Are you parroting what you see the celebrities saying and, and, and what they model as socially acceptable. And one, you know, that's a path that leads, if I hope you know that that's a path that leads to hell, but two, that is an everchanging standard. Even if you wanted to stay with standard of good, you would never catch up to it.

Because as soon as you get to the place where you embrace something as good, the culture is off. Further on down the road, there may be other ways that you convince yourself that you are good.

Maybe you've been told that by your parents and your teachers growing up that you are good, but there is only one standard for goodness, and if we think about whether I am good enough, whether you are good enough to be assured that we will spend eternity in heaven, that we will have that eternal blessedness. Jesus points to the only standard here. This is why he is asking the question of this man. There is no one good except God alone. God's the standard of goodness.

We see that throughout the Old Testament. God says that about himself. Be Good because I am good. Be Holy because I am holy. God says, do you want to know the standard of goodness that you are measured by? If you're trying to determine whether you're good enough to be in heaven, to have assurance of salvation, be as good as I am, be as holy as I am.

Jesus begins to reveal to this man and and to us reading it, his superficial view of goodness by referring to how God makes his standard of holiness, his standard of goodness clear. He does it in the law and that's why Jesus, this is not your standard way of, of, of, of, of giving a Salvy or an evangelistic presentation is it? Jesus takes him to the law. Notice in Verse 2019 you know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false testimony.

Do not defraud, honor your father and mother. Why is it if Jesus wants to lead this man to follow him, why does he take them to the Old Testament? Why does he take them to the commandments? Because as Paul says, the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter three it's through the law that we come to a knowledge of our sin. It's through being compared to the standard of the law that we see we are not good. We see how far short of being good that we are.

And so when we try to judge our own goodness based upon what our culture tells us as good or by constantly comparing ourselves to other people, to goodness by comparison or any other way that we try to define our convince ourselves that we are good, we are stopped short by God's law. When we compare ourselves by God's perfect law as summed up in the 10 commandments, the judgment is very, very different than any comparison than any trying to keep up with the culture.

Here's why this is so important for this man. Here's why this is so important for me. Here's why this is so important for you. If we think of salvation, if we think of our eternity with God, if we think of peace with God, a terminally in terms of being dependent upon being good enough to be saved, to be accepted by God, we really then need to know God's standard for being good and if God's standard of goodness is his law, can anyone measure up?

It's interesting in verse 20 this man thinks he measures up. Do you see that the man says, teacher, all these things I have kept since I was a boy. Now, now there's probably a naive a tay and saying that. But you get what he's saying. Jesus. Yeah. I guess when I look up my life, uh, I've, I know I've never murdered anyone. I've never committed adultery. Uh, I've never stolen anything. I've never lied. I've, I've never coveted, I've never been disrespectful to my parents.

There's an evangelist I love. I watch him on youtube all the time. Some of you may have heard of him, his name is Ray Comfort. And uh, Ray does evangelism on college campuses and he does it on the street and he does it on beaches and he's very winsome in the way he does it. But he always starts with the law. Like Jesus is starting with here.

And his typical encounter will be, let's say it's a college student on a college campus that he engages in conversation and then he'll get to the place where he asks, well, do you know any of the 10 Commandments? And maybe the college student will be able to think of a couple, you know, uh, yeah, uh, do not steal and ray will respond. Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever broken that commandment?

And I've watched so many of his videos and invariably an answer to that question, the person, whoever it is on the beach, on the college campus, on the street, will say, no, no, I've never broken that commandment. Now come back to that in what he does in a minute. How do we know or what do we know about how Jesus interprets the commandments?

We read in the sermon on the mount in Matthew five that Jesus looks not just at the letter of the commandment, he looks at the heart of keeping the commandment. And so he says in Matthew five committing adultery is more than actual doing the actual sexual act. If you lust in your heart, if you have sexual desire in your heart for someone else who is not your husband or your wife, you have committed adultery. You've broken that commandment, murder.

He says, maybe you have never committed the criminal act of murder. But if you get to the place where you hate someone you hate someone with you, wish they were not in your life, you wish they were not around at all, you have essentially, Jesus says, broken that commandment. You have committed murder in your heart and he can goes on and on.

And Ray Comfort picking up on that to the student or the person on the beach who says that they've never, they've never committed adultery will put Jesus's words right out in front of him. Jesus says that if you, if you look at another man or a woman and you lust after them with sexual desire, you have committed adultery. Have you ever done that? And you see those people there? They're trapped.

I mean, they, they like us if their answer honestly, who can say that they have not broken that commandment in that way. And Ray takes them through commandment after commandment after commandment. And that's what Jesus really had begun to do here. Mark at this point, um, takes us to this man who in his naiveté responds that, no, I've never broken any of these commandments. And Mark here record something that Matthew and Luke leave out of their accounts.

But I'm so glad mark includes it in verse I'm in Verse 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus is not standing back and saying, you proud, presumptuous young man saying you've never broken the commandments. Jesus looks at him like he looks at you and me. Jesus looks at him like he looked at me as a young man thinking I was so moral, so good, so deserving of God's favor. And Jesus looks and sees how self deceived we are about our own goodness.

Jesus looks and sees us in the grip of our sin, even sin that maybe we haven't filled it fully realized or certainly acknowledged or confessed, and he loves us. And that motivates his pursuit of us. And that motivates how he wants to bring us into the acknowledgement of our sin, of our lack of goodness, because that's when his mercy and His grace becomes available to us. And so Jesus highlights here in response to that with this man has totally missed. He says, one thing you lack.

It's as if Jesus is saying, you know, I know that you don't understand how far short you fall in all of these commandments you've just told me that you've kept, but even hypothetically, if you kept all of those commandments, there is still a huge crater in the middle of your life where your goodness crashes and burns and Jesus reveals that crater with these words, go sell everything you have and give to the poor Jesus tests the limits of this man's given us.

Give it all away says and then come follow me. You know I look at this and I think, Jesus, this isn't a salvation invitation unit. You're not presenting the gospel like I would present the Gospel. Now, now's the to have the man pray the prayer. Now's the time to ask the man to ask him in your heart, why are you going here? Why are you doing this?

If you want this man to come follow you, I think it is helpful to me to understand what Jesus is doing in this interchange with, with uh, what is known as the two tablets of the law. This is a reformation concept. If you think of that, the 10 commandments, you know the story in exodus, how, how Moses was given two tablets of stone by God with a, with the 10 commandments chiseled into them as he came down from Mount Sinai.

And, and, and really the story is that, that the first of those tablets contain the first four commandments and the second of those tablets contain the last six of those commandments. Well, where is Jesus Ben with this man already? He's been on the second tablet. He's been on the the second, the last six commandments. We've seen these. We've seen him reference the fifth commandment. Honor Your father and your mother. We've seen him reference the sixth commandment. Do not murder.

We've seen him reference the seventh commandment. Do not commit adultery and the eighth do not steal in the ninth. Do not give false testimony. Do not lie and even the 10th do not defraud. I think is is really the 10th commandment. Do not covet. What do all these commandments have in common? They are. If you look at that tablet in those six commandments, they are they or what we could say. It means to love our neighbor. It is the second half of the great commandment.

Love your neighbor as yourself, but what is the first tablet? The first tablet is the first half of the great commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. And how do we do that with we do that through the first commandment. We have no other gods before him. We love no other God more than God. The second commandment, we do not make any idol or graven image. We do not bow down to anything other than God that shows our love for God.

The third commandment, we do not take the Lord's name in vain because of our love for him. The fourth commandment, we remember the sabbath and keep it holy. Devoting it to this God that we love. Isn't it interesting that Jesus has started with the second tablet? He started with the commandments about loving your neighbor, which this man claims that he has kept and now he really, I think moves to the first commandment.

It really tests whether the man loves the Lord, his God with all his heart and soul and strength. And He tests it by getting to the very heart of what he knows.

Seeing the man's heart that this man loves even more his wealth, his money, even if this man deceives himself into believing that he lives by all the commandments on that second tablet, the challenge to give up its stuff, the challenge to open his hands that he has around his money in his property and his wealth reveals that he completely fails at keeping the first tablet, the first four commandments.

And that's true of you in May if you or I walk away from following Jesus because we want to lose our stuff, we want to hang onto our money. We want to hang onto the security that are our material goods in our property. Uh, gives us then. Then we do have other guides in our life rights. We have the god of materialism in our life. We violate the first commandment then, then we have bowed down before an idol. We have made our material goods in our property and idle.

We violated the second commandment. Then our claim that we really love, God is really taking his name in vain. It means nothing. We violated the third commandments and finally we reject his good provision of a sabbath. Rest. We violate the fourth commandment. Maybe it's not money for you, but that is the area that Jesus knowing this man puts his finger on. He identifies what it is that this man loves more than him, loves more than God himself.

He identifies where this man's goodness crashes and Burns and he does that. He gives the man a choice here like he gives to all of us. The choice he gives to this man is you can hang on to your stuff. You can hang onto your wealth. If you cling to it for your security, you can hang on to it or you can open your hands. You can open your grip and you can come and follow me. And the man chooses, the man chooses what he really loves. Verse 22 he went away sad because he had great wealth.

We could add paranthetically that he was unwilling to give up. The man has shown really what he loves. Jesus does this with each of us. And again, maybe for you it isn't materialism. Maybe it's another idol. Maybe it's another false god. Maybe it's sexuality. Maybe it's some relationship. Maybe. Maybe it's the desire for control over all the parts of your life. May, may, maybe it's, uh, it's for influence or, or importance in life. I mean, that's the thing.

John Calvin says that our heart is an idol factory. It can manufacture so many different kinds of idols, so many things that can rise up to have a greater place in our life than the Lord Jesus Christ. Does Jesus have a particular problem with, with wealth mean is really the answer here. We're all supposed to take vows of poverty. Well, how well did that work in the Catholic Church?

You have centuries of priests and nuns taking vows of poverty, did that, did that somehow exempt them from struggling with any other idol? No. I think, I think the scandals in the Catholic Church, and I'm not just picking on the Catholic church here, the scandals across all churches show that even if money is not the idle, there are many, many other things that can rise up and become something that we love more than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, Jesus I think puts his finger here on a particular idol that is particularly potent in our culture. I think materialism is the, um, if I can say this, the opioid epidemic spiritually of, of our culture. I think many, many of us struggle with the place of money and the, and, and, and our desire to have some kind of security and, and get some kind of happiness out of what we own and what we possess. It is a particularly powerful idle in art, particularly in our culture.

I think that's why Jesus uses the opportunity. Even after this man walks away, he impresses upon his disciples how dangerous and idle materialism is where this stunning word picture in verses 23 and 25 it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Now, let the force of that hyperbolic comparison fall upon you the same way it did. The disciples, it stunned them. Don't explain it away.

There've been people in the history of the church. You try to explain that. The most common one I see from time to time as, oh, what that really means is there was a particular gate in the wall of Jerusalem and it was a really low gate.

It was called the eye of the needle gates, and so a camel could get through it, but a camel had to get down on its knees to get through it, and that just shows you gotta be really humbled to enter the Kingdom of Heaven where there's no archeological evidence to back that up. There is no evidence at all to support that opinion. This word. Picture means what it means.

Jesus is taking the largest moving object in his, his day a camel, and he's talking about it going through the smallest object, the smallest opening that could be seen with a human eye in his day. The eye of a needle is like us saying, hey, take that cement truck and move it through that cheerio. That's the kind of image. What does it conjure up in your mind that that's totally impossible. And that is exactly where Jesus wants to bring this man and his disciples and you and me. It is impossible.

It is impossible to be saved hanging on to something like our wealth as our God. And by the way, the implications of what he says here, it goes far beyond the issue of wealth. Jesus doesn't just have an issue where the wealth, anything that we, that we love more than God, anything that we cling to or rely upon or put our confidence in more than God, anything that stands in the way of our willingness to follow Jesus unconditionally puts us in that same category.

So that leads us back to the beginning. The wrong question. The wrong question is what must I do to inherit eternal life? If by asking that question you are asking like I think this man was asking, tell me the good things I need to do so I merit so I am found worthy of salvation. Give me the checklist, tell me what exactly I need to do and I will do it. If we ask that question like that which many of us by default want to ask. That's the question I was asking as a young man.

If we asked that question or that kind of heart, we are asking the wrong question because if we really want to know what does it take to be good enough to get into heaven, there is only one answer. Verse 27 with man, it's impossible. If you want to know what it takes to be good enough to get into heaven, take that cement truck and try to drive it through the opening in a cheerio. That is the comparison here. William Lane says it like this. A little more scholarly.

Salvation is completely beyond the sphere of human possibilities. Every attempt to enter the kingdom on the basis of our achievement, of our merit, of our goodness is futile and that leads them. Finally, his disciples in verse 26 to finally ask the right question, well, who then can be saved? And when you come to the place where you're asking that question, where you realize I am not good enough, this is impossible, how will I ever be be right in God's eyes?

How will I ever enter heaven on my own? I bring nothing but my sin to the foot of the cross. Then you're at the place where you are asking the right question. How then can I be saved to which Jesus replies in Verse 27 with man, with with us, it is impossible but not with God. All things are possible with God. Jesus brings is again face to face or that truth that is throughout scripture that you and I are completely dependent upon God to save us. We are blind in our sin.

We are blind even in our of our own goodness. We are blind and our ability to see God's offer of mercy and grace through Christ. And if we are to be saved as John Records in John Three we must be born from above. God must do is gracious work. Even the faith Paul says in Ephesians two that we need to respond to God's gracious work through Christ is a gift from God.

So there's more in this text than I, I'm going to have to put that off until next week, but I just want to use this opportunity to ask you where you are this morning with this. I wonder how many people here this morning are like I was as a young man growing up with somehow is skewed standard that yeah, I want to be right with God.

I want to know that I'm going to heaven and, and, and you've gotten off course like I got off course thinking it's a matter of being a good boy or good girl, a good son or a good daughter. It's a matter of doing what our parents told us or our teachers tell us.

I wonder how many of you we even have carried that into your adulthood and much of the reason even you go through many of the obligations in your life and and and you function, the way you do is, is, is, is, is really, even if you don't speak it out loud as subconscious desire to be good enough. I wonder how many of you play that comparison game. Yeah, I think I'm okay because I look around me and so many people are not good.

I looked pretty good in comparison and if that is you this morning, you may leave here, not really sure that you are saved and Jesus extends to you the opportunity. Even this morning you can, you can lay down all those claims to goodness. You can accept, my goodness. You can come follow me. I wonder beyond that, I wonder how many of you here this morning are like this man and this man wrestles with materialism and Jesus brings that up in the, in front of him and maybe it's materialism for you.

Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's relationships. Maybe it's sexuality, maybe it's your career goals or whatever it may be, but Jesus is raising up before you. You have another God. You have something else in your life that you love more than me, and yet he extends the same offer to you and to me that he extends to this man. Leave it. In other words, open your grip. Don't try to cling to it. Don't try to make it more important. Leave it and come follow me.

I want to give you the opportunity to even this morning as we close in prayer, you can do business with the Lord Jesus even this morning. And if you realize that you're, uh, you're, you're spiritually is, is based on some false concept of goodness, a superficial view of goodness, you can confess that even this morning as we pray and you can embrace Jesus in all of his mercy and all of his grace.

If you're here this morning and the Lord has has used what Jesus has said here to convict you, that you are hanging on to something, whether that is your, your material goods or our relationship or whatever it may be. You, you can open up your hand. You can open up your grip this morning. You can respond to Jesus. Yeah, I want to, I want to release my grip. I want to come follow you.

You love us out or your love for, draw us to you out of your love. Lord, help us to release our grip on anything we're clinging to more than you and follow you out of your love. Lord, draw us out of any perception that we, that we become accepted by you, by being good out of your love. Show us your goodness for us. We pray that you would do the work in each of our lives that your spirit desires to do. We pray this, that you would be lifted up before our people. Amen. Wow.