All right. And a ruler 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 commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. And he said, all these I have kept for my youth. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute it 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 is 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, we have left our homes and followed you. And he said to them, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, though who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. This is the word of the Lord. Join me in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you would illuminate the scriptures for us, that we would see your word come to life and that your Holy Spirit would change us. Lord, our faults are many, and if you mark iniquities, none of us could stand because your holy law comes from your person and it is very holy. Lord, we pray that you would speak through the mouth of the preacher and that you would be the one who speaks and not me. Lord, let it be more of you and less of me. Lord, we ask these things in the name of your precious son, Jesus. Amen. All right. Fifteen years ago, there was an article in the Washington Post telling the story of the Reagan administration's economic and technological sabotage of the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the Soviets had set up a new arm of the KGB called Directorate T, whose sole duty was to either replicate or to steal technological advances that the West had made to keep pace with the United States. They did this successfully for quite some time with a measure of secrecy. It was not until a Soviet turncoat, Colonel Vladimir Vetrov, dubbed Agent Farewell, revealed to the CIA the extent of the thievery and the Soviet shopping list for future technological theft. The extent of espionage and penetration into the American government and American industry realized some of the Reagan administration's worst nightmares. But the CIA hatched a plan, and they pitched it to Reagan. CIA operatives would find ways to ensure that flawed technology would find its way into the covetous hands of the KGB. And what were the results of this? In 1983, there was a gigantic pipeline explosion in central Russia. It was the biggest non-nuclear explosion to date, and it was so big that the U.S., so NORAD, so NORTHCOM was actually worried that the Soviets had detonated a nuclear weapon. But the CIA and the administration said, So what had happened was the CIA made sure that the Soviets had stolen flawed computing, pipeline computing program that increased the pressure in a pipeline at a valve and blew it sky high. And this single-handedly crippled the Soviet's energy industry. And that started them falling behind the United States. And ultimately, another, the level of, when they realized what happened, the Soviets were so worried about the other technology they had taken that they were worried that their entire technological infrastructure was compromised. Here's another example. There's actually CIA footage of this, but there's actually the Soviet mock of the B-1. There's videos and videos of this thing exploding on takeoff, exploding in midair, all because the CIA gave them a flawed blueprint where they just turned around one screw, and it compromised the entire airframe. Much like the Soviets, the rich young ruler had a backward understanding, not only of the law, but of God's character and where he fit into that picture. Jesus exposes his heart, blowing up his flawed efforts to gain eternal life. And while Toby was gone, if you thought you could escape three alliterated points, you can think again. And here are mine. The rich young ruler, he had ignorance, inadequacy, and inability. Ignorance, inadequacy, and inability. Let's talk about ignorance. Verses 18 and 19. And the ruler 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. At the outset, we need to make a few initial observations about the rich young ruler, and we need to give him a little bit of credit. He comes to the right person with the right question. The right person with the right question. And like many of the Jews of his day, he recognizes that Jesus has some sort of connection to God that would make him an authority. Many sought him for wisdom, and many got various answers depending on the state of their hearts and what God was doing, right? And he also, the second point of credit, he also realizes that he lacks something of utmost importance, eternal life. Knowing one's need of eternal life. is often half the battle. When you talk to your unbelieving friends at work or at the different groups you go to, a lot of them don't think they, they're materialists, they don't think that anything is after this, so why do I need to live, I don't need eternal life and the life to come if there's nothing after this. Like a lot of them don't know they need salvation and eternal life. So he has those two things down. He correctly deduces that Jesus is the correct person to field such a question. So he calls him good teacher. If we were writing the story, how might we expect Jesus to reply? Would he simply state that the man needs to repent of his sins and trust in him alone for salvation? Should he have gone through an exposition of Romans 8 where Paul goes through foreknowledge all the way through glorification? Did he give him a technical answer? Instead, his answer is a little bit surprising to us. He says, why do you call me good? There is no one good except God alone. And we need to talk about first what Jesus is not communicating when he says that. Unlike many of the liberal theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries, who thought this was the proof text for Jesus, he's not divine. Look, he says that no one's going to accept God alone. Why do you call me good? And we have to deny that outright because of the preponderance of material in the gospels where Jesus claims divinity. Right, we have John 8, at the end of John 8, when he's talking to the Pharisees, he says that, he says, before Abraham was, I am. He calls himself Yahweh, equating himself with God. And they picked, the Jews knew what he was saying. They picked up stones to kill him, and he escaped. Because his time had not yet come, right? So we know that Jesus is not denying his divinity. We also know that Jesus is not denying his inherent goodness. By affirming his deity, when he says, I am, he's also affirming everything that goes along with it, including the inherent goodness. So why does Jesus respond like this? After all, was a rich young ruler technically incorrect to call Jesus good teacher? But we find that the real problem is that he imposed his own ignorance, his own definition of good on Jesus, a presumption that utterly blinds him. Calling him good teacher is telling. He treats him merely as a guru, a spiritual guide who is achieving and working past his own level. He treats Jesus as a means by which he might gain the secret knowledge that needed to achieve eternal life through his own efforts. You could call this a Pharisee's nirvana, he wanted the answers. He fails to ascribe ultimate goodness to God and to God alone, whom he doesn't believe stands before him. You know what I'm saying? He doesn't think Jesus is God, and he calls him good. So Jesus is attacking that. He's like, how dare you ascribe your definition of goodness to me? That's a huge no-no. And Jesus sees through all this immediately. With a simple question and statement, Jesus directly attacks the rich young ruler's ignorance of his identity as a son of God and of the nature of goodness itself. Unfortunately, as the narrative continues, we'll come to find that the answer to this question is true. The rich young ruler has no idea that true goodness and righteousness originate from the very person of God himself. So right off the bat, we have issues, but it continues. Next is the inadequacy, verses 20 through 23. 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 said, all these I have 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. To begin, I must say that Jesus is not telling us that in order to follow the law perfectly, we must sell everything we have, join a monastery or a convent, and live in abject poverty. I want to hit that point right away because there's room for abuse, and it's manifested throughout church history, and we want to hit that right away. There was a problem with a man's possession of wealth, but not in and of itself, and we'll dive into that a little later. Other than that, there's something missing here. Did you notice that Jesus only mentioned five of the Ten Commandments? Commandments five through nine. And in no particular order he mentions them. That's only half. He's missing one through four in ten. And why is that? Why would Jesus leave out the other half? Perhaps Jesus first mentioned the ones with which the man would have been most comfortable affirming in order to confirm his understanding of what law following consists. So he's kind of drawing out the poison here. I don't say he's baiting him, but he's revealing and is only using half the commandments. And we'll come back to that point as well. But the most troubling question of all arises here as well. Is Jesus telling him that obedience to the law, what merits salvation, what merits us eternal life, is he really saying that? And while good Protestants, we go, no, no, he would never say anything like that, but he did. But the answer is actually yes and no, yes and no. It is technically true that adherence to the law does merit righteousness before God. But this is not just general pattern adherence like I follow them for the most part. This must be absolute perfect obedience to the law. This is utter perfection. And Jesus was not telling the rich young ruler that this one is an available mode of salvation for him. If the man had looked at his life honestly for two seconds, he would have seen that from his youth that he claimed, he would have been a lawbreaker and that he had nothing to stand on. Chances from his youth would have been completely gone. And why does the rich young ruler say that he had kept the commandments from his youth? And this amounts to a declaration of self-righteousness. Had he attended the Sermon on the Mount, he would have known that Jesus set the bar for obedience to the law much higher, much, much higher. Sins of the heart, while lesser in magnitude than obvious open sins, are violations of the law all the same as separate man from God, ensuring his need of salvation. Think about it. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that even if you looked on a woman lustfully, you've committed adultery. And there's not a single man in here that can say, I've never cheated on my wife. While that may be true in one sense, you've never physically cheated on your wife, you've certainly done it in your heart. And that makes us need Jesus all the same and should spur us on to greater mercy with others. But we'll continue. Like every legalist who has made the delusional claim that God's law can be obeyed by himself for himself throughout church history, the man believes he can follow God's law sufficiently because he neither knows God nor his own inadequacy to stand blamelessly before him. Jesus exposes that inadequacy here. Two of the unmentioned commandments in particular reveal the inadequacy of the Rishon ruler, commandments one and 10. The 10th commandment is, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. That's Deuteronomy 521. Off the bat, we simply don't know how the rich young ruler acquired his wealth, whether it was through a successful career, or it was inheritance, legal loopholes, direct blessing of God, or otherwise. The scripture doesn't tell us, so we don't know. But so then how do we know that the rich young ruler was coveting? That's a question. He had everything that life could have possibly given him. He had probably the house, the car, the wife, and so on. And how much money does it take to make a man happy anyway? Billionaire John D. Rockefeller, his answer to this question, how much money does it take to make a man happy? His answer was, just one more dollar. Just one more dollar. And we know that riches in and of themselves cannot satisfy us. They cannot fill the God-shaped hole that we have. And if he had everything this life has to offer, perhaps this industrious young man wanted something more. Perhaps this was his motivation for coming to Jesus in the first place. My guess is that the rich young ruler, he coveted the thing that he knew he didn't have. That is eternal life. And this isn't a new concept to us. There's a precedent for it in our own culture. How many myths, movies, or even real-life examples do we have of the very rich trying to delay the inevitable end or trying to cheat death itself? One example that comes right off the bat is the people who want to cryo-freeze themselves and try to live as long as possible that way. My question is, what are you going to do when you get out? You can't re-cry or freeze yourself. You have to die eventually. There's no way out of it. So this man sees that, and he goes to Jesus for the one thing he doesn't have, eternal life. And coveting is perhaps the most crucial of the second table of the law. It's the second table being love your neighbor as yourself. It's the root of other sins, lying, that is gaining something through a falsehood. Adultery, stealing, sometimes murder, maybe even withholding honor from your parents. Sometimes, and I say in most cases, coveting is at the root of all of those. His covetousness of his wealth and otherwise is the rich young ruler's first critical failing where he fails by his own standards. The second is possibly even more fatal. The first commandment is, you shall have no other gods before me. That's Deuteronomy 5-7. When Jesus asked the man that salvation required him to sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and follow him, he really asked him a question of worship. Which did he love more, God or his money? God or his resources? And as I mentioned earlier, there's nothing wrong with wealth. Jesus is not advocating necessarily for a systematized socialist redistribution of wealth, as that's inconsistent with the rest of scripture. Many men of scripture were rich. Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and others. Their riches were given to them by God and were not issues in and of themselves. The real problem persists when man must decide between worshiping the God of the universe or the gifts he bestows. Romans 1 talks about that, worshiping the creation rather than the creators. For the rich, ideally, your wealth, if you are rich, your wealth and blessing should point you toward your creator in worship. Should it not? In a perfect world, the more rich we are, the more we feel blessed by God and give praise and thanks to him. And if you are rich, I would encourage you to follow that course. But other than that, what is this treasure in heaven that Jesus mentions? Is it a return on monetary investment in the ministry of the gospel? Is it a robe and crown? Well, these things come along with eternal life, and Jesus does promise these things. Our answer comes from Lamentations 3.24, where Jeremiah states that the Lord is his portion. The Lord is his portion, Jehovah Shulek. Or Psalm 73, 25-26, where the psalmist desires nothing in heaven other than the God who resides there. And John Piper has a great sermon clip where he talks about heaven could be completely empty with nothing in it, but if God was there, that would be enough and it would be perfect. We shouldn't desire the things in heaven rather than the one who resides in it. God is the inheritance of the godly, and Jesus offers himself as the man's portion when he calls him to follow. And the first commandment makes an absolute demand on a man's heart, mind, soul, and strength. If there's a choice between God and literally anything else, anything less than God is sin. And unfortunately, driven by his covetous heart, the rich young ruler worshiped the money more than the God he claimed to follow. He chose it over Jesus as he walked away from him. Jesus' requirement for him to sell everything he had, give it to the poor, and follow him would be perfect adherence to the first and tenth commandments, the ones he lacked. Yet we see him walking away from Jesus very sorrowful. His coveting drove the worship of the wealth, but his misplaced worship did not allow him to receive the very thing for which he longed most. By walking away, he shows his true nature, lawbreaker, particularly in disobedience of those commandments. Some of you might ask, but he was mostly good. At least he had that going for him, right? He probably was better than most people. Wrong. James 2.10 tells us that failing in one point of the law brings guilt upon us for the entire thing. One point of the law brings guilt upon us for the entire thing. And how is that failing at one point making us total lawbreakers? We know this because the nature of God himself. He is utterly and completely holy. more holy than we can imagine. His sovereignty, perfection, and command are impeccable. The human cannot dare to follow God in his own terms when he has commanded otherwise. To make righteousness attainable by lowering the standard is a blasphemy against the character of God. I'm going to read that again. To make righteousness attainable by lowering the standard is a blasphemy against the character of God. If a man recognized Jesus as the Son of God, second person of the Trinity, the Messiah, I still, personal opinion, I still think he would have walked away. And why is that? Because if he did not believe and obey the word of God that he did have, why would he follow the one from whom it came? When Jesus told the Jews that he was the Son of God, they picked up stones to stone him, despite the works and miracles that he had done, raising a man from the dead. opening the eyes of the blind. They wanted to kill him for these things. The revelation of God to man does not necessarily return praise and worship from the unbeliever. I still think he would have walked away. And why is that? Because it was impossible for him to obey. He could not not walk away from Jesus. But why was it impossible for the rich young ruler to follow Jesus? Because he literally lacked the ability. He was utterly unable. And that's our third point, inability. Verses 24 and 27. 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 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 those who heard it, and in the Matthews account of this, he says the disciples, the disciples heard it, said, then who can be saved? But he said, what is impossible with man is possible with God. Jesus makes a poignant observation that wealth is a cruel idol and destroys many who have it. It's a formidable counterfeit of the true God. Formidable counterfeit. Wealth appears to take care of us. It appears to earn friends for us. It appears to protect us from harm and appears to help sustain us from turbulent times. And how often do we say, if I just had more money. As some of you may know, we've had a little bit of a bug problem in our house recently. And bed bugs in particular. And those little suckers are hard to get rid of. They can get everywhere, and it usually takes several iterations of an exterminator to get rid of them. And to myself, I'm thinking, if I just had, and I literally have thought this over the last month, if I just had more money, I wouldn't have to, you know, go into a little bit of the savings fund to pay for these things. If I just had more money, I could solve this problem for myself. Instead of trusting in the God who made those bugs. Instead of trusting in the sovereignty of God, we are more apt to trust in the sovereignty of our own resources and power. This problem is magnified for the rich. More than us, they have a greater issue in that regard. And as far as this metaphor goes, it's a hyperbolic statement. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. It's a hyperbolic statement. But I'm going to dive into it anyway, because I can. Just to give you an idea of what Jesus is saying, adult camels on average are about six to eight feet tall and weigh about as much as a car. They're anywhere from 1,500 to about 2,300 pounds. That's about a small car. And if you've been here for a while, if you've been to the Christmas market at St. Wendell, they have a live nativity scene, and I highly recommend it. But they have three or four camels that you can go look at. And seeing a picture of a camel and actually being next to one is a completely different story. They are huge. They are huge animals. On the other hand, needles, a large needle, the point would be a little less than a millimeter, with sizes decreasing from there. This hyperbolic statement has a point, that it is utterly, completely, and most certainly impossible for this man who worshipped his wealth more than the God to enter the kingdom. But these disciples, who are not rich men, they're clearly disturbed by this declaration when they ask, who then can be saved? Perhaps they are, to an extent, placing themselves in his shoes and wondering what they would have done if they had that much money themselves. The temptation is strong for them. vicariously. And we can't know for sure, but it appears that in a moment of honesty, where the disciples examine themselves and see the roots of the same law breaking in their own hearts. As well on the outside, I'm sure the man outwardly appeared to be very pious, a very devoted follower of Judaism. They probably saw themselves below this man in that way as well. In Matthew Henry's commentary on the passage, he helpfully points out that the hold of the world lies on every unbeliever and even beckons the believer back into slavery. The temptations do not stop, even for those who have passed from death to life. The call of the world is strong and present every single day of our lives until we go into glory. So how do rich people enter the kingdom? Most of us, I'm sure, know rich Christians after all. They are out there, they do exist. Contrary to popular belief, perhaps. So what squeezes the camel through the needle's eye? Jesus clearly makes an analogy that demonstrates the impossibility of this decision. But he says that though this is impossible for man, it is possible for God. and for all of us, rich, poor, all who are in Christ. God's remedy for those truly dead and their sins can be nothing less than the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. And for my youth groupers out there, you've probably heard me mention this a couple times, and I'm sure you are familiar. But in Ephesians 2, when Paul says, you are dead in your trespasses and sins, the word for dead is the word nekros, the Greek word nekros, which is literally a rotting corpse. You are a rotting corpse in your sins, no life in you. And we see that again in Ezekiel 37. with the value of dry bones. Those were dry bones. It wasn't even a corpse. They were just bones. But God, through the power of his word and his Holy Spirit, raises them to life. And we need nothing less than the regeneration of the Holy Spirit ourselves in order to cling to Christ. Jesus makes it very clear that we need nothing less than God himself to overcome the world that has a hold on our hearts and cling to him in faith. Jesus generally calls all men to salvation. The outward call is there, but the Holy Spirit is the only one who can bring any of them, even the rich, to God. Jesus says that all whom he, all whom he calls, he will raise in the last day, John 6. When the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart and spirit as foretold by both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we then may approach Jesus in faith where he cleanses us of all of our sins and lawbreaking and makes us new creations united to him in righteousness. That's great news. I pray that you would really, you would honor God and praise him and really cling to him and that truth is real. Yet, Peter thinks that there might be a little bit something to gain for themselves in the process. Verses 28 through 30. And Peter said, see, we have left our homes and followed you. And he said to them, truly I say to you, there is 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 more times, many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. So we don't know exactly, the tone is hard, well I'd say hard, impossible to pick out from a text necessarily. But it almost appears as if Peter is patting the disciples on the back for passing through the eye of the needle. Almost saying, we did it Jesus, look how much we've already suffered for your sake and look what we've left behind. Look how we're following these commandments that this rich young ruler couldn't. Somehow, possibly, Peter figured out a way to take what God has graciously done for the disciples and make it about them. But Jesus, gentle savior that he is, gently brings the focus back on what God is doing. He reminds them that all these things are done for the sake of the kingdom of God and the king who resides in it, bringing the first commandment back into focus. He also reminds them that they receive new family, the church, and this time, not later, we'll meet more of the saints in heaven, but now, we have the church now, we have brothers and sisters in Christ now. God places us into a new family, those who he has redeemed, the bride and the lamb. Because of God's grace toward us in salvation, we have the communion of the saints. We can go over to each other's houses, share a meal, and fellowship with one another, and truly have the Holy Spirit present. And we can really deepen, as we deepen our relationships with others, we deepen them also with Christ. And finally, he reminds them of the thing for which the rich young ruler sought but could not receive, eternal life. Because of what God has done for them in saving them all the way, when they could not save themselves, they have eternal life. So he brings it back, brings it all the way back around to a completely God-centered, sovereign salvation. So, that's the text. Where do we go with it? Where do you go on Sunday afternoon, or on Monday, Tuesday, and so on, with this? And first, we must renew our minds. I like that, actually, Matt Wright, he used the word insidious to describe this, because that's the exact word I picked. We need to see the insidiousness of our sin and how badly it pervades our thinking, and how apt we are to fall into that. And you must know, if you do not have Christ, godliness is out of your reach. There is no way that you can please God without faith. Jesus alone followed the law. He was the one who had perfect obedience to it. And he alone is righteous in this regard. And we need his righteousness to stand before God. You cannot please God by following the law because you cannot follow the law. Without him, you are ignorant, inadequate, and unruly. We need Christ. We need his robes of righteousness when we stand before God. And that can only be gained by faith in him and trusting in him alone for salvation. And then we have living out our faith, if we have that faith. If God has passed you through the eye of the needle, and he has saved you from the power of the world and the devil, praise be his holy name. You can lift up your hands with the psalmist and lift up your name in his hand, or lift up, sorry, lift up your hands in his name and praise him for what he has done for you. You can embrace the church and the new eternal life to which he has called you, being enabled by the Holy Spirit to walk anew to follow God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. But for the rest of you, we need our hearts changed. The weak and the unbelieving, this is addressed to you. Are you too rich? Are you too rich? I'm not asking if you have enormous wealth, but does the world have a death grip on you? Are you rich in the things of the world? Is there anything that you have that competes with your worship of God and following him with your whole heart? If the Holy Spirit has you under the conviction of these things, I urge you, my brothers and sisters, cling to Christ and to him alone as your trust and your sole object of worship. By faith, trust that who he is, God incarnate, and what he has done for us in saving us by his blood is enough. And if nothing else, with this, we will be content. You've got your heads in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we are not good people. Even those of us who look good aren't. Lord, I pray that you would convict us of sin and that you would show us that your holy standard is far beyond what we can achieve on our own. Lord, we need you. Lord, and we need you to even be able to spread the gospel to our coworkers and our friends. Lord, let them see the grace that you have given us. Let them not see us for what we've done and our works, Lord, but let them, if they do see good works, let them see through our testimony that those are only found in you. And Lord, enable us, convict us of sin, let us walk in holy righteousness anew with Christ and only with Christ. Lord, it's in his name we pray. the one who came and lived the life that we could not and died the death that we cannot afford to die. But he rose again. In his name we pray. Amen. If you would rise for