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This scripture reading this morning
is Luke chapter 19, verses one through 10. The sermon is based
on the preceding chapter, chapter 18, on the account of Christ's
encounter with the rich young ruler. And it is remarkable,
I think, and no accident, that Luke placed these accounts together
like this. Because in the account of the
rich ruler, as we're going to see, here's a man who refused
to follow Christ in the end, give up his treasure and follow
Christ. And then in Zacchaeus, here we
have this man who did follow Christ and give up all. So listen then to this account
of Jesus and Zacchaeus. Luke 19, verse one. He entered
Jericho and was passing through, and there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector
and was rich. And he was seeking to see who
Jesus was. But on account of the crowd,
he could not because he was small of stature. So he ran on ahead
and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about
to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place,
he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down,
for I must stay at your house today. So he hurried and came
down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all
grumbled. He's gone in to be the guest
of a man who's a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood and said
to the Lord, behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the
poor. And if I've defrauded anyone
of anything, I restore it fourfold. And Jesus said to him, today
salvation has come to this house. since he also is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek
and to save the lost." That is the word of God, and we are to
receive it as such. It's an amazing passage, often
kind of trivialized, I think, by us. It's one of, and there's
nothing certainly wrong with teaching our children the account
of Zacchaeus and Jesus, but, I think that often, I know that
I as a kid, you know, you learn the little Sunday school song
about Zacchaeus, the little wee man and so on. But often I think
instruction of the real depth of that passage goes wanting. And we'll plan to look at that
passage in Well, about two weeks. We're only going to look at,
it's gonna take a couple of weeks, including this morning to deal
with Jesus and the rich young ruler. And then after that, I
wanna take a look at Zacchaeus then. Well, let's pray and ask
the Lord's blessing then on the ministry of his word. Father,
Thank you for the scriptures. Thank you for your word. Here
you are, almighty and holy God, so far in majesty above us that
we can't even imagine your glory. And yet you have chosen in your
goodness to not only reveal yourself to us in the creation, and to
create us in the first place, and to not only send your son
then, your own son, into this world, to reveal in person your
godhood. But for us living in later centuries,
you've given us this book. You've given us the scriptures
in which we can meet Jesus and meet you and come to know you
and to hear the good news of salvation and to grow in the
grace of Christ. So thank you for this word, Father,
and we pray that we would come to this book for what it is,
that it is your word. It bears your authority. It is not the mere opinions of
men, but it is you speaking to us from on high. And so Father,
we pray that by faith, we would hear your word and obey you. And we pray this all in Christ's
name, amen. The Apostle John wrote these
words. Do not love the world or the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. For all that's in the world,
the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the
pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away
along with its desires. But whoever does the will of
God abides forever. Well, we're looking at the Gospel
of Luke. And specifically, we're looking
at passages in Luke which speak to this matter of the cost of
following Christ. And under that heading, of course,
the free gift that costs everything, you have to begin to think of
the rich young ruler. We've met him before in our series
that we went through the Gospel of Matthew. It's also an account
that you can find in the Gospel of Mark, each one adding certain
details. So this account, the rich young
ruler, is a record of a man who, unlike Christian that we're seeing
in Pilgrim's Progress, who left the city of destruction gave
up everything to go, this man, as we're going to see, does not
do that. He remains in the city of destruction. I hope that you're finding as
we go through the Gospels And looking at the parables of Jesus
and the teachings of Jesus, that while all scripture is inspired
by God, and all of it is equal for our edification, nevertheless,
there's something about studying and hearing The words of Christ
himself, that's not to say, I should add, by the way, that, for example,
the epistles of the Apostle Paul, those are the words of Christ,
too, every bit as much as these as he inspired the rest of the
New Testament. Nevertheless, there's something
about reading about Christ in the Gospels here that is particularly
particularly powerful, and it's a great place to begin to present
the gospel to someone, to an unbeliever. Well, follow along
then. I'm gonna read from chapter 18,
and we begin at verse 18. I'm gonna read down through verse
30, and you can follow along. It's printed out here in your
handout. And a ruler asked him, asked
Jesus, 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 commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false
witness, honor your father and mother. And he, that is the young
man said, all these I've kept from my youth." When Jesus heard
this, he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that
you have and distribute to the poor and you will have treasure
in heaven and come follow me. But when he heard these things,
he became very sad for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing
that he had become sad, said, how difficult it is for those
who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it's easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
person to enter the kingdom of God. Those who heard it said,
then who can be saved? But he said, what is impossible
with man is possible with God. And Peter said, see, and it's
like, look, we've left our homes and followed you. And he said
to them, truly I say to you, there's no one who has left house
or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the
kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this
time and in the age to come eternal life. Well, we'll plan to deal
more with this business of the eye of the needle and a camel
going through and so forth next time. Both of the Gospels of
Matthew and Mark, as I said, record this event. And if you
look at them, you do pick up on a couple more details, particularly
in their opening verse. In Matthew 19, when the young
man, now here in Luke, he's called a ruler, all right, a ruler.
And then Matthew 19, he's called a young man. And in Mark chapter
10, we're also told not so much about the man himself, but what
he did. Luke just says, a ruler asked
him, good teacher. But Mark tells us, as he, Christ
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 so here it is, you put those
together and you've got the classic name that we give him, the rich,
young ruler. He was extremely rich. He was
a young man. And he was some kind of a ruler
among the Jews. Now, this is a remarkable scene. In today's church, for the most
part, if a person was in a church service, for example, and responded
in the way that this man did, runs up, what must I do to be
saved? They would be pronounced saved, right? Right on the spot,
that would be it, no more questions asked. You have, after all, he's
an extremely wealthy man. He wasn't just rich, he was extremely
wealthy. He enjoyed a high position. He was socially popular. He might have been, we don't
know, a member of the Sanhedrin, some kind of a ruler among the
Jews. And he doesn't just casually
approach Jesus. Here's a man of high respectability,
high office in his community. He's a wealthy person. And the
crowd that was standing around had to be shocked to see a man
like this running up to Jesus and he kneels down in front of
him. And you know, your initial reaction
certainly would be, here's genuine humility. I mean, this guy, this
is faith in salvation. In action, we would have concluded
that, I think, if we would have been watching. But if that would
have been our conclusion, we would have been wrong. Matthew 13 describes what kind
of a fellow this was. As for what was sown on rocky
ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives
it with joy. He has no root in himself. He
endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises,
when following Christ is going to cost something, on account
of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among
the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares
of the world, and here it is, the deceitfulness of riches,
choke the word. and it proves unfruitful. So you hear this man run up to
Jesus, you see him run up to Jesus, he kneels down before
him and he asks a solid question. I mean, how many of us would
be very, very happy to have an unsaved family member, unsaved
friend or neighbor come over, knock on your door in a parent,
some kind of agitated state, what must I do to inherit eternal
life? And it'd be like, man, there's
the opportunity. Surely this guy's gonna get saved
today, you see. It's a good question. It's probably,
I think I heard when R.C. Sproul was preaching on this
passage, he said, this is the most important question a person
can ask. There's no more important question
than this. What must I do to be saved? What
do I have to do to inherit eternal life? Now, we don't know exactly
what this young man was thinking about when he uses this phrase,
inherit eternal life. It's kind of an odd phrase coming
from a Jew of that day. We don't hear that kind of language
much in the scriptures from the Jews, inherit eternal life. They pretty much conceived of
the kingdom of God as being an earthly type thing for the most
part, in which Israel would be like the dominant nation. The Messiah's purpose was to
come and restore the nation Israel and they would be kind of the
top dog. And I'm not sure how far their
thinking went then in respect to the eternality of the kingdom,
though they should have known a lot from their own scriptures
about the fact that the kingdom of the Messiah is an eternal
kingdom. For example, Daniel chapter two. In the days of those kings, this
is Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream. In the days of those kings,
the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be
destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It
shall break in pieces, all these kingdoms, and bring them to an
end, and it shall stand forever. And then in chapter 12 of Daniel,
and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt. So maybe what he is asking Good
probability is when he speaks of eternal life, inheriting eternal
life. Maybe he isn't. What must I do
to be saved? But even then, as we're going
to see, his concept of saved from what is not accurate. Now, we want to give this young
man credit. At this point, he's far, he's
way ahead of most people around us today. I mean, we're surrounded
by people, they're not even concerned to ask this question in the first
place. Yeah, save from what? What do
I need to be, I don't need to be saved from anything. They
just suppress any notion of that, you see. It's always been that
way. Listen to Matthew Henry, way
back in his day, the great thing we are every one of us concerned
to inquire after is what we shall do to get to heaven, what we
shall do to inherit eternal life. This implies such a belief of
an eternal life after this as atheists and infidels have not,
they don't have this, such a concern. to make it sure as a careless,
unthinking world have not, and such a willingness to comply
with any terms that it may be made sure as those who have not,
who are resolvedly devoted to the world and the flesh. That's
kind of his old English language. What he's saying there is that
us as Christians, you know, We are concerned to ask this question,
what shall we do to inherit eternal life? But the rest of the world
is careless and unthinking. They don't give it a regard.
And if any thought of that pops into their mind, what happens
after I die? They suppress it. They work to
suppress it. Now, as a Jew, This young man,
certainly as a ruler of the Jews, he would have regarded himself
as a member of God's chosen people. And, as we're about to see, he
also regarded himself as having done quite a good job obeying
the law. Kind of presents himself as perfect. So, why is he asking the question? We don't know for sure. He comes
and he says, is there anything else I need to do? Any stone
I've left unturned? Just let me know. Now, he might
have been sincere, of course, if he was sincere, he was sincerely
mistaken in this, but he might have been sincere when he's asking
this question. He had, after all, run up to
Jesus in zeal and knelt down then before him, calls him good
teacher, and so on. The problem is, the answer that
he's going to receive is an answer that he did not expect then at
all, you see. Maybe it would have been more
like, well, just, yeah, you know, Fine job, fine job you've done
here. Just one little thing. Actually,
Jesus kind of presents it to him that way before he gives
the answer, but the guy's expecting, he was not expecting the answer
that he received. He will ultimately walk away
from Jesus, unwilling to comply with Jesus' command, And yet
to this point, he was, as we said, far ahead of most people
today. At least he's asking questions.
He goes to Jesus. He goes to him. He went humbly. He went urgently. You might say
from Pilgrim's Progress, this guy came right up to the wicket
gate. He's right there. And then Beelzebub
in his castle, he's gonna shoot an arrow and nail him before
he ever enters in and goes in. And in a way, in a way, it's
Christ that shoots the arrow in a way, or at least gives the
opening. I don't know that's quite accurate
to say, but nevertheless, he does not, he does not enter. Have you ever noticed how often
Jesus, when people will ask him a question, he gives them an
answer that not only did they not expect, but initially when
you read it, you're like, how is that even connected with what
they said, right? So Nicodemus comes up to Jesus
at night and he engages Jesus in some conversation. You know,
we know that you're from God and so on. And then Jesus essentially
says, unless you're born again, you'll never see the kingdom
of God. Boom. And the reason is, that this happens is Jesus
knows our hearts. He knows the real issues and
the real questions, and he gets right to it. He doesn't mess
around, you see. And we have that kind of a thing
here. The man comes up and he asks this question. Well, good
teacher, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus responds to him, Why
do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. When Jesus does this, he really
is answering the question. It's just that he knows what
the question is. He knows what the important question
is, and he gets right to it. The important question here,
an issue in his life that this young man needed to face up to,
is that his real problem is that he had a deficient notion of
goodness. And specifically, he thought
that he himself was good. And he thought that because he's
had a very flawed concept of the goodness of God. That was
his problem. And to a degree, Greater or lesser,
every one of us is probably infected with that, that false thinking
as well, and it's deadly. It is deadly. I mean, really,
how many people who profess to be Christians think that they're in, when you
get right down to it, they might mouth the words about believing
in Jesus and so forth, being saved, but when you get right
down to it, they think, that God approves of them because
they're approvable, that God regards them as good because
they're good, not necessarily perfect, but good enough, a pretty
good person. That same sermon that I listened
to by Sproul, he said, he referred to a poll that was done And by
the way, you can go to the Ligonier site, and they do a far-reaching
poll every year and publish the results. And in this case, the
poll that he was referring to was in regard to what Christians,
people who profess to be Christian, evangelical Christians, have
to say about questions like, do you think that man is basically good? He said 80% of
professing Christians, evangelical Christians, responded yes. That
they think that Man, human beings, there's goodness,
that there is goodness in human beings, in spite of what the
Bible has to say then to the contrary. But this is a soul
killer. It's that idea that worldly wise
men sent Christian over, you go see Mr. Legality over there,
sends him to Sinai. And you know, you're good enough,
you can pull this off. Well, that's what this rich young
man, that's the road he'd gone down. And as I say then, we need
to examine ourselves. Am I really trusting in Christ,
recognizing that there's no good thing in me? in me, of myself, no good thing
in me, but my righteousness then is entirely of Christ, or am
I just kind of, you know, who's the guy that put his thumb in
the pie? Peter Piper, right? And then
he says what? He said, wow, what a good boy
am I. That kind of thinking will send you to hell, right? Because
it is in opposition to trusting in Christ and his righteousness
then alone. So don't skip over that, do some
self-examination there. Am I really trusting in Christ,
or do I think really, you know, I'm a pretty good person. I'm not perfect, but I'm a pretty
good person, and as a result of that, God and I are on good
terms. When you were born into this
world, when I was born into this world, we were enemies of God. We are born in sin. We grew up and we, as we progressed
into childhood, we loved our sin. We hated God. And I would hope that the older,
the longer that you're a Christian, the older in Christ that you
grow, you begin to see increasingly how sinful you are. Any goodness that's in us, any
righteousness that's in us has come to us from Christ. It's
only because that we are in him that there's any goodness then
in us, and that goodness is of him. And we don't like to think
about those things very much, you see. It's easy to think about
that rotten sinner that we see down here and so forth and that
guy, but to regard ourselves as lacking any goodness Well,
that is another matter, you see. Christ is our righteousness,
and Christ then alone. Well, this man, as I said, he
has this deficient notion of goodness, and that's what Jesus,
Jesus sees that immediately, and he addresses it. Why are
you calling me good? He knew the man wasn't, the man's
coming to Jesus as good teacher, okay? He doesn't have the foggiest,
I don't think, that Jesus is God. And so Jesus isn't saying,
well, I'm just a man, and only God is good. He's not saying
that. What he's saying is, if you're addressing me, as good
teacher, what do you mean by that? Because the fact of the
matter is, no one is good except God. Do you think that I'm God? Now, he doesn't ask him that,
but that's the, you see, that's the implication. Well, the man
didn't come to him because he thought that Jesus was God. The
irony is, though, that this fellow that thought he was so good has
come face to face with goodness in its perfection. He's face
to face with God. And he's thinking at the same
time that he's pretty good. He's pretty good. I've kept all
these commandments. All have turned aside, Paul wrote. Together they've become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And Ecclesiastes. Listen to this,
Ecclesiastes 7, surely there is not a righteous man on earth
who does good and never sins, all right? James 1, do not be
deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect
gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with
whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will, he brought us
forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first
fruits of his creatures. Psalm 107, oh, that men would
praise the Lord for his goodness. See, these verses are showing
us only God is good, right? Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children
of men. Here's a definition of God given,
if you can do that, given in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal,
and unchangeable in his being. Wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth. So if you pull goodness out of
the list there, what this is saying is God is a spirit, infinite
and eternal in his goodness. Would any of us like to claim
that we are infinite in our goodness and that our goodness is eternal?
It never changes, it always has been, and it always will be. Robert Raymond, in his systematic
theology book, listen to what he says. This is a section, all
systematic theologies have a section on the attributes of God. God
has always been and always will be infinitely good. dealing bountifully and kindly
with all his creatures. His attribute of goodness subsumes,
that is, includes, his love, grace, mercy, pity, compassion,
long-suffering, kindness, and other such expressions of his
tender and fatherly character. The goodness of God is vast. And these are the things that
this young man was oblivious to. He's just throwing around
this adjective, good. Well, good teacher. Think about
the goodness of God here some more, and then we'll come back
to the young man and his thinking on this. Psalm 103 lists and sets forth the goodness of
God as shown in his creation. And it's things that we take
for granted. And if we would just think on
these things more, we wouldn't be guilty of throwing this idea
around of good. Well, this is good, and that
is good, and I'm good, and that kind of a thing. Listen to Psalm
103 here. Psalm of David. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Stick goodness
in there if you want, right? Forget not all his goodness. Who forgives all, this is the
King James, by the way. Who forgives all thine iniquities,
who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction,
who crowns thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies
your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like
the eagles. The Lord executes righteousness
and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his
ways to Moses, his acts to the children of Israel. The Lord
is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, neither
will he keep his anger forever. He has not dealt with us after
or according to our sins. nor rewarded us according to
our iniquities, for as the heaven is high above the earth, so great
is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east
is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions
from us. Like as a father pities his children,
so the Lord pities them that fear him. He knows our frame,
He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass,
as a flower in the field, so he flourishes. The wind passes
over it and it's gone, and the place thereof shall know it no
more. But the mercy of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him. And
it's righteousness to children's children. To such as keep his
covenant and to those that remember his commandments to do them,
the Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom
rules over all. Bless the Lord, you his angels
that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening
unto the voice of his word. Bless you the Lord, all you his
hosts, you ministers of his that do his pleasure. Bless the Lord. all his works in all places of
his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul." And
all of those, that praise is evoked from getting a clearer
handle on the goodness of God. I attached at the end of your
handout, a copy of another Psalm, which is, was it Psalm 104 here? Yeah, Psalm 104, that one really
lays out also the goodness of God. That's the one I was thinking
of in his works in creation. But these are the depths of the
goodness of God. And when this young man comes
up to Jesus, You know, loosely tossing around this good teacher
phrase, he reveals, he betrays the fact that his idea of God
is flawed. And therefore, his evaluation
of himself is flawed. He believed that he was good.
He addresses Jesus as a good man and a good teacher, but not
as the perfect and perfectly good God. Now, if you compare
the perfect goodness of God, unchangeable goodness of God,
with the so-called goodness of man, do we still want to say
that we are, in and of ourselves, good? But as we've seen, there's no
goodness in us natively. Any goodness in us is an alien
goodness that's been given us by our regeneration in Christ
and in his spirit dwelling within us. It's a fruit of the spirit
that is in us. And it becomes ours, but we didn't
manufacture it. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness. There it is, you see. There it is. I can't take any
credit for it. I can praise God for my heart
desiring to do good. But I can't take any credit for
it. I certainly wasn't born into this world with such a heart. Well, then Jesus goes on, verse
20, tells him, you know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not
murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false
witness. Honor your father and mother.
And then this man, maybe, I mean, maybe the crowd was even applauding,
I don't know, when he gives this answer. All these I've kept from
my youth. The reality of this guy's mindset
and of his heart is exposed now, you see. I mean, really? All these commandments of God
I've kept from my youth. He fancied himself quite good. He was absolutely ignorant of
the requirements then of God's law. He shouldn't have been,
but he was. Now, it's interesting here that
Luke quotes Jesus presenting the man with five of the Ten
Commandments. Matthew adds a sixth, although
it's not part of the Ten Commandments proper. It's a summation of them. Matthew adds, you shall love
your neighbor as yourself, you see, no adultery,
no murder, no stealing, no lying, honor father and mother. But
essentially, that's from what's called the second table, the
second half of the Ten Commandments. And then they're summarized,
Jesus said so, that those are summarized by the loss is fulfilled
by sin. The first table, you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart. And then the second is
like it, right? He says, then love your neighbor
as yourself. So if you love your neighbor,
you're not going to murder your neighbor. You're not going to
steal from your neighbor, and so on. It's also interesting,
these are just some things to quote, to take note of, and there's
a reason behind them. I'm sure we don't always know
the reason, but Jesus did not include the 10th commandment.
Now that's interesting. The 10th commandment is the one
that got the apostle Paul. The 10th commandment is, you
shall not covet. This young man is extremely rich. There's gotta be a reason why,
well you know, in essence Jesus did quote that 10th commandment
to him, you shall not covet. Only he didn't, in a way that
would not be expected. He's gonna tell him, go sell
everything that you have, you see. The man, well, listen to
J.C. Ryle comment on this, and then
next time, I would like us to think further and examine further
just what this young man's notion of the law was. And then to go further into this
matter of his love for the world. You see, as it turns out, this
man, this young man was an idolater. He wasn't a good man at all. And he was oblivious to this.
And Jesus is revealing that. He hadn't, and maybe this is
why Jesus didn't quote directly from the first table of the law. You should have no other gods
before me. Well, he did have a God before him, and that God
was money. And he chose that God. And he went away dead then in
his sins. But this issue, this idea of
a false notion of goodness, And this idea that somehow we have
an ability within ourselves to go the way of the law. People will deny that they're
doing that. Professing Christians will deny.
No, I know that we're not saved by the law, and at the same time
can be deceived into, I regard myself as pretty good, and I
think God is smiling upon me every day because I'm good. Here's J.C. Ryle. At once the
spiritual blindness of the inquirer, the young man, was detected.
All these, said the man, I've kept from my youth up. An answer
more full of darkness and self-ignorance, it's impossible to conceive.
He who made it could have known nothing, rightly, either about
himself or God or God's law. Does the case of this rich ruler
stand alone? Do we suppose there are none
like him at the present day? If we do, then we're greatly
deceived. There are thousands, it may be
feared, in all our congregations who have not the least idea of
the spiritual nature of God's law, and consequently know nothing
of their own sinfulness. They do not see that God requires
truth in the inward parts, and that we may break the commandments
in our heart and thoughts even when we do not break them in
outward actions. To be delivered from such blindness
is one of the first things needful to our salvation. The eyes of
our understandings must be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. We must learn
to know what God's opinion of us is. No man really taught of
the Spirit will ever talk of having kept all God's commandments
from his youth. He will rather cry with Paul,
the law is spiritual, but I am carnal. I know that in me dwells
no good thing. In other words, Jesus is confronting
this young man who had just told him, all these I've kept my whole
life. I've kept the commandments of
God. What Jesus is showing him is you haven't in your entire
life for one second kept the law of God. Because the law of
God only condemns us. It only incites sin. It's only given to show us our
sin and then to drive us to Christ. And the sad part about this story,
this account, and Jesus was saddened by it. He felt a love for this
man. Then here this man rushes up and he's all excited and pumped
up. What must I do to inherit eternal
life? He bows down, kneels down before
Jesus, calls him a good teacher, and he's all excited and things
seem so promising. And after a few words from Jesus,
the whole atmosphere changes. And the excitement and the smile
and the bubbliness turns to being downcast and sad as he walks
away, refusing to get a trillion dollars by giving a nickel. And that's really the essence
of the insanity of a person who loves this present world, refuses
to give it up in order to have eternal life. Father, we thank
you for Christ. Thank you that you got a hold
of us and you showed us our sin. You showed us our utter depravity
and absolute inability to obey your law, or to do anything
to merit salvation from you. And then you showed us Christ,
and you opened our eyes to him and his salvation. and you caused us to be born
again, you made us into new creations. We give you thanks for this great
salvation, and we pray as always, Father, if there be anyone that
listens to this message today who is dead in their sins, who
maybe like the rich young ruler, thinks themselves really good
enough to stand before you, And then Father, we pray that you
would open their eyes, show them mercy, and show them, let them
hear and feel the thunderings of Mount Sinai, that they might
in fear and trembling come and ask you to be merciful to them,
the sinner. And we pray this all in Christ's
name, amen.
The Gospel of Luke - Free Gift Costs All (18:18-30)
Series Gospel of Luke
Jesus deals with the Rich Young Ruler. Here, we consider this man's superficial inquiry about salvation and his flawed ideas about his own "goodness" and the requirements of God's Law.
| Sermon ID | 102222162385794 |
| Duration | 51:30 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Luke 18:18-30 |
| Language | English |
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