Luke 18:18-30
A ruler 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 the man said to Jesus, 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. 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? Jesus said, what is impossible
with man is possible with God. And Peter said, see, we have
left our homes and followed you. Jesus said to them, truly, I
say to you, there is none who has left house or wife or brothers
or parents and 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. Amen. You may be seated. Back during the Christmas season,
our mailbox was full of catalogs. I’m sure yours was also. The
usual suspects came, you know, Land’s End, L.L. Bean, you know,
the usual ones come, but every once in a while we would get
a catalog that was pretty unique, one we hadn’t seen before. And
these unique catalogs were the type where it had the gift in
it, the types of gifts in it, for the people who have so much
money and have everything already that they couldn’t possibly have
this item yet. So we got this one catalog, I
forget what it was called, but I think it’s Target Audience,
and I don’t know why I received it. It’s Target Audience were
ranchers. Now not the roping, riding, corralling,
and branding type of ranchers. know, the tax shelter type of
ranchers. You know, the businessman or
the businesswoman in Atlanta that got so much money, they’re
so filthy rich that they have to shelter their money in a ranch.
And it has an airstrip for their piper and it has, you know, the
ranch house where they entertain their friends. Well, some of
the gifts in this catalog were rather interesting. So while
you’re on your ranch and you’re out in the field hunting the
Pheasant or quail or whatever it is you’re doing with your
$19,000 engraved shotgun, which they also sold in this catalog.
You could use your $1800 portable whiskey set to get yourself a
drink. And so while you’re out on the
field, I mean, this thing was mahogany. I mean, nice, pretty nice. Had
the gifts, the gifts for the people who have everything, but
Not these particular items. My kids said that if they had
$1,200, they would have bought me the satin smoking jacket with
the pheasants down the front. And it had a $250 pair of matching
shoes to go with it, slippers. I don’t know why we got this,
but it was rather interesting to see how the other half lives. But you get money. You get more
bucket list, right? You get a few dollars in the
bank. You do well in life and your bucket list grows and increases
and the things you want or would like to experience become more
sensational. Well, we come to a passage today
where there’s a rich young ruler. We glean some of the facts from
Luke’s gospel, chapter 18, but also in Matthew and in Mark,
this begins the parallel with all three gospels, the synoptic
or seeing alike gospels. And so we pick up that this is
a young man who is rich and he is very rich. He is exceedingly
rich. He’s might as we say, I don’t
know why we use the modifier or whatever. He is filthy rich.
He gets the catalog I just spoke of. He buys these extravagant
gifts. They had one thing in there.
It’s fascinating. It was a leather case that would hold four bottles
of wine. And the case cost more than the bottles of wine. Interesting.
I don’t think any of us live this way, but I still have it.
I’ll pass it on if anybody would like to see it. It’s rather interesting.
But what does a rich person need that money can’t buy? That’s
what pops up in our story today. That’s what pops up in the gospel
today. And as we look at these gospel stories over the weeks,
we see many of these little vignettes are meant to expose in a person
their sin, but it does so for us as well. In our passage, it
says, a ruler asked Jesus, good teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life? It was the thing he couldn’t
buy, But it was also the thing that he was pretty sure he had.
And as he approaches Jesus, I think we have to see that he was just
making sure that he had all his ducks in a row, all his money
counted for, all his taxes paid, but all his good Jewish boy law-keeping
under wraps, all set and ready to go. And so I think this passage
shows to us two significant things that we ought to not only see
in this man, but we ought to also take a careful look into
our own lives to see if these things are so in each of our
lives. The first thing we see in this
passage, this man was ignorant. He was ignorant of many things.
And Jesus points that out to him very quickly. He comes to
Jesus and he flatters him, good teacher. We have a little joke
in our house when we say, uh, so-and-so is a good person. We
say, no, they’re not read Romans three. There is no one righteous. There is no one who does good.
No, not one. Exactly. Uh, and Jesus points
out this, uh, uh, this, this very fact, uh, there is no one
good except God, uh, even, Jesus affirms this great truth. There
is no one good except God alone. This man is ignorant of this
fact. It’s another fact which proves
his ignorance. He says, what must I do to inherit
eternal life? Now the do he is asking about
is not walking forward in a church service and accepting Jesus by
praying a prayer. It’s not a you know, saying the
sinner’s prayer when the man on TV says, now, if you want
to become a Christian, become a Christian with me today. That’s
not the do part. There is action required to become
a Christian. This is more law-keeping do. This is, do I honor my parents? Do I refrain from murder and
adultery and stealing and lying and coveting? Do I love the Lord
my God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength? These things
were heavy on his mind, what must I do for eternal life? And so this man was ignorant
of the basics of the Christian faith. Now we live this side
of heaven, on this side of the cross, on this side of the work
of Jesus. And it’s helpful for us to remember
exactly what we said in our creed a few moments ago, the Westminster
Creed, that last little statement. We understand the way God works
in salvation. The book of Ephesians says, before
the dawn of time, God in eternity past chose us in his beloved
son to be his children. And we know that in God’s work
of sovereign election, when we become real people born in space
and time, the gospel call goes out, the Holy Spirit does its
work, and God brings us to a place of faith In Jesus, through the
power of the work of regeneration, we become born again. Our eyes
are opened. We see the gospel. We not just
see its words, but we realize in our heart, God is talking
about us. Through the eyes of faith, we see that we’re sinners.
Through the eyes of faith, we recognize that Jesus is the only
lamb of God who can take away the sins of the world. We lay
hold of this truth by faith. We trust in God alone, Jesus
alone for our salvation. We receive him, we rest, we trust
the Holy Spirit, the work of the church, the word of God to
do its work. And we spend the rest of our lives striving to
grow in grace and in holiness. until God takes us home to heaven.
We know these things. We have this all wrapped up in
our confessions and creeds and catechisms. But this man, as
you see, had a very different worldview. He believed that if
he grew up, reached the Jewish age of accountability, and he
kept the law from a young age and kept it perfectly, guess
what? I can probably get eternal life. And so he’s coming to Jesus. Let me just make sure. Let me
just make good and sure that I’ve done everything right. I’ve
checked all the boxes. I’ve been responsible. Well,
what do we know about God’s law? I mean, we read the 10 commandments
just a few moments ago. Did y’all feel the hush over
the room? Did y’all feel the trembling and the shaking of
Mount Sinai? Did y’all imagine in your minds the fire and the
smoke and the people saying, Moses, you go meet with God and
just tell us about it. We can’t stand to be at the foot
of this mountain where it shakes and it quakes and the holiness,
the weightiness, the majesty and the splendor of God, it scares
us to death. Did you, did you, See that, feel
that. And then we hit our confession
of sin. Every week we pray something about Lord and thought word and
deed. I’ve broken your law. We remember Jesus and the sermon
on the Mount. You may not have committed adultery physically,
but you’ve done it in your heart and that’s as bad or worse. You
know, we, we, we understand this side of the cross, this side
of the gospel, this side of having all 66 books bound together for
our edification and growth and grace. That’s not what this man
understood. No, he was ignorant. And so he
comes to Jesus. He asked him, what must I do
to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, don’t
call me good. Why do you call me good? No one’s
good, but God alone. You know, the commandments, Jesus
lists a few of them, not all of them. And the man’s response,
thanks for asking. I’m pretty good at it. And what
I’m really wanting to know is, have I done it good enough to
get eternal life? Now you might stop there and
say, okay, this is Jewish sounding. This is Old Testament sounding.
You ask Joe Blow Christian on the street in Burlington, North
Carolina in 2021, what must I do to be saved? And probably most
people will say, well, I’ve done a lot of good in my life and
I’ve done a lot of bad, but one outweighs the other. Or this
kind of theology really pops up at a funeral service. You
know, my job as a minister is to help the family see the witness
of Christ’s resurrection power at the death of their loved one.
But what do most families want? They want the sainthood of their
loved one to be on display for all to see and hear. And what’s
the problem with this? The good that you have done,
what does the Bible say? It says, though filthy rags. And what about the evil? We downplay
our evil. If you were to look at the stack of your sins, which
you have committed in your life, whether young, old, or in between,
they would rise up to the heavens. You couldn’t begin to remember
them all and to confess them all. That’s sometimes why we
have to confess to the Lord, Lord, my confession of my sins
needs repentance too, because I don’t realize how wicked I
am and how much I need more to confess to you. And so Jesus
points out to this man whose theology is not much different
than the theology you might find on the streets in Burlington
in 2021. And he points out to him, there’s
still one thing you lack. You need to sell all you have,
you need to distribute it to the poor, and then you need to
come and you need to follow me. Now we’re getting into some fuzzy
understanding of salvation here. Am I to preach a gospel to you
today that says, all right, you people, You bunch of rich people. Sell it all, give it to the poor,
and then come follow Jesus. Is selling all your possessions
a prerequisite to coming to Jesus? Well, no. What’s Jesus pointing
out here? He’s saying, look, you’re trying
to fulfill the law in your obedience. And maybe you’ve obeyed your
parents. Fat chance of that, right? Maybe you’ve not murdered.
Well, probably a pretty good chance of that, but you’ve thought
about it. You haven’t committed adultery. Probably haven’t, but
thought about it. And go through the list. And
Jesus is saying, okay, if you want to measure up, let’s get
you to measure up. Oh, you’re coveting. You’re rich. You love your riches. You’re
idolatrous. And so he’s broken the first
table of the law. No other gods. His God is money. You’ve broken things in the second
table of the law. You have coveted. You love your
wealth. And so what is Jesus pointing
out here? He’s like, look, guy, you’ve broken it. You think you
followed it, but you’ve broken it. And what does this remind
us of? This reminds us that we can possess
everything. We can possess heaven and earth.
We can you know, be lifestyles of the rich and famous. You can
receive that catalog I described in the mail and you can have
your $400 four bottle of wine holder so you can get in your
airplane and get back and forth between Atlanta and your ranch
or whatever it is those folks do. You can gain the whole earth
but not possess Christ Jesus. And that’s what Jesus wants us
to see today is you can’t measure up. You do daily break God’s
law in thought and in word And indeed, and your good deeds are
those filthy rags in the sight of God. And so we need Jesus.
Did Jesus keep the law? He absolutely did. Back at Christmas,
just a few weeks ago, we recited in many of our creeds and catechisms
about the coming of Jesus into the world. We remember that Jesus
left heaven. was conceived by the Holy Ghost
in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He was born of her yet without
sin. And so we understand that because Jesus was not conceived
through the power of Joseph, a sinful man, he was born in
the womb of the Virgin Mary. He was born without original
sin. You see, all of us born with original sin are held accountable
for that original sin and the actual sins that proceed from
it. but not so Jesus. Jesus was born
without original sin. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, without sin, made under the law,
but he perfectly kept it, every bit of it. And so when we look
at Jesus, we see a sinless man who perfectly obeyed God. He
met the demands of God’s righteous, holy law. And so when he went
to the cross, he was the perfect spotless lamb. His death, his
sacrifice was sufficient to save because he was worthy. He was
worthy to die for the sins of his children. And we speak of
the work of Jesus at the cross as a great exchange. He took
your sin. He took your lawlessness. He
took your disobedience. He took your disobedience to
your parents. He took your adultery. He took
your covetousness. He took your other gods and he
bore in his body on the cross those sins for you in order for
this other great exchange, your sins for his righteousness. And
we speak of this word justification often in faith when we come to
God and receive Jesus and rest in him alone for our salvation.
God in justification sees us as if we never sinned because
that’s how he sees Jesus. And he sees us as if we have
always obeyed. That’s how God looks at you when
you are a Christian. And that’s how this man in the
passage, that’s how we who sit here today need to look at ourselves.
Apart from Christ, we are unrighteous lawbreakers and we do daily break
God’s law and thought, word and deed. And we’re really good at
it. We know this about ourselves, don’t we? It’s our experience.
It’s what the Bible teaches us. We have come to this fact. In
fact, one of the first questions we ask for membership in the
church, do you recognize yourself to be a sinner in God’s sight?
justly deserving his wrath and his curse due to you for sin.
But do you acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ? And have you received
him? And do you rest in him alone
for your salvation? If you can’t answer that question,
the rest of the questions don’t really matter. Are you a sinner? Have your eyes been opened to
the fact the gospel tells it to you? Your life affirms it,
your experience acknowledges it. That’s what this man needed
to know. And that’s what we need to hear
today, that unless we fix our eyes on Jesus, we are fixing
our eyes on ourselves and we are lawbreakers. Jesus is a law
keeper. This man was ignorant, but he
came to the right place. He came to the fountain of blessing
and grace, even Jesus. This man was also idolatrous. It’s the second thing we see
in this passage. Not only was he ignorant, he was an idolater. One thing you still lack, Jesus
says, sell all that you have, distribute it to the poor and
you will have treasure and then come and follow me. But when
he heard these things, he became very sad because he was extremely
rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become
sad, said how difficult it is for those that have wealth to
enter the kingdom of God. Here’s a question for you to
think about. Can a wealthy person become a Christian? Absolutely. There are all kinds of wealthy
people around the world who love the Lord Jesus and who have submitted
their lives and their wealth to the glory of God through the
Lordship of the Lord Jesus. Here’s another question. Can a rich person serve the Lord? Well, it’s difficult. Just as
it may be difficult for a rich person to give that up and come
and submit to the Lord, it also may be difficult for a person
who does come to faith and either becomes wealthy or is wealthy
for that wealth not to steer their lives in a certain way. And so when Jesus says, you know,
go and sell all you have distributed to the poor, this is not a condition
for salvation. I don’t want to see and hear
next Sunday that all of you had yard sales and that all of you
called up Franklin Templeton or whoever it is that has your
money and you liquidated it all and gave it to the poor. Now,
if that’s what the Lord would have you do, go and do it. Give some
to the church, the sanctuary fund and all the rest. And if
you’re having a yard sale, let me know if there’s any good stuff.
And I’ll come on Friday night before the crowd comes on Saturday.
But it’s not a condition for salvation, is it? It’s not a
condition for salvation. If you’re wealthy, get rid of
it, then come to Jesus. But what is Jesus doing here?
He’s speaking in hyperbole. He’s speaking in exaggerated
terms. He’s speaking, I was about to
say hyperbole because that’s how my eighth grade teacher up
at turn time taught us to say it. It’s hyperbole, right? My
mom is not sitting here to correct me, but she would by lunchtime
at least. Hyperbole, he’s exaggerating,
right? A rich person has such an obstacle
to faith because they love their money. A rich person, in fact,
can’t come to faith. It’d be easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle. Now, some of you are sewers,
right? You get out your needle, you’re gonna put a button back
on the pants or stitch up a little tear You get out your trifocals,
bright spotlight, and you do it. Now, you’ve got to have one
of those little gadgets that gets it through there. But you
can imagine, in Near Eastern times, their needles had bigger
holes in their eyes. But it was still impossible.
for a camel to go through. Now, some would say there was
a gate in Jerusalem and everybody knew about this gate and it was
the gate that no donkey and cart and camel could go through. They
had to duck and kneel and shuck and jive to get through there.
That’s probably a lot of folklore, but you begin to get the picture.
A transfer truck is not going to go in your garage at home,
right? And neither is a camel going
to go through the eye of a needle. It’s impossible. And what is
Jesus saying here? He’s saying the heart, the heart
of a wealthy person, the heart of a wealthy person finds it
hard to have their fingers pried off their idols of wealth. And you could fill in the blank.
Some of you have read the Confessions of St. Augustine. He was the
fourth century theologian who for much of his life was not
a fourth century theologian. He was a fourth century playboy. It’s probably the best way to
put it. His mother, Monica, prayed for him to come to faith in Jesus.
If you read through his confessions, which is really the story of
his life and his conversion to the Lord Jesus, there comes a
point in time where wine, women and money and fun are still a
delight to him, but he has heard the gospel preached and it’s
ringing in his ears and God the Holy Spirit is at work in his
life saying to him, you need to come to faith in me. And there’s a point in the confessions
where St. Augustine says something rather
telling. He says, before me was the pearl of great price. And
I hesitated. This man loves his money. St. Augustine loved his wine and
his women and his carousing. And you could fill in the blank.
I love this. And coming to Jesus means I have
to give it up. We have a friend in the faith,
a sister in the faith who has converted not only to the Lord
Jesus Christ. in saving way, but she converted
from a sinful lifestyle, which is prevalent in this day and
time. And she writes in her autobiography, coming to Jesus was not rosy
and pretty. It was a train wreck. And it
was a slow moving train wreck where As Jesus was precious to
her, all that she had to give up, all that she had to change,
all that she had to do was very messy in her life. And we’ve
watered down salvation. You know, you hear me say sometimes
we don’t want to put salvation in front of people as you don’t
want to go to hell now, do you? So come to Jesus and put your
get out of hell free card in your back pocket. And when the
Monopoly game’s over, you get to go to heaven. That’s how we
look at evangelism sometimes. But coming to Jesus means that
we are a new creation. The old is gone. The idolatry,
the immorality, the wicked practices, the disobedience, the rebellion,
and all the horrors of a pagan life apart from God must go. And we must have the folly and
the foolishness of this world driven from us in order that
we might live under the Lordship of Jesus and his word and his
Holy Spirit. And that’s what this man is facing.
And that’s what some of you may be facing today. You hear the
gospel, you hear this challenge to come to faith. And you want
to, as our creed said, you want to be redeemed and called and
justified and sanctified and glorified. But not yet, because
you’re still in love with this present world. You’re still in
love with your wealth or your immorality or your addictions
or the things of this world. And I wanna challenge you and
say to you this, what a precious thing it is to
hold the gospel in one hand and see that it lifts you up to heaven
for eternity. And what a wicked thing it is
to hold something that keeps you from God in this hand and
say, but I just can’t. And that is a conundrum that
so many people face. Coming to Jesus means giving
it all up. Father, brother, mother, father,
standing in life, self-righteousness, and on and on that list can go. What obstacle stands in the way
of you receiving the gospel of the Lord Jesus? Jesus says, if
you give up this world, you’ll gain heaven on earth. You see
that in the passage? You give up this earth, you’ll
get heaven in this life, but you’re going to get it all in
the life that is to come. Jim Elliot, the missionary to
the Aka Indians in Ecuador said this, he is no fool who gives
up what he cannot keep to gain what he can never gain. lose. And isn’t that true in everything
we hear in the gospel? Last week, we looked at parenting
and family and covenant homes. And isn’t it worth it to give
up so much to have a quiet, simple Christian home where the generation
after generation after generation, so many people are pursuing wealth
these days. They ignore their children. So
many people are pursuing sports and they want their children
to pursue sports. And you give up all these opportunities
for the gospel life. What does Peter say in this passage?
He says, Jesus, we’ve done this. And some of you are saying, I’ve
done this. This is my life. I’ve given it
up all for the glory of God. And you can give testimony. I’ve
never been without. God has always provided. And
you know the hope of heaven and what’s to come with God’s great
blessings. But let me end with asking you
this question. Your fingers are always tightly
gripped on something. And it’s often not Jesus, it’s
often not God, but it’s something in this world that you’ve worked
hard for, you have earned, it’s near and dear to you, or it fills
a void in your life and it is precious to you. But what are
your fingers gripping that Jesus is saying to you today, let go
of and follow me wholeheartedly. Let go of it and be my disciple.
Let go of it and see if I don’t give you the riches of heaven
now and later. I’m sure that each of us have
our sweaty little fingers on something. And may God, by his
grace and through the power of his word and the work of his
Holy Spirit, see our hands loosened and see us like Abraham, our
father in the faith, leave idolatry and go for the promised land
where God promises to bless and keep and provide for us. Pray with me. Our Lord and our
God, we give you thanks for this your word, which shines a light
into our hearts. It takes its two-edged blade
and it cuts deep. It goes to the joints and the
marrows. It proves to you, but to us, who we are. May we not
be afraid of the light. May we not be scared of the surgeon’s
hand, but may we yield ourselves this day, not grieving the Holy
Spirit, but yielding to the Holy Spirit and say, Lord, take my
fingers off of these idols. And may my hands be ready and
willing to follow you and serve you in any way you ask. May this
be so of us, so that we might bring glory to your name and
good to this world as we bear witness. Hear us and help us.
It’s in Christ’s name we all pray and say together, amen.