The Key to Success | Sunday, October 25, 2020

All right, today we are going to be going through Mark chapter 10, verses 17 to 27. It says, "As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'"

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus asked him. "No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother."

The man said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all of these from my youth." Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, "You lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

But he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving because he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were astonished at his words. Again, Jesus said to them, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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."

They were even more astonished, saying to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Looking at them, Jesus said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God."

Heavenly Father, as we go through this passage, I pray that you would speak to us, that you would give us wisdom and discernment, and give us understanding. Father, help us to grow and to be more like you, Jesus, to grow closer to you, and ultimately, Jesus, to be better followers. So, Jesus, we want you to be glorified as we study. Be with us. We pray these things in your name, Jesus. Amen.

We start out here in Mark chapter 10, verse 17, and it says, "As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'"

The question and the person asking both tell us something here. The person ran up to Jesus, showing urgency. He was not afraid to be seen running after Jesus, which tells us a little bit about him. We see him kneeling down before Jesus, showing subservience and acknowledging Jesus' authority.

And we know from other accounts in the Gospels that he is rich. We'll see that later on here also. He has wealth, and you can tell that probably just by looking at him.

From other accounts in Matthew chapter 19 and in Luke chapter 18, we see that he is young. He is not old. This is somewhat of a sliding scale. When I was in junior high, I looked at high schoolers, and they seemed old, mature, and grown up. Forty was old; forty was ancient. At that time, I thought you were probably dead at forty. Now, I look at things differently. Forty is not old at all; seventy is old, but forty is not. Best guess we have here is that he is somewhere in his early twenties.

We also see that he is a ruler. He has a position of authority, probably religious, considering that the civil government was Roman. He also has a good acquaintance with the Jewish law. This man is the epitome of success in the culture of that time—someone whom anyone would look at and think, "This is a guy who's got the world in the palm of his hand." However, he also has an urgent question for Jesus.

He starts out by saying, "Good teacher." He recognizes that Jesus is both good and a teacher, a rabbi, someone who has a higher authority than himself. He asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" He believes that eternal life is something desirable and that there is something he can do to obtain it.

Jesus knows this man. He loves this man and desires that he would come to a right relationship with Him. In light of all this, He answers the man's question. However, how He answers is really important. He doesn't challenge the man on the false idea that he could do enough to inherit salvation. We call that a works-based salvation, and we know that's not the case. But Jesus doesn't challenge him on that. He doesn't insist on the argument that salvation only comes from Him, not from the man's actions. Instead, He asks the man a question and allows him to wrestle with his own thoughts and beliefs.

Jesus answers him in verse 18, saying, "Why do you call me good?" He asks him, "No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother."

So, Jesus starts out by saying, "Why do you call me good? Only God is good." But we know that Jesus is God, right?

Then why does He say this? Jesus does not challenge or force the man to acknowledge His divinity here. The text doesn't tell us why that is, so we're left with having to make educated guesses about it based on what we know about Jesus and His word. What we do know from God's word is that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. Jesus doesn't see this man as a throwaway, unworthy of time or trouble to set straight. We need to remember that.

Point number one: God's goal is ultimately concerned with our eternal salvation, not with changing the immediate situation or winning an argument. Rather than force the argument about the divinity of Christ, Jesus points him to the law. Jesus lists six of the Ten Commandments: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, and honor your father and your mother. This is the framework that God lays out in the law for all our interactions with other humans.

This is an imposing list, but the requirement here is to perfectly fulfill the law, and the law requires us to be perfect. This is why trusting in the law and our own efforts is a dangerous plan. In Galatians chapter three, verses ten to twelve, it tells us that all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, "Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed." Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. But the law is not based on faith. Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

The requirement, the curse of living under the law, is that you have to keep the law perfectly. You have to do all of those things perfectly: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, and honor your father and mother. You have to keep all of those things perfectly.

In verse twenty, the man answers Jesus and says, "Teacher, I have kept all of these from my youth." That is quite a claim. He asserts that he has perfectly and righteously interacted with everyone since he was a youth. If we take him at face value, he legitimately does not know what else to do. If we take him at his word, as Jesus does, he has kept the law and he has done it well.

But it still left him with an understanding that there is a need. That is why he came to Jesus and said, "What must I do?" He knows that there is something more he needs to do. His keeping of the law was not enough. He still seeks out Jesus for direction and help.

Isaiah 64:6 says, "All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment." All of our good things and all of our righteous acts are polluted because we are sinners with divided hearts and double-minded thinking. Even if we concede that he has kept the law perfectly, keeping the law while being sinful, with divided thoughts and minds, makes it tainted.

At this point, we could be tempted to scoff at his claim of a perfect record. Quite honestly, most of us have enough life experience to realize that we don't do things perfectly. I don't do things perfectly, you don't do things perfectly, and none of us do things perfectly. This might entitle us to look at him with a bit of scoffing or mockery, perhaps calling him a prideful liar.

But what does Jesus do? This is really telling. Look at verse twenty-one. "Looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, 'You lack one thing. Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'"

First, Jesus looks at him. He creates a moment of connection and attention. He didn't rush off; he didn't brush the man aside. He gave him time and his direct, undivided attention. What a gift that is, right? When you give somebody your direct and undivided attention.

I know I've been convicted lately of having a tendency to give people divided attention. I often find myself alternating between my phone and the person I'm speaking with. Jesus, however, does not do that. He takes this interaction with this man, one of probably hundreds of people he will see that day, and he stops. It says he looked at him and loved him. He gave that moment of connection and attention, offering him his full presence.

Time and his direct and undivided attention, then it says Jesus loved him. Jesus interacted with him, and his interaction was motivated and directed by love. It was more loving at this point for Jesus to address the man's fundamental need to understand his guilt before the law than it was to force him to see Jesus as the Savior at that moment. Only after creating the moment of connection and being guided by love does Jesus point out the agonizing truth to this man. He doesn't just drop it on him. He looks at him, is motivated by love, and then he says to him, "You lack one thing. Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

See, Jesus doesn't need to point out anything else. This was the one thing that the man was holding onto more than his desire to please God. It was his blind spot. Many people, when they teach this passage, choose to focus on the message about power and possessions and the hold that they can have over you, and there is definitely truth in that. However, we need to remember that this is a conversation with a person that Jesus is having. This is not a position paper on a condition or a characteristic.

What do I mean by that? Jesus is not at this point telling every rich person to go sell everything they have and give it all to the poor in order for them to be saved. He is talking to this man about his specific issue and his specific blind spot. My blind spot might be different, and yours as well. The thing about blind spots is that we're blind to them; it's in the name.

How then do we find out what we cannot see? Well, we need to ask. In Psalm 139, verse 23, the psalmist says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." If we ask God to show us our blind spots, He is faithful to do that.

Now, why is it important that we ask about our blind spots? Because I could very easily look at the rich young ruler and say, "Wow, okay, well, fortunately, I'm not rich, young, or a ruler, so I'm doing pretty good." But see, that's his blind spot; that's not my blind spot. My blind spot is going to be something different, and that's what I have to go to God for. That's why we have to ask, "Try me and see if there is any wicked way in me."

And remember, when you ask God to show you your blind spots, you have to be prepared for the answer. Just like the rich young ruler, it's not going to be without pain, and it's probably not going to be something that's easy for us to address. We have to be ready for that because when you ask, God will be faithful to show you, and it's probably going to hurt.

Jesus loves this man. He tells this young man, in love, to sell everything and then to come follow Him. Look at his response in verse 22: he was dismayed by this demand, and he went away grieving because he had many possessions. Point number two: God's correction, while loving, can be painful. The rich young man leaves grieving because he had many possessions. Jesus pointed out to him the one thing that he could not get rid of on his own, the one thing he could not bring himself to change. So he leaves the presence of Jesus mourning, and Jesus lets him go.

Now, why didn't Jesus stop him or expand on what He meant? Why didn't He send one of the disciples with him to help him sell his stuff and come back? We don't know. We're not given that information. There are a lot of possibilities. Maybe he needed time to marinate on what Jesus said. Maybe he needed time to decompress. Perhaps he was just heading home to post everything on OfferUp. We just don't know.

But remember the man's initial question: What good must I do to have eternal life? He leaves sad because his thinking has a fundamental flaw, and that flaw is very common. The flaw in his thinking is that he could do something to make himself perfect. The problem with trying to become perfect is that once you have a flaw, even if you repair it, at best you are something repaired; you're not perfected. This is the problem. None of us can be perfect. None of us can be perfect enough to merit eternal life on our own.

So Jesus, in verse 23, looked around and said to His disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God."

The disciples were astonished at His words. Again, Jesus said to them in verse 24, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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."

See, Jesus now turns this interaction with this man into an opportunity to teach His followers. He says it's just about impossible for a rich person to go to heaven. The genius part of this is the fact that Jesus uses the example of being rich. This is something that almost everybody wants to be. We might not want to be Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos rich, but if we're honest, we all wish we had a little bit more or a lot more.

As a race of people, we want to be rich so badly that we sell lottery tickets like hotcakes. We enter contests and sweepstakes. We sacrifice our time and our effort to try and amass as much as we can. Look around the world; see how much everybody wants to be rich to the point of sacrificing time with their families. Everybody wants to be rich, or at least a little richer than they are now. It wasn't any different in Jesus' time.

But Jesus uses this opportunity to drive the point He is making home. The disciples have just seen the epitome of Jewish success walk away mournful and grieving. Jesus tells them how impossible it is for this man, and they perfectly grasp the issue. We can tell that by the question they ask. In verse 26, it says they were even more astonished, saying to one another, "Who can be saved? Who can be saved?" Notice they are still focusing on the person who is being saved, not on the Savior.

That is the main issue. It is impossible to be good enough to be worth saving. No one can save themselves by their own works. If we're honest, we know that we all have defects, we all have deficiencies, and we all have things that we struggle with that make us fall short.

But looking at them, in verse 27, Jesus says, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. Because all things are possible with God." That is what Jesus tells them. All things are possible with God. In Galatians chapter 2, verse 23, it says, "Before this faith came, we were confined under..."

The law imprisoned us until the coming faith was revealed. The law then was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. Through faith, you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus. It is through faith, not through works. The law was a prison; it confined us until the freedom of faith was revealed.

Jesus pointed out that their whole way of thinking was backwards. They continually looked inward to try and be good enough, while never being able to pull it off. Instead, they should have been looking to Jesus, who was right there. This is how we get to the main point: people cannot do enough to save themselves, ever. We can never do enough to save ourselves, but God can and does save all of those who call upon Him.

Following the law made this young man right in the eyes of his culture. It gave him status and comfort, and it provided him with something to take pride in. However, it left him with a blind spot. Jesus pointed out that blind spot, and it hurt, so he left. We don't get the end of this man's story; we don't know if he ended up following Jesus or not. And that's okay. That's God's business, not mine. My concern, and your concern, should be whether we are rightly following Jesus. Am I trying to earn my salvation by being good enough, or am I resting in the finished work of Jesus on the cross to pay my debt?

In the three times that the story of the rich young ruler is told in the Gospels, it always comes directly after another event. Let's look at Luke chapter 18, verses 15 to 17. It says, "People were bringing infants to Jesus so that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, invited them. He said, 'Let the little children come to me. Don't stop them because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.'"

The contrast here between these two stories highlights the issue that Jesus is addressing. People were bringing their children, their infants, and their babies to Jesus and asking him to bless them. The Gospel says they were asking him to touch them and to bless them. The disciples saw this and rebuked the people because they viewed it as a phenomenal waste of Jesus' time. They thought, "Get the kids out of here. We have important stuff to do. Babies aren't important. Send them on their way."

Well, Jesus saw things very differently. He invited the children to him and actually rebuked the disciples, saying, "No, no, let the children come to me." He declared that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. I should have a baby here with me for this, but I got lucky with last week's announcements. You can't work too hard on holding babies on camera. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven belongs to these infants. Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like these babies will never enter it.

So, what does this mean? How does an infant receive anything? We have a lot of babies and grandbabies floating around the church right now. I can tell you from many years of observation and experience that babies do absolutely nothing to deserve or merit the attention they require. They don't. It sounds harsh, but hear me out. Do babies have any skills or talents that they express that would make up for the demands they place on the people around them? No, they don't. They cry, they coo, they poop, they wiggle, and they sleep. That's what babies do. They are not capable of doing anything else to take care of themselves. They are completely dependent on others, like leeches or parasites, if you will.

So, what then makes us go through this over and over? If it's four in the morning and you're watching this while sitting up with a baby, I apologize. Stay with us; it's going to get better. Don't despair. What makes us go through this repeatedly? It's our love for them. It's our love that makes us go without sleep. It's our love that enables us to continue listening to the crying while still loving them. The love we have for them means we will literally sacrifice almost anything for them. It is the love of God that gives us our value.

Our value is not in what we do. Your value, hear me out, is not based on what you do. You could screw up badly in two minutes, and your value is not diminished in the sight of Christ. You could do something spectacular; you could lead a thousand people to Christ in your neighborhood in five minutes, and your value is not increased in the sight of Christ. Our value is given to us by the love of God. It's the love of God that gives us our value. Do you see it yet? This is the love that God has for us. The same way that we love our children when they've done nothing to deserve it is the same way that God loves us. We are just as helpless as a baby when it comes to deserving our salvation.

These two stories, The Rich Young Ruler and The Blessing of the Infants, work together to tell us some truths. God wants us to come to Him like infants, totally trusting in Him. We often want to come to Him like rich young rulers, trusting in our own efforts and the things we are prideful about in keeping the law. This leaves us with a fundamental disconnect, a fundamental question we have to answer between these two. Am I coming as a child, seeking nothing more than being blessed by being in the presence of Jesus, or am I pridefully showing God my works as the source of my worth?

We are called to rest in the arms of Jesus for our salvation. Only then, when we are resting in His arms, can we grow and mature in our faith. When we rest in the arms of Jesus, secure in His love, we see the law for what it truly is: a teacher to learn from and to learn how to honor God and love each other, not a stairway to heaven based on our own performance. Instead of grieving over our shortcomings and failings when they are pointed out to us, like The Rich Young Ruler, we can grow in our relationship with Jesus like a child, using His word as the guide.

So that's the question we have to answer. Are we going to show up like The Rich Young Ruler, full of pride in what we've done? Or are we going to rest like an infant in the arms of our Savior, knowing that our value comes from His love for us? That's the question we've got to answer.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close out this service, as we spend a little more time in worship...

Together, I pray that You would remind us, Father, even more, that our worth comes from Your love and that we can trust and rely on You. We don't have to base our worth on what we do, Lord. We don't have to strive to attain salvation; instead, we can enjoy growing in maturity and being closer to You.

So, Jesus, we give this time to You. I pray, Lord, that You would help us to grow in wisdom, to grow in knowledge, and to grow in our love for You, Lord Jesus, and our love for the people around us. We pray these things, Jesus, in Your name. Amen.