Take your Bibles with me and turn to Luke 18. Luke 18 this morning. We are going to read verses 18-34 in a minute.
This morning I, for whatever reason, decided to try to find the house that I lived in as a child on Google Maps. My parents got divorced when I was two or three and my mom moved me and my brother from New Hampshire to Leesburg, Virginia. My step-dad was an air traffic controller who worked at Washington Center in Leesburg.
We lived there until I finished the fourth grade. So roughly 7 years from the time of his 3 till the time of his 10.
Now when I lived in Leesburg, Virginia, it was a small town. There's probably around 8,000 people that lived in the town. It wasn't a particularly rich town. Our house was in a modest neighborhood, a lot like this neighborhood. Just a small ranch house sitting on a basement. That's what was all around us.
The town was nothing to speak of. I remember going to Roy Rogers restaurant a lot with my mom for breakfast, which is basically Hardee’s. I remember riding by fields of cows every day on my way to school. My best friend then, John Motes, lived in this really old house and we used to go and shoot BB guns in his backyard. It was a typical small country town.
Today Leesburg, Virginia is nothing like that. Today something like 60,000 people live in Leesburg. And it's one of the wealthiest places in America. I was trying to find my old house and I couldn't find it because the whole neighborhood looks like it was torn down and replaced with mansions. I was trying to find the places that we went to when I was a kid and they’ve all been replaced with super bougie coffee shops and wine bars and yoga studios. The whole place is a different place.
Today it’s just an expensive neighborhood for tech bros and people that work in Washington DC. It's the kind of place that your senator or his staff probably lives. It’s the modern home of rich young rulers.
Our text today is the famous story of the rich young ruler. It's one of the more challenging stories in all of the Gospels and it's found here in Matthew and in Mark. Let's go ahead and read verses 18 to 34.
18 And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.
20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.
21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up.
22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.
24 And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!
25 For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
26 And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?
27 And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
28 Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.
29 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake,
30 Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
31 Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
32 For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
33 And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.
34 And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.
Luke 18:18-34 (KJV)
In our story today a man comes up to Jesus who is very rich. This passage tells us that he's a ruler and Matthew tells us he's young. Both tell us he’s rich. We put those three things together and he's been known throughout history as the rich young ruler.
I imagine he was a young and up and coming member of the Sanhedrin. Just beginning a promising political career, a moral man in many ways. He comes to Jesus with the greatest question ever. He asked Jesus,** “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”**
Isn't that a good question? This man, to his credit, is thinking about how to get to heaven. He is thinking about what he has to do to get eternal life, what he has to do to get in.
A lot of people aren't even considering that. A lot of people, especially in the modern age, don't think at all about the afterlife, maybe until their dying days but this man is thinking, "What do I got to do to get to heaven?”
And he's going to the right place. He's going to Jesus. Can you think of a better place to go to get that question answered than the feet of Jesus Christ?
But it's interesting. Jesus' answer confounds him. He walks away sorrowful. He doesn't accept what Jesus says here and he walks away and this whole episode gives the impression to the disciples that it's impossible for anybody to get saved.
Someone said this is the only person in all the Gospels that comes to Jesus and leaves worse off than he came.
It's easy to get the wrong impression here. A lot of people have read this story and said that it teaches that it's bad to be rich and that rich people, wealthy people, can't be saved. That's a really lazy interpretation of this passage. The very next chapter tells the story of Zacchaeus, a wealthy person that got saved, and Jesus didn't ask Zacchaeus to give away everything that he owned.
The scripture talks of lots of wealthy people that were also holy, godly, saved people. In the Old Testament you have people like Abraham, Job, David, Solomon. All of them would have been fantastically wealthy. In the New Testament you've got Zacchaeus, Joseph of Arimathea, Barnabas, and others that God used that were wealthy believers.
The point of this passage isn't that money is bad and that you can't get to heaven if you have money. The point of the passage is that money tends to cause people to trust in the wrong things for their salvation.
Money tends to go along with self-sufficiency. People who have money tend to be proud and they tend to think they can do anything. The vices of rich people tend to be socially acceptable. Nobody puts you in jail for being proud, covetous or self-sufficient. They put on on magazine covers for those things.
What happens in this story is Jesus is confronting this man's false ideas about what it means to get saved showing us five things about what it means to become a Christian and have a home in heaven.
So let’s pray and I’ll give you those five things this morning.
Pray
What do you have to do to go to heaven? What do you have to do to inherit eternal life? To inherit the kingdom of God? That's the question this rich young ruler asked Jesus and there are five answers in this text.
The first thing I think we can see from this text is
1. Recognize Jesus as God.
The rich young ruler asked Jesus a very interesting question but he prefaced it by saying, "Good master."
And Jesus pushed back on that. You see in Bible times nobody called a rabbi good. There's not one instance in all of the Talmud of anybody calling a rabbi good. This was a breach in etiquette.
So Jesus grabbed a hold of that and he said, "Why do you call me good? There's nobody good besides God."
What I think Jesus was trying to do was to bring this man to the recognition that Jesus is God. Jesus has the right to be called good because he's God. He's trying to draw out that confession from this man.
Jesus can save us because He's Emmanuel. He's God with us.
He's the one that left the glories of heaven to take on human flesh, to live a normal life so that he could be our Great High Priest and he could be our sacrifice.
So I think the first thing Jesus was trying to get this man to see was that he is God. He's not just a good teacher; He's God.
The second thing I think Jesus was trying to get this man to do was
2. Recognize yourself as a sinner.
It's interesting that Jesus asks this man, "Do you know the commandments?" And then Jesus reads most of the second table of the law.
In the 10 Commandments we talk about two tables:
The first four commandments are about how we relate to God.
2. Have no other gods before me.
3. Don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Make no graven images.
5. Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.
Those are called the first table of the law.
The last six commandments, the second table, are about how we relate to our fellow man.
Jesus reads most of the last six commandments.
Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.
And the rich young ruler quickly says “I’ve done all these things from my youth up.” He's saying, 'I'm good. I've done all those things.'
But I think what Jesus left out was conspicuous. Because he may have done these things. He may not have been an adulterer or a murderer or a thief or a liar. He may have taken care of his parents but the first table and the last commandment are missing.
I think Jesus was trying to point out to this man that he was guilty of breaking both the first and the last commandment.
The first commandment says “thou shall have no other gods before me.” This man did have a god that was more important to him than Jesus and that god was his stuff, that God was his possessions.
What's the last commandment? “Thou shalt not covet.” That last commandment is something that happens in your heart. It's wanting things God doesn't want you to have. And again this man was guilty of that. He was unwilling to trust God with his possessions.
And so when Jesus said, "Sell everything that you have," He wasn't giving a blanket command to every person everywhere that all of us have to sell all of our stuff if we're gonna go to heaven and follow Jesus. What He was doing was for this particular man. He was bringing him to the realization that he was a sinner. This man thought he was good. This man thought he was righteous. Jesus, out of His love for this man, was showing him that he wasn't. That God wasn't as important to him as he said that He was. That there were things that were more important to him than God. That he was a sinner.
And listen folks, for you maybe it's not money, maybe it's not possessions, but God could for every single one of us turn the spotlight onto our heart and show that we are a sinner. No one measures up to the holiness of God. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
So if you're gonna go to heaven:
- You gotta recognize that Jesus is God.
- You gotta recognize that you're not good.
You can't get there on your own.
There is a third thing we have to do if we are going to go to heaven that we see in this passage and that is…
3. Recognize that salvation is impossible.
Jesus said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven.
A lot of people have tried to soften that and say that there was some gate that camels had to be unpacked and go through and it was called the eye of the needle. I don't believe that. I think Jesus was talking about a literal camel and a literal needle. I can't get thread through the eye of an needle. It was a ridiculous illustration of something that's impossible.
And the disciples understood that because they said, "Well then it's impossible for anybody to get saved." Bingo! You got the right answer.
So Jesus said “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
Humanly speaking salvation is impossible. Every man is guilty as a sinner before God. None of us are able to live up to the demands of the law.
Anybody that says, "I keep the Ten Commandments. I've always kept the Ten Commandments," like this man wanted to say, just hasn't studied them very well because they're impossible. It's impossible for a depraved human heart to love God chiefly, to always put God first. That's the first commandment. None of us can keep the first command. As you understand all these commands as God gave them to us and explained them to us, the deeper meaning of them, none of us are capable of keeping any of these things.
You might say, "I am not an adulterer and physically that might be true." Jesus said, "If you look at a woman with lust in your eyes, you've committed adultery in your heart." Every single man is guilty of that, all of us.
You might say, "I am not a murderer and I hope that's true in a physical sense." Jesus said, "If you have anger in your heart then you're guilty of this" and all of us have been there. All of us have borne false witness and lied. If not outright we've done it by little acts of deception.
And if we think that we can check off all the lists, God put a convenient last one on there about coveting and every single human being covets. All of us want things that are not good for us. All of us want things that God doesn't want us to have. All of us look at the rich guy down the road and say in our heart, "Why can't I have that?" That means that we're sinners.
Sinners in need of a savior. Sinners that can't, by our own acts and our own righteousness, get our own way into heaven.
And ask the question, "What shall I do to enter into heaven?" He was thinking about this all wrong because there was nothing he could do to enter into heaven. His riches had blinded him to the fact that there was nothing he could do to enter into heaven. His riches and his morality had made him think that he was good enough to get there on his own and Jesus was trying to say, "No you're a sinner, you're guilty."
So…
Jesus is teaching us in this passage that if we are going to go to heaven we must:
- Recognize Jesus as God.
- Recognize yourself as a sinner
- Recognize salvation as impossible.
There is a fourth thing we must do and that is…
4. Trust in Christ totally.
Look at verses 31-33 with me. You know, on our own, there is nothing we can do to enter heaven. On our own we can’t be good enough. But Jesus did make a way.
31 Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
32 For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
33 And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again.
We don't get to heaven because of anything that we do. We get to go to heaven because of what Christ did on our behalf. Christ came and lived the perfect life that we can't live. Christ was the only sinless one. He came as God and they put him on a tree. They crucified him, they mocked him, they spat on him, they scourged him, they put him to death. On that cross God poured out the wrath for all of our sins on Jesus Christ and then on the third day he rose again. Rising again he proved that God had accepted his payment for our sins.
So if you are going to heaven, it's not going to be because you're a good person. It's not going to be because you have accepted some moral code. If you're going to heaven, it's because of what Jesus did for you on the cross. You have to trust in that totally.
Sometimes God has to bring religious people to the end of themselves so they stop looking to themselves and start looking to Christ. And I think that's what Christ was doing to this rich young ruler.
- Recognize Jesus as God.
- Recognize yourself as a sinner
- Recognize salvation as impossible.
- Trust in Christ totally. (From verses 31-34)
Now there is one more thing I think Jesus was trying to teach us in this passage. It’s not quite a part of our salvation, it’s not necessary to go to heaven, but it is really helpful for us.
When this rich young ruler walked away from Jesus sad because he refused to pay the cost of following Jesus, it left the disciples thinking “What about us? We’ve given up everything to follow Jesus.”
And they likely had. They walked away from their families, from their businesses, from their possessions to follow Jesus full time.
And what did they have to show for it?
I can relate to that. I walked away from my dreams to follow Jesus. I’ve spend my adult a thousand of miles away from my mother and father and brothers and nieces and nephews. I’ve sacrificed my dreams to follow Christ.
Maybe Christ will ask you to make sacrifices for him. Maybe you won’t advance as far in your career as you would if you weren’t a Christian. Maybe God will move you to a place where you won’t make as much money. Maybe you’ll have to make difficult decisions for Jesus that are a strain on your relationship with your family or even your marriage. I’ve seen all of that and more.
It’s a fair thing for us to ask “What about us? What do we get for following you Jesus?”
Look at what Jesus said here:
28 Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.
29 And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake,
30 Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.
That is a promise. A wonderful promise. So the fifth thing Jesus was teaching in these verses is
5. Recognize that what Christ gives is greater than what He asks.
Church, I don’t think this means that we are going to be physically richer because of following Jesus. I think what Jesus is promising is that what He gives us both here in this life and in the life to come is going to be much better than what we would have if we didn’t follow Jesus.
God will be debtor to no man. You cannot out give God. And if you life faithfully for Jesus and follow Him, He will reward you.
What does Jesus give? He gives things that money cannot purchase and that death cannot take. He gives peace with God. He gives a conscience that isn't constantly working to justify itself. He gives the joy of knowing that your standing before God doesn't depend on your performance. He gives a family — the church — that will be there when your money is gone and your health is failing. The rich young ruler walked away with his possessions and without any of those things. He made a terrible trade.
The disciples gave up fishing boats and tax tables. What did they get? They got to be there when the tomb was empty. They got the Holy Ghost. They got the privilege of carrying the greatest news in human history to the world. And they got eternal life in the age to come.
Jesus isn't asking you to take a loss. He's asking you to make the best trade you'll ever make.
This morning that same question hangs in the air: What shall I do to inherit eternal life? And the answer is not a list of things you've done right. The answer is a Person. Recognize that He is God. Recognize that you are a sinner who cannot save yourself. Recognize that what He did on that cross is the only payment God will accept for your sin. And trust Him — totally, not partially — with everything that you are.
The rich young ruler couldn't do it. His money had too strong a grip on him. Don't let anything have that grip on you today.
—
Conclusion:
So this morning I want to ask you, have you thought about what you need to do to inherit eternal life? Have you thought about how to get to heaven?
That’s the most important question you could ever ask. And Jesus gives us the answer:
- Recognize Jesus as God.
- Recognize yourself as a sinner
- Recognize salvation as impossible.
- Trust in Christ totally. (From verses 31-34)
- Recognize that what Christ gives is greater than what He asks.
Let’s stand for prayer.
