Mark in chapter 10. We're looking at a man that asks an extremely important question. How do I get into the kingdom of God? Now, I'll have to confess to Gene out here, as we were in Bible study this morning, and we were in the book of Matthew, we were trudging along through those text and stuff, and I kept thinking to myself, slow down, slow down, or you're gonna get to my sermon. It was the very next text that we were going to read, and so thankfully we didn't get there. I thought, I'm gonna have to do my sermon in here, and then do my sermon again, and we'll already have all the stuff out there. But we stopped, praise the Lord, right before the rich, young ruler. in the story of this incredible encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. We know in kind of the setting that we're getting into as we know truly that even from the very birth of Christ he was already headed in one direction and that was to the cross in Jerusalem from the moment he was born. But here in this particular text he is very close to coming in. He's very very close to that time where he's gonna sit down with his disciples for the last supper and express to them again the sufferings of Christ to get them to try to understand what is the purpose, what is the reason for all of this. And just before he does, he ends up in this particular encounter of a man coming to him and begging him to tell him, how can I get into the kingdom of heaven? What must I do? And so we're gonna see today how this man really represents us in a lot of ways. In the way that we approach what might be the wrong way to ask the question. And so we'll look at that. So Mark chapter 10, starting with verse 17, and reading through verse 31. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 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. And he said to him, teacher, all these I've kept from my youth. And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, you lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. Disheartened by the saying he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions and Jesus looked around and said to his disciples How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God and the disciples were amazed at his words But Jesus said to them again children how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God and It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. Peter began to say to him, see, We have left everything and followed you. Jesus said, truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time. Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this encounter, I pray that you would help us to see the eagerness of this young man, that we too might be eager in regard to the kingdom. And yet also allow us to see this man as ourselves, that we might be asking the wrong question. And so, Father, allow the Spirit that does linger continually with us until the end to change us, to address these questions that we have, to teach us from your Word the truth. Because, Father, there is a truth. All things are possible with you. All things are possible with you. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, we look back in verse 17 at this young man. We want to try to get an idea of who he is and maybe where he's coming from, from what we find here. We go back and we see that Jesus is walking along. He's traveling, continuing his way to the cross. And this young man comes up to him in a very eager manner and bows down to him quickly. He's the type of man, and probably the circumstances well, lends him to stand out in the crowd. I mean, after all, if you're walking along with Jesus and you're seeing the things that he's doing and you're wanting to listen to him speak, and then all of a sudden this person comes running, as it says, toward Jesus and kind of slides in on his knee and reaches up to ask a question. I think that would get our attention. Wow, what's this guy doing? How does he have the privilege to go run up to Jesus and throw his hands up and demand an answer? Well, this might be just who this person was. We are told and recognized that the titles of sections aren't necessarily inspired in your scripture. It's just to give us an idea of what's next. But yours may say, the rich young ruler. Or it may say, as mine does in the ESV, the rich young man. It doesn't necessarily identify him as a ruler. But we can kind of get an idea of his description and how he's responding to Jesus about some of his characteristics. And I think we're going to find that maybe we even have some of these. First of all, he's prosperous. How many of you are prosperous today? Okay, just raise your hand. Goodness. You may not be prosperous in consideration to your neighbor who owns a thousand acres of cattle and a large house and all of that, but let me tell you today, you are the richest people in the world. I don't care where you are financially. You're prosperous. And we also know that if we're in Christ, we're extremely prosperous, amen? regardless of our finances. But this was a prosperous man. We know it doesn't really matter in regard to his entry of how he comes to the Lord, but if we look back at other texts from other books of the scripture, we find that he's probably well-dressed. And so as he comes running up and slides up into Jesus on his knee, he stands out in the crowd. He was also probably a man who was principled. As we find out in the story, he's a man that follows the rules. I like a guy who follows the rules. He's very unlike me. I generally don't like following rules. I think all of us feel that way. Amen? When people come and say, you gotta do this, and you gotta do that, and you gotta do this other, and I think all of us just looking around are already going, no. Not doing that. We're not following that rule. But this was a man who followed the rules because Jesus said, hey, if you want to do this, there's some rules to follow. And the guy says, I've already done those rules. So he's a man of integrity. And I truly believe within our church body here, we have a lot of men of integrity. And that type of person stands out in the crowd today because there's very little integrity in our world today. He was probably also a man who was personable. We pick that up from the fact that, you know, the way he approached Jesus. He knew to come in and to bow down. He knew to speak of him as a good teacher, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. He knew how to approach this person, and he's probably a person that in his particular position had to be personable with other folks. I find myself trying to be in that same situation as I work, and I have a lot of clients that call me during the day. And sometimes they get really, really mad at me about things that are going on. And the whole time, I'm just, yes, sir. Yes, sir, I understand. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I feel your pain, and we're going to do what we can to take care of it. I'm trying to be as personable as I can instead of going, look, it's not my problem, and just hang up on them. This guy stood out because he was personable. Do you find today that there's not many personable people? You know, it used to be said about the South, you could walk through the South and by the time you got to the end of the block, you had ten new friends. Because everybody, they would walk across the street to come meet you, not knowing who you were. Then I went up to New Jersey for boot camp in New Jersey and had the opportunity between my boot camp and the extra training I had to go walk around the local town. I thought somebody hated me. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody would even look at me. I even wanted to go up to people and say, hey, my name's Mark. How are you? And I thought, that might not be a good idea. But this guy, he was personable. He knew how to approach people. And then the greatest thing was there was this eagerness about him. I mean, can you imagine the crowd by now that was surrounding Jesus? People had already realized that if I could just get in close to this guy, if I could just touch him, if I could hear a word, or if by chance he would turn and actually talk to me, there must have been a huge crowd around Jesus. Then all of a sudden to have someone in the crowd go rush in toward him and bow down before him, it showed an eagerness in him to get an understanding of this question he had from Jesus. I just want to pause there for a minute from the sermon and kind of break out for a second on a rabbit trail. Folks, if we truly love the Lord, There must be a spirit of eagerness about us to know Him. Now, I'm not saying just to know Him for eternal salvation. We can all get our get-out-of-hell-free card and then basically decide we don't need to know anymore. That's not a man or woman of God. Just like this person, every morning you should run towards your Bible and slide up to it and grab it and open it up and ask Jesus a question. Because He will answer it. His Word is the truth. And I tell you, I have lived with people who have been in church longer than I've been alive. who have been leaders in their church, who couldn't tell you if Matthew was an actual book in the Bible. There was no eagerness. If there's not an eagerness about you in knowing Jesus, you need to be asking some serious questions. This man had eagerness. He was also a spiritual man. How do we know that? Well, he described himself as being religious. After all, he not only knew the rules, he said he obeyed them all, even from his youth. So he was very spiritual in what he did, in the way that he acted. So we have a prosperous, principled, personable, spiritual man who is standing out among the crowd asking Jesus a question. This is a great guy. I mean, just think, if someone like this walked in the church, immediately we would want them in our Bible study. That's a great guy. We'd find out some committee to put him on. Hey, we need help in this area. What are your talents? And by that time he realized what's going on, he goes, I don't have any talents. I'm not getting on those committees. Can you imagine the disciples listening to this guy? Thought, hey, maybe guys, we ought to ask him on to our team. He looks pretty good. He's got all the right questions. Oh my goodness, he's followed all the rules. This is an outstanding guy. Well, at the end of the story, we find out things don't work out so well. So I say all that to say this, just because you might have all those characteristics, you might be principled, you might be prosperous, you might be spiritual, you might be personable, it has absolutely nothing to do with your eternal salvation. It has to do with who you are in Christ alone, in Him alone. Now again, when we read other sections of the New Testament, we discover that There are a lot of people that had encounters with Jesus, and I picked this particular one because this one happens to be different than all the others. We say, how is it different? Well, all of the other stories and encounters that I see in the scriptures with Jesus, everybody comes in sad and leaves happy. This is the only account that I can find where someone comes in happy and leaves sad. So something serious happens in this encounter that's counter to all of the other encounters with Christ. Verse 17, we go back there again, which starts our text, we find out that he has a great concern. He's very sincere. He's falling all over himself to ask Jesus a question. What is that question. Well, he wants to know, how do I enter the kingdom of God? What do I do to enter the kingdom? How do I get there? What do you want me to do, Jesus? I'm a man who does a lot of things. I follow rules. I obey them all. I know there's got to be a way I can do something then to get into The kingdom. You know, it would be no surprise if we called up someone and we said, hey, I'd like to talk to you about getting into the kingdom of heaven. And they would basically answer us, well, then what do I need to do? It's just the way that we're wired. We think that there's something that we need to do as that process happens. So we recognize he's a good guy and he's got a great question. But then we see that there's a reply. And so let's go back and let's look at that specific reply that Jesus has. He says to him, when the man goes up to him, he says, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit life? Now, that's a pretty straightforward question. Don't you think it would go straight to the answer? Well, here's what you need to do. You need to follow the laws. Do this, do that, do this other. But all of a sudden, Jesus puts this answer in here that doesn't fit necessarily the question nor the circumstances. He first answers him, why do you call me good? What's your point for calling me good? You know, Jesus has a way of stopping people in their tracks. Think about any of the encounters that we have in the Bible where someone's meeting Jesus, or better yet, Jesus goes to meet someone. Think about the woman at the well. She comes to get a drink of water. He has no intention of talking about water. She wants to draw out from the well. You don't even have a bucket, Jesus, and he just bypasses that and says, yeah, but you've had five husbands and you've got somebody living with you now that's not your husband. And oh my goodness, where did that come from? It's because Jesus wanted to stop people in their tracks. He has a way when he speaks. that He halts the things that we're thinking of and gets us on track with the way that we should be thinking. So I say that to say this in application. When you're reading the Word of God, recognize that the text is meaning to shock you. Literally, to take you by surprise. Father, I'm struggling with this. I really have a problem in forgiving. I just don't know what to do. Would your word please show me what I should do?" And then the word says, forgive him or you will not be forgiven. Ooh, wait a minute. I didn't want to go there. Jesus has a way of stopping us in our tracks and he does this young man, he says, why do you call me good? For there's no one good but God. Now, there was a philosophical question in there the man didn't get. And there's one there that we need to see. And that answer that he gave in the philosophical question is this, is Jesus God? Amen, He is God. So then is Jesus good? Yes, Jesus is good. Then why would He say He's not good? Because He's getting to the base of the problem. The guy doesn't need to do something to get into heaven. He needs to recognize who Jesus is to get into heaven. And he's saying, I'm not good, I'm not going to let you, man, infallible man, make the proclamation that I'm God. I will declare that of myself on my own terms. See, this guy didn't even know all this teaching was going on at the moment. And then he says, only God is good. And he's basically telling him, so if you're saying I'm good, you must be proclaiming that I'm God. But it just completely flies over the guy's head. He thinks, uh-oh, I've offended this guy by calling him good. And so when he goes back and asks him again, he calls him teacher. He leaves off the good. He's a smart guy. He leaves off the word good. So we see this as the kind of fellow that has the right question. He wants into eternal life. We see that maybe he takes a different approach than most should, and then we also learn in what he said that we need to be careful about the question. The question's not, what should I do? But who should I know? And what should I know about Him? And that goes back to my eagerness. You can do all things and completely miss heaven. You can come into this church building. You can drop off a tithe in the bowl. You can bring special offerings to Lottie Moon Christmas offering or Annie Armstrong Easter offering. Some of those things you're going, what in the world are those? Just be here long enough, you'll figure it out. You can pray for missionaries on a daily basis. You can go out and give money to our girls in Haiti to take care of the orphans. You can do all of those things and you can completely miss heaven because you've asked the wrong question. The question is, who is Jesus and what is he in your life? Are you eager to know that? Well, then we go on with the story. I'm just gonna put these notes away. Let's dig in. So, he says, no one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do you honor your father, or do, excuse me, I missed a sentence here, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. So he goes into what this man knows, and he says, here's how you do this, you need to do this and this and this and this and this. What is Jesus doing here? He's laying out a to-do list for this man. This is the wrong answer. It's not about a to-do list. We just said that. Why is He giving him a to-do list? Because it's the only way this person can think. He grew up as a Jew. He knew he had to do these commandments. He's busy doing the commandments. He must be able to get into eternal life, right? Jesus says, yes, just do these things. And then the man has the gall to say, hey, I've been doing these things, I've been doing them since my youth. So Jesus has him right where he wants him. I can tell you, family, that you can do all these things and you will never find peace in them. I have the unfortunate circumstances to watch a young man who's doing and doing and doing and doing and doing, and every time I talk to him, he is sad and depressed. But he's doing a lot of things. He's doing a lot of good things. He's doing some bad things, but he's doing a lot of good things. So Jesus wants to put him on his level. Where's the man thinking? He's thinking he can do good. Okay, have you done all these? Yes, I've done all these. What's your list? I guarantee you, you have a list. Every one of us fall into the pit of thinking, if I'll just go visit these people, God will be more happy with me. If I go mow that guy's lawn, I'll get a checkmark on the board with Jesus. If I go do this other, you don't think you think that? You do. How do I know that? Because I do. Even as a pastor, I fall into the problem of thinking, man, I got to go do that. But then when I think about my motive for doing it, it's all messed up. But he wants the guy to see the failure. by telling him first, man, you're a good guy. You've done all these things. Let's keep going. And he said to him, teacher, so he dropped that good part, all these things I've kept for my youth. And Jesus, looking at him, loved him. Let's stop right there. Jesus looked at him, and he loved him. How can Jesus look at a disobedient lost man and love him? It's because the scripture tells us that God loves the whole world. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter the rules you followed. It doesn't matter the rules you've broken. It doesn't matter the good things that you're going to do tomorrow. It doesn't matter the fact that you don't end up doing them tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Jesus loves you. And He loved this man. Now, there should have been a discussion going on. Maybe Mark could have written this out a little bit better for us and given us some sort of information as to why Mark writing this, most likely through the word of Peter, Peter giving him tales of what happened and Mark writing this, that Peter must have said, yeah, Jesus looked at him and you could just see Jesus' eyes. You could see his demeanor. You could hear Peter saying, that guy was so messed up, like Peter's not. And yet Jesus loved him. How did Peter know that? Three denials and Jesus loved him back. The story here is, is no matter where you are today, Jesus loves you. He loves all of creation. But it says, he loved him and said to him, you lack one thing. Oh, you missed one. You missed just one. Now he's fixing to get to the heart of the matter. You've done all these things, go and do one more. Can you imagine the excitement on this guy's face? Oh my goodness, I've done them all. Only got one more to go. Give it to me, Jesus. Let me know what it is. This is that disruption I talked about when you read God's Word. This is where it's fixing to hit him right in the face. He says, go. Go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. and come, follow me. Go and sell everything you have." Now, isn't it interesting that so many people can read the scriptures, and they will read these stories from a literal standpoint. Literal, literal, oh, he said this, that's literal. Oh, he said this, that's literal. Oh, he said, go sell everything and give it to the poor. Oh, that's figurative. That's figurative. He didn't really mean that. He was just saying, oh, do this, you know, have a heart change. No, he wasn't figurative. He was literal. He was saying, go change your life and do it so by selling everything. Well, God would never call me to do that. Oh, please. Don't tell me that God would never call you to something. God called a man to marry a whore and chase her around the city and take her back over and over and over and over again. God let a man into Egypt to be able to bring the people out, stand before the king when he couldn't speak and tell him over and over again that he needed to let the people go, knowing good and well he was never going to do it. So much so that even his own people got mad at him because it made it harder for them. Don't tell me that God won't call you to a western church that's got about twelve people in it and eleven of them don't like each other and the twelfth one never shows up. Don't tell me that he won't put you in a place where you have to have a struggle with your family, that your finances are just total wreck, you can't keep up with things. Don't tell me he won't call you. to those things. Because he will. And please don't ever tell him not to call you into those circumstances. Because that's when he really will. I was told by two of my best friends, is God, or asked, is God calling you to be a pastor? I said, absolutely not. Where did you get that from? Well, it just kind of feels that way. Well, you need to stop feeling Because I am not being called to be a pastor. Be careful what you tell God He can't call you to. Go give up everything is not a figurative statement. He knew the only way for this man to understand what the real problem was is that he needed to give up everything. Now listen, He didn't just say go sell everything. He said, go sell everything and give it to the poor. What's he saying? He's saying, change your life and then be obedient to my calling. We are supposed to take care of the orphans and the widows. So you can't just go out there and say, well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give up my fishing kayak. Going to do it. I'm not going to go fishing on that thing anymore, I'm going to do it for the Lord." It won't do you a bit of good, unless you come to a point of obedience in Christ. He could have sold everything, but if he hadn't given it to the orphans, he was being disobedient. When God calls us to something, to do something, it's so that we can be obedient. Why does He have us preach the gospel when He already has chosen before time began? What's the point? Obedience? For His glory, because He said it would go all over the world? And for whatever reason, He gave it to stupid people to go give it? That didn't make sense at all. Why not have the angels come down and do it? Man, that would affect people. Whoa! Don't be afraid. I've got good news. I'm in your area today from 9 to 10. Let's talk. That would have made a bigger difference. But he gave it to us. Why? For obedience. And he says, you need to go and you need to give up everything. You need to sell it all and you need to be obedient. Be obedient. But he didn't stop there, did he? And then he says, then come follow me. Come follow me. Why come follow him? Do we literally need to be at the foot of Jesus to be a believer? Well, the quick answer to that is yes, we do. Okay. Let's just put it that way. Okay. A different answer is, is you can be wherever God's put you physically in this temporal sense and be a believer in Him. Well, how do I follow Him then? You follow Him because you believe Him. You believe Him and it's proof because you're following Him. There are so many people in the church today, and I mean in the church today, who believe in Jesus, but they're not following Him. Because I've got too many people coming to me and say, I'm struggling with this, and I'm struggling with that, and I'm struggling with this other. And you go, well, let's go into the Word. OK, well, the Word says this. Well, I'm not doing that. No, uh-uh. Submit to who? No way. Not submitting to that guy. But that's what the Word says. That's all right. I'm just going to believe in Jesus. Well, you just go right on believing in Jesus. It's not going to get you there, because I am absolutely, perfectly comfortable with the fact that what you believe in becomes your walk. And if you're telling me you believe in Jesus, then you walk in Jesus. Or something's broke. Come and follow me. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. The only one that I know of that went away sorrowful from Jesus. He gave him the last thing he needed to do, just do one more, and you're there. And yet he went away sorrowful. He had followed so many rules, but he couldn't follow that one. Why? because it was greater than Jesus. It was greater than Jesus. You've got a lying problem today. You've got a gossiping problem today. You know why you have that problem still? Because it's greater than Jesus. You get more joy out of people taking interest in you than you do in taking interest in Christ. Men, especially, you know why you have a pornography problem today? It's because in what you're seeing is more beautiful than Christ. You can't have anything in front of God and be in Christ. Nothing. Well, I've got family members that have decided this about their lives and it's outside the scripture. What should I do for them? Well, you should love them and pray for them, but you should also disown them. Because if they're not willing to give it up, the scripture is clear. Give them over to Satan. Man, that's tough, isn't it? But if you're gonna put that family member before Christ, Now you're in a tough spot. He's saying, give up those idols. Turn them into obedience. And then follow me so that your obedience is in the right direction. And yet he goes away disheartened. I so wish the scripture would have been clear here in saying, and Jesus still loved him. It doesn't say it, but by other texts within the scripture, I think we can hold it true. Jesus still loved him, even though he was going to miss eternity. Jesus loved him. Jesus looked around his disciples and said, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were amazed at his words. Why is it so difficult for rich people to enter the kingdom of God? It's because we have this thing about possessions. I really don't see anywhere else in the scriptures that says, beware of this, it may keep you out of heaven, except riches. But what do we say? Oh wow, look how much they make, look how much they have. God is really blessing them. Let me tell you something, He may not be. He may be further condemning them. in their own possessions. So don't chase after the American dream. Don't chase after the possessions. Don't go the way of the rich young ruler. Be content in all things, as the Apostle Paul says, knowing that your possessions are great in Christ. Well, I need them now. You're getting them now because what you actually deserve is to be smitten right off the earth. And you're still here. You've received a lot of grace today because He didn't just take this giant thumb and just right to the ground. And the disciples were amazed at his word, but Jesus said to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. There's been about a half million sermons on this particular text, and I won't belabor it, but basically the idea was, is that possibly somewhere in the kingdom in Jerusalem there was a gate that was lower than all the other gates, and when the camels came through, They had to get down on their knees and crawl through the gate because of the possessions they had on their back. The camel had possessions, get it? Had a lot of wealth they're carrying, and the only way they could get in was get down on their knees. It was difficult, okay? I don't know whether it was true or not, but that's a great story, okay? I've never found a fact of it anywhere in the scripture. But here's the point. It's difficult. If you've got idols in your life, it's difficult to get into the kingdom. And he goes on to say, it's not possible by man. You can't get there. How does a dead guy do anything? He doesn't. God must do it, and in God, all things are possible. In him, all things are possible. Then Peter, oh Peter, hmm. Peter, Peter. Peter began to say to him, see, we've left everything, our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children and lands for my sake and for the gospel, or for your sake and for the gospel, Jesus. Peter. He's got a big head. We've left everything. Let me tell you something. Peter left nothing as Jesus expressed to him, and neither have you. You've left nothing. Nothing of consequence. Nothing. Because, as Job found out, you have riches beyond belief in Christ. Not riches, not just riches, but riches in Christ. You must be in Christ. You must be in Him. How do I get in Him? Well, it's not through doing things. Let's go back to the story and apply it now. It's not through doing things. It's in who you think Jesus is and how you're applying Him to your life. Are you giving up your idols? And when you do, does it lead to more obedience? And can you truly say you believe in Jesus by showing me your walk? We just go to the book of James. Show me your faith by what you do, not by what you say. Is that you? You know, maybe you, this week, thought about eternal life. I hope you think about eternal life all the time. Am I getting there? Am I going to be there? Some people come to me and they say, why did you ask my daughter to reconsider her salvation? And I basically just say, are you saved? I'll ask him that question his too. Oh, we shouldn't question our salvation. Yes, you should. Every single day. And then once you question it, you fall back over and say, Jesus, I have faith in you, that what is started in me will be completed by the Father, that you died and you went on the cross for my sins, and that you had covered the wrath that was to come, which is the second death, and that everything is done. I don't know that I'm gonna be saved, but I know you said I'm gonna be saved. I'm gonna sit over here with you. And then tomorrow, get up and do the same thing. Every day, follow Jesus. Not just Sunday, not just Wednesday night.