We'll stand, if you will, for the reading of God's word and recognition that it's more than the writings of man. We're reading in Mark 10, beginning in verse 17. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, Be pleased to grant that our hearts and minds would be present, attentive to what you would say. Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. Amen. 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 eternal 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 for 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 this 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. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the 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? And Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. And Peter began to say to him, See, we've left everything and followed you. And Jesus said, Truly I say to you, There is no one who's left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands from my sake and 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 the many who are first will be last, and the last first. Please take your seats. In the year 2004, Nancy and I traveled to Peru as a part of our official responsibilities to provide pastoral support for the missionaries that were working there. Some of the missionaries from our congregation were serving in the city of Cusco. And while we were there, they took us to visit various families. One of them was Marcella and George. And we traveled to their home by taxis. If you've ever been in that part of the world, these little teacup taxis, we were crammed in, sitting on each other's laps. The roads were dirt-packed, deeply rutted, enormous potholes in them. When we came to the front door, we knocked, and as the door opened, we walked down a set of steps into an open courtyard. It was below the street level. It was open to the sky. There were chickens and a dog roaming around. And there were rabbits and guinea pigs in cages. They were not boys and girls pets. They were a source of protein for the family. This was both the kitchen and the laundry room. And then we were invited inside to the interior. It was a single room. It was 10 by 12. There were no windows. It was lit by a single fluorescent bulb. There were bunk beds on one wall, a double bed on another. Eight people lived in this space. And Marcella's children wanted to sing to the guests. And so she, along with the missionaries' children, they sang to us for half an hour. We sat on little wooden stools on a dirt floor. I know almost no Spanish at all, so there's only a phrase or two once in a while I would recognize. But I looked around my wandering eye and saw the poster, the alphabet of the human body up on the walls. Marcella would do whatever it took to give her children an education. We were warmly greeted. by them when we came to their home, and they hugged us as we left. It is the poorest home I have ever been in, in the north or southern hemispheres. Amid oppressive poverty and bleak futures, we encountered in this home not hopelessness, but an unearthly joy and a profound contentment. That visit raised deep questions for me. Are our lives with every material benefit better than Marcellus? And we have more, but are we as content? Do we even approach her level of contentment? How could this woman, whose entire home was smaller than many bedrooms in our homes, could actually be happier than I was? Are the material advantages always the advantages that we imagine in life? It's not that Marcella was not aware that other people were better off than she. In fact, Cusco, there are many, many middle class people, and there are not a few very wealthy people. And it's not that she didn't desire what every parent desires for their children, that they would have a better life than she did. But this experience just raised this question I couldn't shake. Could there be a downside to having so much? Well, this morning in our text, Jesus is approached by a rich man. Jesus is on the way to the cross, and the man comes to Jesus as an equal. He's a good man. Jesus, the rabbi, is a good man. And what happens in this conversation is entirely shocking and surprising. And Jesus, instead of reducing the tension that grows in this conversation, he only heightens it. Let's enter the text. The man whose stories told in the other gospels was young, a ruler, as well as rich. And when he approaches Jesus, he bows, which is a sign of deep respect for a rich man to show to a rabbi. And he asks, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? As he thinks about eternal life, there are things that are required of him, just as there might be for someone who is going to inherit an estate, certain conditions that need to be met, certain obligations. And so the rich man wants to know what it is, what it is that will be required of him so that he can be confident that he will enter into the next world, to the next life, to life that will last forever with God. In all of Galilee, no one had ever raised such a penetrating question with Jesus. And Jesus' response is, why do you call me good? Only God is good. Jesus points the man to God and then he asks him, has he kept the commandments? He lists off some of the 10 commandments and then he adds in the mix a commandment that's not in the 10, but is in the Old Testament asking, has he defrauded the poor? And the man says, yes, I've kept all of these. What he's saying is what any devout Jewish boy would say. Well, you know, from the time of my bar mitzvah, when I became a son of the commandments, when I assumed the full adult responsibilities to keep the law, he had never violated any of the commandments intentionally. He had done what was required. This is what Paul means when he writes that he was blameless in accordance with the law. And with a look of love in his eyes, Jesus says, one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and then come follow me. He's given five commands. Go, sell, give, come, follow. And a promise. And then you will have treasure in heaven. Now, Mark describes the man's response with a very strong word here. It means both shock and gloom simultaneously. The man is just appalled by what Jesus says to him. He's both surprised, and he finds what Jesus said incredible, but also alarming. And his intentions toward Jesus are displayed by what he does. He just walks away. He has no intention of following Jesus. Now, the irony of this is probably lost on us often because, well, we read these passages kind of in little chunks. But what happens immediately before this is that the little children have approached Jesus. And what Jesus is saying is that the man who possesses everything lacks something, but the children who possess nothing, are not told that they lack anything, but rather that the kingdom of God is theirs. When you put these together, what Mark wants you to see is that it's only when the man sells everything, only when he's as vulnerable as a child, will he possess everything. Just what in the world is going on here? Jesus loves this man by putting his finger on the deepest impulses of his heart. His love of wealth, the real estate and the liquidity that he has, undoubtedly, his business and the future earnings he will accumulate. And Jesus is saying, your life is not to be measured by the accumulation of things. And Jesus is also showing us that what you love is what controls you. Whether you're a religious person or not, whether you regularly attend religious services or not, we all worship something. And whatever you worship controls you. Whatever controls you is your God. Jesus loves the man by showing him what, in fact, he really loves. What, in fact, actually controls him. You see, if God is not your chief treasure, why would you want to enter eternal life and spend all of time with him? Jesus is saying something else here. The call to follow Jesus is not something you add to your life. It's not an additional obligation. You don't take a moral person and an outwardly good person, and add Jesus to their life, and then they receive eternal life. No, the call of Jesus judges and replaces and subordinates all obligations and allegiances to himself, to the one who calls you to follow. Jesus is indirectly asking to be this man's chief love. Jesus is offering himself as a substitute for the man's riches. Jesus is asking this man to make him his chief love. He's offering himself as the substitute for his riches. And if you're here and you're not a Christian, we're just honored that you're here with us today. You need to understand first and foremost that following Jesus is not about a lifestyle. It's not about making certain changes in how you live. It's not about adding this and subtracting that. No, it's about the deepest desires and affections of your heart. It's about what will control you. It's about what you delight in. Religion's a matter of doing. It's about doing the right thing. And it leaves people ultimately unchanged. It doesn't change us. But Christianity is not about doing, it's about delighting. And when we delight in the Lord Jesus Christ, it changes us from the inside out. It changes the very core of who we are. Now, the disciples are watching all of this, and Jesus takes the initiative to speak to them, perhaps because of the expression on their faces, or maybe even their jaws have fallen open by this exchange. Jesus says how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples are amazed. Because they and Jewish society held that wealth was a sign of the blessing of God. A reading of the Old Testament strongly suggests that wealth is a gift. It's an affirmation of that a person is walking with God faithfully and covenant with him. And now Jesus says it's a hindrance. And then Jesus continues, and he begins to speak about needles and camels. Now, the camel was the largest common animal in Palestine, and needles were the smallest common hole. Now, you may have heard somebody talk about this passage, and I can tell you in the history of the church, people have gone to great lengths to explain away what Jesus is saying. And maybe you heard this. Sometimes people say, well, there was really a gate. somewhere in Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle. And if a camel got down on its knees and it wiggled its way through, the way you might crawl through a cave, it could get in. It's difficult. We'll admit it's difficult, but it's not impossible. That's not what Jesus is saying. Such a gate didn't exist in the Middle Ages. There was no such gate when Jesus was speaking. Jesus is speaking of what is impossible, not a difficult thing, an impossible thing. And this causes the disciples to be even more amazed. They're just utterly astonished. Who can be saved then? Why? Well, they're not as wealthy as this rich man who wouldn't follow Jesus, but they belong to a culture, a society. that evaluates wealth in such a way that sees it as completely good. And Jesus is challenging this. He's challenging one of their core beliefs about life. And these words ought to sober every person who's sitting in this room, because we are among the wealthiest people who've ever lived in the history of the world. If you don't think that, it's because you're comparing yourself to the people who have a little bit more than you. Most of you don't compare yourself to Warren Buffett or Jeff Bezos. You just look down the street or across the hall in your office and you see the people who drive a nicer car, have a bigger home, take better vacations than you do. And you say, I'm just in the middle compared to those people. But we just take for granted so much about our lifestyles, that we should be in a climate-controlled environment at home, that we should have access, well, to almost bountilous food and to eat fruits and vegetables out of season. We just take that as normal. I don't think you have to wait until harvest to have that. We expect to find it on the shelves in the grocery store. We just take it for granted that we should be able to take a trip of 500, 1,000 miles in a day, or even a few hours with air travel. We just assume everyone should be able to do that. We just take for granted all the technology that surrounds us. No other generation in history's had these things. And we have so much more. We ought to be sober because we live in the most materialistic culture that's ever existed. And it's harder for us to enter the kingdom of God than poor Marcella and George. We have every advantage but one. You see, the fallen human heart gravitates toward loving the creature, the creation, rather than the creator. We prefer the visible to the invisible, the sensual to the spiritual, the temporal to the eternal. And Jesus' last words are, with man this is impossible, but not with God. You see, it's impossible for us to free ourselves from our idolatry, from the things that crowd our hearts and seek our love. Only God can set us free. Wealth is a great danger to everyone who follows Christ. It's a great danger to faith. But Jesus doesn't categorically condemn wealth. He's not saying that poverty's a good thing. but the rich man's wealth controls him. It has absolute hold on his life, and it prevented him from doing the one thing necessary for him to enter salvation. You see, anything that causes you, if you're a Christ follower, to forget your spiritual poverty, and your childlikeness before God will prevent you from following Jesus Christ. It is the camel before the eye of the needle. Or to put it a different way, the greatest enemies to faith and obedience are self-satisfaction and pride. Self-satisfaction and pride. And nothing removes them more effectively than poverty. But Jesus is saying something still more. It is a mercy to know that you and I are utterly incapable of following Jesus. Jesus wants to draw us away from any and all trust in ourselves and our abilities, and trust entirely in Him as our Savior. Jesus is revealing the utter futility of human effort before God. In other words, you cannot be good enough for God. You can't, through your life, through your sacrifice, through your obedience, deserve from God life. Salvation is a gift. Empty hands alone can receive it. And empty hands is precisely what rich people lack. Their hands aren't empty. That's why it's hard for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven. But God in his grace gives what he requires, and so there's hope. God gives us the ability to turn away from lesser things. Peter turns to Jesus and says, we've left everything. And Jesus says all the sacrifices that Peter and the others make for the sake of Christ will be rewarded. A hundred times as much in this world, along with persecutions and eternal life in the next. Jesus is saying something really radical here that Our most natural instinct of relationships and allegiances to our families, to our homes, to a place, our fields must be forsaken. For the call of Christ takes priority over all of them and requires us to sever all these allegiances. And yet, paradoxically, If you let go of everything, you receive everything, even in this life. Now, don't misunderstand. To follow Jesus isn't an insurance policy against adversity and hardship. In fact, suffering for the sake of Christ is not a sign of divine abandonment. It goes hand in hand with following a Savior who was persecuted and crucified. But if you're here and you haven't made a decision about Jesus Christ, I want you to know that you're not going to miss out, that the blessing of God is far greater than anything you would give up. We've experienced this. In 1986, my work at a neighboring church was coming to an end. My need to be there was gone. And for a year, We tried in every way to stay in Maryland. We knocked on doors and I sent resumes and I networked and I pled. But in the end, we moved 500 miles away. From everything that was familiar, from parents, from our children having grandparents, to our friends, and it was hard. It was really hard to go and live in a place where no one knew us, except what they knew about us was that we were Yankees and we didn't belong there. They've reminded us of that quite regularly. You know, it's hard to calculate the feeling of loss, and we had friends who knew, and for the first few years, some of them would actually come and visit with us, and we were grateful for those. But you know, something just as small as to have Your parents watch your children so you could have an evening out together. Well, we would have that twice a year if we hired a babysitter and drove 30 miles back and forth to get them each way. It was hard. It was very hard. Parents weren't with us when our youngest daughter was born. They weren't there, but they came eventually. But God did something extraordinary, and through the years we've seen this. God gave us grandparents. a grandparent named Julia, and Nezi, and Margaret. And he has given us family and friends everywhere we've been. And those relationships remain, they persist. You see, if you think of only the costs and sacrifices, you are missing the point. It would be like a beautiful young woman and a handsome young man coming up to be married, only thinking about the whole time what they're giving up. Let me put it all together. We need to draw all this together. The way to be really rich is to die to wealth. There's three ways you can die to wealth. You can join a commune and renounce all personal property and just share it with other people. Or you can embrace the radical simplicity of asceticism and just give everything away. Jesus is not commending either of these ways, except to this man who can't see how utterly blind he is to the control of wealth in his life. Now, the third way is a life of stewardship. God owns everything. We must give it up and leave everything now because it's his. We give up our claim on what we've accumulated, on what we use, on what we naturally think is our own, and on whatever it is that might come to us. Augustine put it well when he said, the one who gives up both what one owns and what one desires to own gives up the whole world. How can you tell if you've done that? Well, I can tell you it's a lot easier than it sounds. And if you're really young and don't own anything, it sounds really easy. But once you start accumulating things, it gets a lot harder. So Jesus asked the rich young man for it. Can God ask you for what you say is his? It's just that simple. Can God ask from you what you say if you say, I'm living a life of stewardship? Can he ask for it? Can he have it? Well, you might say, how would I know if he's asking for it? This man had Jesus encounter him. Well, God's already gone on record and asked for it. He asks if you're a Christ follower to live a life of generosity like the Macedonian Christians did. Paul describes them this way as they're asked to participate in an offering for other poor Christians who are experiencing poverty because of a famine. He says, Among the churches of Macedonia, in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, and I can testify beyond their means of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in this offering. Not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then by the will of God to us. And writing to this other church, he says, but as you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in earnestness, and in our love for you, see that you excel in the act of giving. Are you growing in the grace of giving? To grow in the grace of giving means to give till it makes a difference in how you live. Or to put it a different way, till it hurts, till it affects your lifestyle. It means you don't buy that car, you can't own that home, you can't take the vacation that all your non-Christian friends and neighbors can. That's what it means to give. Why would a Christian give this way? Well, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich. Amen. Let's pray. Gracious Lord Jesus, It's hard for us. These are very sobering words for us. Lord, it's easy for us to fool ourselves in these words, Pierce, for they topple our cherished priorities and they demand new ones. Lord, you're asking us. to yield to you the things we would keep, so that you might give to us things we cannot imagine. Oh Lord, grant us grace to do this, to give up not just possessions, but people and places and even our lives, if you ask for this. knowing that you will give us far more and in the world to come eternal life. Amen.