It's an astonishment of having your own worldview, the very heart's desire that you have ripped into pieces before your very eyes. That's the sadness that this is referring to here. You know, this is a sad encounter in the Gospels. This is a sad story where this man would rather have anything than Christ. You know, we think this man obviously wanted Jesus. No. This man was unwilling to give up his wealth for Jesus. This man would rather go to hell than give up his wealth and follow Jesus. And he knew the implications of that. That's why he was so astonished and so sad at Jesus' words. What are we to make of all this? I want to point out two observations and then give two practical challenges. Okay, so two observations I want to make. Number one, everyone's a theologian. It's an astonishment of having your own worldview, the very heart's desire that you have ripped into pieces before your very eyes. That's the sadness that this is referring to here. You know, this is a sad encounter in the Gospels. This is a sad story where this man would rather have anything than Christ. You know, we think this man obviously wanted Jesus. No. This man was unwilling to give up his wealth for Jesus. This man would rather go to hell then give up his wealth and follow Jesus." And he knew the implications of that. That's why he was so astonished and so sad at Jesus' words. What are we to make of all this? I want to point out two observations and then give two practical challenges. Okay, so two observations I want to make. Number one, everyone's a theologian. Our scripture text for this morning is from Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 22. Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 22. And if you don't have your Bible or are new to the Bible, it's printed in the bulletin there. Mark chapter 10, 17 through 22. Now as he was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before him, and asked him, Good teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? So Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is God. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, honor your father and your mother.' And he answered and said to Him, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.' Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, One thing you lack, Go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, take up the cross, and follow Me.' But he was sad at His word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." These are the words of God. Let's pray once more for God's blessing on His Word. Oh Lord, we do thank You for this time. We thank You for these words from Scripture, and we ask that You would send Your Spirit to help us to understand it this morning. That it would be to us a light to guide, a fire to purify, a hammer to crush idols, and a sword to strike the nations. Amen. Amen. Well, this is one of Jesus' most famous interactions in all the Gospels. It's not THE most famous, but it is one of THE most famous. Because it's so popular, it's been twisted by just about every aberrant group known to Christianity. The liberal theologians look at this and they try to make the claim that Jesus doesn't claim to be good or that Jesus doesn't claim to be God, and we'll see why that's false in a minute. And then the prosperity gospel teachers that you see on TV flat out ignore this passage. In fact, the only I actually did a search of a few prosperity gospel preachers to see if they'd ever spoken on it. And the only thing I could find was a Christian satirical website named Babylon Bee. I hope you've read some of Babylon Bee that says that the rich young ruler, as he's commonly called, finds a place at Joel Osteen's church. So, needless to say, it's ignored by prosperity gospel preachers. But it's also misused by a very popular teaching in our day that is almost like a poverty gospel. That men that I have a lot of respect for almost seem to teach that what Jesus teaches here or in other places is that it is more virtuous to live in poverty. So it's almost like an opposite prosperity gospel. But let me give you one reason why Jesus doesn't mean this for everyone at all times is supposed to sell everything they have and give it to the poor. The one reason I'm going to give, and there are many, but the one reason I'm going to give is that nobody, nobody in the Bible actually did this. And I'm going to explain more about this in a minute, but in just Mark's gospel alone, we have an account of where they go to Peter's house. So he owns a house, he didn't sell his house to go follow Jesus, but he has a house, he's got a mother-in-law, which means he was married at some point, and they've got a boat, and different things like that. numerous reasons to not take this as being blanket for everyone at all times. But a lot of times in our day, good preachers that I've heard, men that I respect, seem to make it out that Jesus is saying that it is virtuous to live in poverty. Well, if that's not the point of the passage, then what is? the point of the passage. The point of this passage we ought to see, and I'm going to explain this as we go through the passage, is that whatever you worship determines what you do and what you believe about everything else. Whatever you truly worship in your heart, whatever you really love, is going to determine what you believe about everything else in your life. And everyone always seems to make this just about money or wealth or finances. And we're going to talk a little bit about that next week when we go to the following passage. Jesus is kind of commentary on this. But there really is a lot more at work here than this just being some call to give up everything that you own. So this man that comes to Jesus makes three crucial theological errors, and then Jesus drops the hammer on him with His response, and then we see the response of who is commonly called the rich young ruler. So we're going to look at those three errors, Jesus' final response, and then the rich young ruler's final response, and then go on from there. So let's look at these three theological errors he makes. The first error is We have two pieces of evidence for this in verse 17. It says that he came and knelt before Jesus. And the second thing it says is that he calls Him good teacher. Well, when he comes and kneels before Jesus, this is not the kneeling of worship. This is just kind of a polite kneel that you would give to a well-respected man or a ruler. This is not the kneeling of worship that even the demons at some cases in the Gospels give, render to Jesus. But also He calls Him good teacher. And you would say, well, why is it? That's not untrue. No, it's not untrue. The problem is what He's not saying. You see, every... Muslim would say that Jesus was a good teacher. Every Mormon would say that Jesus is a good teacher. There are even many atheists who would say that Jesus is a good teacher. And worst of all, the college student that's had a semester of philosophy would probably say that Jesus was a good teacher. But what he fails to do is honor Jesus as Lord, and Jesus understood this, which is why He corrected him. He was not willing to honor Jesus as God of very God, and that was the point that Jesus was making. So He corrects him, and He says, Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. And of course, note, if you look at the text carefully, Jesus does not say that He is not good, nor does He say that He is not God. He simply says, Why do you call me good? Only God is good." Now, notice that he was a good teacher. He was making a point, almost gently challenging this man in the way that he addresses Jesus. Point being, don't call me good if you're not going to affirm my full deity, that Jesus truly is God in the flesh. He embodies the very reality of goodness because He is God. And all that it is to be God is good. So his first theological error that he makes is his denial of the deity of Christ, to not honor Jesus truly as Lord and God. The second error can be found in his question to Jesus. Notice that he says, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And it's interesting that he refers to it as an inheritance. You know, being a wealthy man, he had likely, and a young man, as we find out from other accounts of this in the other Gospels, that he was a young and very wealthy man. He had likely received most of his fortune as an inheritance. And it wasn't enough for him. He wanted to know, what do I need to do, was his question, what must I do to gain this great inheritance, the greatest inheritance that ever there was, the inheritance of eternal life. This man wants to make certain that he's right with God, that whatever good he can do, he needs to get done to make God happy, or so he thinks. And you know, most people believe that they can do enough good to make up for the little bit of bad that they think they might have done. But good doesn't cancel out evil. If you were to murder someone and stand before a judge, you could not plead before that judge. But look at the 7 billion people that I didn't kill. See how much grace I've shown to them to let them live? Good doesn't cancel out evil. Good is good, but evil requires justice. Evil requires blood. Evil requires punishment. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. And what he failed to understand was that the whole reason Jesus came was to live perfectly so that we could receive the righteousness, the goodness that we need to stand before God, but also that Christ died to pay the penalty for sins that we deserve. And this man, as most men do, believes that he can work his way to God, but salvation is not a work of man in any way. Salvation is from first to last. a work of God. It's a gift of His grace, which means that we can't do anything to earn it. And it's received only through faith, which means that we trust in who Jesus is and what He does to make us right with God. So his second theological error was that he believed he could be saved by obedience, or works, instead of grace. And Jesus corrects this error too. Now, if you're not much of a teacher, His response might seem a little odd to you, but as all great teachers do, Jesus is leading His pupil to a certain conclusion. He's using language in such a way because He wants to get him to a certain point. And He's going to show him the hopelessness of his religion. And Jesus sort of nonchalantly tells him, oh, I mean, you know the commandments, right? And he says the last six commandments, you know, he skips the first four and he doesn't even say them in order. And you know, if you read commentators, they go back and forth on what order Jesus puts them in. I mean, saying all kind of silly things. Jesus simply says six of the ten commandments and he doesn't even do it in order. He says, oh, you know the commandments, you know, don't murder anybody, honor your father and mother, things like that. And the audacity that this man has to look Jesus in the eye and says, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. This man clearly was not present for the Sermon on the Mount. He did not hear Jesus say that if you have lusted after a woman in your heart, that you've already violated God's commandment to not commit adultery. That if you hate your brother in your heart, you've already violated God's commandment to not kill. And as Isaiah says, that even our righteous deeds are a filthy abomination before the sight of God. There is more sin in the human heart than there is water in the ocean. And this man has the audacity to look the Son of God, the sinless Son of God in the eye, and say, oh yeah, I've done all that ever since I was a little boy. I've kept the Ten Commandments. So his third theological error was that his view of man was wrong. He thought that he was a good person, or that man could be a good person. So what does Jesus do with these three errors? With this deficient view of Christ and God, with this deficient view of salvation, and this deficient view of man. Or perhaps I should say, too much, too high of a view of man. Well, in verse 21, it says that Jesus was looking at him. Now, this word for looking really often times is translated considered. It has with it... It carries with it the idea of consideration and thoughtfulness. Jesus is thoughtfully thinking about what this man has just told Him. All these errors He's spewing out. He's very thoughtfully thinking and it's time for Jesus to respond. And look at how He responds. He doesn't get angry with Him as He did with the Pharisees when they were seeking to challenge Him a lot of times. He doesn't get angry with Him. It says that Jesus loved Him. Jesus cared for this man's well-being. He cared for this man's soul. Now, in the South, we tend to think that loving someone means only saying nice things that make people feel good all the time. Well, look though at how Christ responds to him. It says that He looks him in the eye and says, One thing you lack, go your way, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow Me, taking up the cross. Now, there were numerous encounters, either from Jesus or His messengers, the prophets or whoever, in the Old Testament, with wealthy men. And not one time, not one time in all of history, biblical history, does one of the messengers of God come to someone wealthy and say, you need to sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me, except for in this one place. So it begs the question, why is He telling this man this? Because Jesus knew what was in this man's heart. Jesus knew that this man worshipped his wealth, his power, his riches, and Jesus loved this man enough to expose that to him. He cared enough about this man's soul to show him, you are worshipping these riches, you are worshipping your money. He walks right up to the dagon of this man's heart and breaks it into pieces before his eyes. Here's what I'm saying. If Jesus would have been talking to someone else who worships something else, that response would not have been that way, and that's why you don't see it anywhere else in the Scripture. So this is not an articulation of an idea that we need to sell everything we have and give it to the poor. As we already said, nobody has ever done that, not even the apostles did that. But Jesus thoughtfully, and with a heart overflowing with love, exposes to this man the hopelessness of his religion, of his theology. He shows him the gaping wound in his heart, and it's almost as if he looks at him and says, look, before we move on, before you can have eternal life, we've got to get rid of this idol in your heart. So Jesus' response was thoughtful and loving confrontation to this man, showing him the idol of his heart. Well, how does the rich young ruler respond? Look at verse 22, it says that, "...he was sad at his word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." And this word, sad, actually carries with it the idea of astonishment. And it's a very rare word in Scripture. It's only used twice in the New Testament. And it's only used three times in the Old Testament. That is, the Old Testament translation, the Greek translation of the Bible that Jesus and the Apostles would have used in the first century called the Septuagint. Only used three times. And all three of those times, it's in the book of Ezekiel. The first two are in Ezekiel 27 and 28, and they refer to Tyre and its prince. And the third time is in Ezekiel 32, and it refers to Pharaoh of Egypt. And both times, or all three times, every reference to this word in their Bible translation had to do with a paragon of wealth and power receiving the judgment of God for their own self-reliance. Think about that. That the only time this word for sadness that carries with it astonishment is used has to do with self-reliant, powerful men coming under God's judgment. But as I said, it means astonishment as well. It's almost the astonishment that you would have if you were sitting watching helplessly as one car smashes into another knowing that there's nothing you can do. It's an astonishment of having your own worldview, the very heart's desire that you have ripped into pieces before your very eyes. That's the sadness that this is referring to here. You know, this is a sad encounter in the Gospels. This is a sad story where this man would rather have anything than Christ. You know, we think this man obviously wanted Jesus. No. This man was unwilling to give up his wealth for Jesus. This man would rather go to hell then give up his wealth and follow Jesus. And he knew the implications of that. That's why he was so astonished and so sad at Jesus' words. What are we to make of all this? I want to point out two observations and then give two practical challenges. Okay, so two observations I want to make. Number one, everyone's a theologian. If you look at my bookshelf at home, or if you go to Pastor Mike's bookshelf, you're going to find a three volume systematic theology by a man named Charles Hodge. And on one volume on the spine, it's going to say theology, which is the study of, God, thank you. If you look on another volume, it's going to say soteriology. This one's a little harder, which is the study of... Salvation, thank you. And if you look on the third volume, it's going to say anthropology, which is the study of man. So we've got the study of God, the study of salvation, and the study of man. Now remember what three errors the rich young ruler makes when he comes to Jesus. He's got a deficient view of God, he's got a deficient view of salvation, and he thinks way too highly of men. This man is a theologian. In fact, R.C. Sproul wrote a book called Everyone's a Theologian. Everyone has a view of God, how the world got here, how it's being run, who runs this whole thing. Everyone's got a view of that. Everyone, whether they're Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, no matter how much they hate this term, they've got a theology. They've got a view of what's wrong in the world and how to fix it. That's salvation. And they've got some sort of view of man. Either we're made in the image of God, or lightning struck pond scum somewhere and we evolved over tens of billions of years. Everyone has a theology. Everyone's a theologian. The question is, are they a good theologian? Are they a bad theologian? Everyone that you know, whenever you hear someone talk, they're articulating some sort of theology. You're either a good theologian or you're a bad theologian. Second observation. Whatever you truly worship in your heart, not what you say you worship, but whatever you truly worship affects everything else in your life, how you live and what you believe about everything else. Remember that Jesus went after the God of this man's heart. It was because He worshipped His wealth that he believed the way he did about Christ, that he believed what he did about salvation, and that he believed what he did about man. And bad gods make for bad theology, and bad gods make for bad living. Jesus went after His idol because that affects everything else. And you cannot be right with God if you still have this idol in your heart, if you say, I am not willing to give this up for Christ. So what you truly worship, What you truly worship in your heart determines what you believe about everything else. So I want to leave you with two very practical challenges for your life. Two challenges. First challenge. Think in terms of worldview and theology. Here's what I mean by that. Everyone has a God of some sort. Whether it's the true God or some false God. It could be an impersonal force that someone believes in. It could be a process that governs the universe. Everyone has a view of God. And when you turn on the TV, and watch even the news, you are hearing a sermon. You are hearing a worldview articulated. Somebody wants to disciple you and wants you to believe something. When you watch whatever movie you watch, someone is trying to communicate something to you. They want you to believe something about the world, about what's wrong and how to fix it, or about man, or about their God that they worship. And whatever song you listen to, whatever movie you watch, it doesn't matter what it is, everyone in some way is articulating to you their worldview. And you have to have eyes to see that. Think in terms of worldview in theology. When someone is speaking to you, think, what are they trying to say? When you get done watching a movie, Don't just mindlessly be entertained. Think about what they want you to believe. Think about the characters in the movie. What are they trying to get you to think? That this man who killed these people, well, he was really just a good guy at heart. He just did what he had to do. Think about what they're trying to articulate, because they are preaching their gospel of some sort to you. You have to be a thinking Christian. And this will help you to be able to discern between right and wrong, because you have to think, these people that are coming to me have their own presuppositions, their own gods, their own views of salvation and man and the world, that they are trying to articulate to me. And this will help you as you watch movies, or listen to music, have a conversation. But it's not just something that's helpful to you in your own personal life. It's something that will help you interact with others. Because when you think in terms of worldview and theology, you're going to have a conversation with someone who is not a Christian, and if you listen well enough, and if you listen long enough, they are going to do exactly what the rich young ruler did. They're going to tell you what they believe about God, about the world, about man, and if you listen well enough, you will be able to help them see that they have to flee from that idol to embrace Christ. You have to be able to show them in a loving yet confrontational way as Christ did. You must flee from this idol and embrace the Lord Jesus if you would inherit eternal life. So the first challenge is to think in terms of worldview and theology. Second challenge and final challenge. Be on guard against every, every form of idolatry. I want to portray this challenge as both a warning and an encouragement. It's a warning to forsake every sin and everything that might not necessarily be a sin, such as wealth. that you may have put up in your heart as an idol. Because things that aren't necessarily bad, such as wealth, like we said, wealth isn't necessarily a bad thing. But if you have that in your heart as a treasure, if you're treasuring this in your heart, that is going to affect how you live and what you believe about everything else in life. But also, let it be an encouragement to you. Because it should be an encouragement to grow in your love for Christ. Remember the sadness, this astonishing sadness that this man has as he walks away and leaves Jesus behind for his riches, for his other, his true God that he worshiped. That sadness comes because sin brings sadness. Sin brings misery. Sin brings curse. Sin brings destruction. And we wrongly think, it's wrong to think that our desires are just too great. when we get hooked on wealth, or we get hooked on making a dime, or we get hooked on sex, or we get hooked on drugs and things of that sort. Your desires aren't too heavy. Your desires are fixed on things that cannot satisfy you. I said at the very beginning of this worship service, the reason God made you, was to worship Him, to bow before the Lord Jesus Christ and render yourself to Him. And if you are doing anything else with your life, if you are rendering that worship to wealth, if you're rendering that worship to status, to power, if you're rendering it to your spouse or your family, no matter what it is, It is an idol and it must be forsaken for Christ. So grow in your love for Christ. How do we do that? Well, you cannot grow in your love for someone if you do not spend time with that person. And Christ, we spend time with Christ through His words, hearing His voice. hearing Him teach us, being together with His people, worshiping Him truly, spending time in prayer, communing with Christ. This is how you can grow in your love for Christ. If you want to forsake those idols and be on guard against those idols, then you have to forsake them for Christ. There has to be something in that place. You must be growing in your love for the Lord Jesus. So growing in love for Him will lead you to living and thinking rightly. Because whatever you truly worship, whatever your heart's true desire is, that's going to affect how you live and what you believe about everything else. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we do thank You for this account of Jesus with the rich young ruler. And we ask that it would be to us a warning and an encouragement. A warning to guard our hearts against any encroaching idols, and an encouragement to grow in love for the Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen.