Lost & Found: The Ruler

Luke 18:18-30

You know, there is no one like Jesus. I marvel at how he handles people. We have watched him deal with folks in amazing ways. He possesses such an amazing mixture of grace and truth. Too often I fall into either being gracious without truth or truthful without grace. Have you ever noticed how folks tend to fall into one of these two categories but few folks can be truly gracious and graciously truthful at the same time. Well, this morning we are going to see our savior in action once again, full of grace and truth, and I believe as we visit with him this morning we will, if we are able to listen, be transformed by this man unlike any other man, full of grace and truth. Let’s pray.

¹⁸ And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ²⁰ You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’ ” ²¹ And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” ²² 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.” ²³ But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. ²⁴ Jesus, looking at him with sadness, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵ 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.” ²⁶ Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” ²⁷ But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” ²⁸ And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” ²⁹ 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, ³⁰ who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 18:18-30 (ESV)

Jesus has an amazing interaction with a ruler, as the text calls him. Also, within this story, he interacts with his disciples over the same issues. Once again we have two contrasting types of people interacting with the savior and one key lesson from these interactions. The key lesson in this passage is this: to follow Jesus requires a miraculous response to a radical call that results in abundant rewards. Jesus and the others are speaking here of eternal life or the kingdom of God – true biblical salvation – that is, the experience of enjoying God’s full reign and presence forever. This ruler, a young ruler as the gospel of Matthew describes him, is apparently some important person, perhaps some sort of civic or community leader, maybe the eldest son of some wealthy and influential family in the area. And he comes to Jesus with a very good question, much like others in the gospel accounts. He says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now that is a fantastic question to ask. Oh that more folks would ask that question. Oh that our church would be full of folks asking this fantastic question. There is no better question to really ask – nothing else really compares to this question. How do we have eternal life? How can we know the real meaning of life? Is there something better than this? Why am I here? What is the truth? All these questions are getting at the same question of how can I have true eternal life and this guy is asking the right man the right question. Let’s look at what happens next.

Jesus answers the man’s question with a question, as is his common response. We can learn much from him. Although the man asks a great question there are a lot of assumptions behind what he is asking and Jesus goes after these assumptions with his own questions.

He says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” This young wealthy man is coming to Jesus with a point of reference that needs to be adjusted. He is quick to call Jesus “good” and probably quick to think of himself in the same way. Jesus points out the fallacy of his assumption. No one is good except God alone. Now, Jesus is not saying he isn’t good nor he isn’t God – he is merely getting at the man’s assumption – that a mere human is truly good. So he states that no one is good except God alone.

You know what – if that was all that Jesus said he had already answered the man’s question. He is asking what must he do to inherit eternal life. His question has an assumption that there is something he can do to inherit eternal life. In other words, he assumed the answer to the question lied within himself. Jesus is saying, no, there is no warrant in any mere man to earn eternal life. The answer to this great question does not lie within you or me, there is no subjective internal answer to this question. If we are going to find an answer to this question, it must lie outside ourselves. No one is good but God alone – we are not good that is. And as such we in and of ourselves can not rightly discern and can not rightly earn the ability to find the answer to this question. We are corrupt and limited and therefore unable to find or be the answer to our own question. So if you think the way to true life lies within yourself you are badly mistaken and destined to wander aimlessly through out your life trying to find an answer in the wrong place. It does not lie within – it is outside of yourself, it must be. And it must reside in the only good one in the universe, God himself.

Jesus continues. He directs him to the law of God – the commandments of God – those right and good and perfect rules he lays down for humanity to enjoy and follow. The implication is that if you follow these commandments you will inherit eternal life – you will know true life now and forever. And Jesus is absolutely right. But the reality is, if we really can see the perfection of these commands and our miserable and consistent failure, we can not get into heaven this way – the door to heaven is unattainable for us if it requires obedience to the commands. The actual result of truly contemplating the commands of God should be deep conviction of sin and utter despairing of self-righteousness and self-effort. Love God with all my being? I don’t even come close – even my very best thoughts and desires are still completely riddled with selfish ambition, pride and warped thinking. Love my neighbor as myself? My neighbors come in just about dead last on my list of priorities, if I am truly honest with myself and resist the self-flattering fantasy that I love others as myself.

However, this young wealthy ruler doesn’t see it. He says, “All these I have kept from my youth.” Now, looking at these beautiful commands is like looking in a close-up mirror and seeing every defect and wrinkle on my face – in light of that, it would be absurd to claim I have baby fresh skin . Yet, that is what this young man claims when he looks in the mirror of God’s word. “All these I have kept from my youth.”

So Jesus turns up the magnification. “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.” Now, the young man sees it. The wart is in full view to him and all those around him. Jesus has called him to obedience to the commands he thinks he has mastered. To love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and to love others as yourself means to be ready and willing to give all your wealth for his purposes, as he makes those clear. And so, Jesus, as God himself, calls this wealthy man to give his wealth for the poor. And then and there the wart of materialism and the idol of wealth is exposed in all its ugly detail.

Bottom line is, this young man really didn’t love God with all his being and he really didn’t love his neighbor as himself. He loved his money with all his heart and he loved himself preeminently. And any semblance of love for God or others was shallow and probably only as deep as needed to project a good image and keep profits flowing and the man feeling good about himself. His real God was money. That is what he trusted for life. He believed money was what brought true life. His golden rule was he who has the gold makes the rules. He believed money was the means to happiness – for if you have money you have power and you can get what you want and therefore be happy. Isn’t this how it goes? Isn’t this a lot like you and me? This past week I was looking at one of those real estate magazines offering vacation homes in the White mountains. A number of the homes were on lakes in gorgeous settings. Now, nothing wrong with owning such a house but I found myself longing for such a home. I found myself thinking, if I had one of those than life would be oh so good. I pictured myself relaxing by the stone fireplace looking out at the lake with the mountains behind it, enjoying the company of friends and family, at peace and content in my mountain palace. Do you see what was going on? I was replacing God with this mountain home. This thing was the source of my life, of peace and joy and relationships. I was loving stuff more than God – just like the rich young ruler. And in reality, I was loving myself first. All the people in my fantasy were there not for their sake but mine. My supposed love for their company was only a façade to cover my desire to have them with me to make me feel good. Now, nothing wrong with enjoying others company, but when that becomes the object versus a by product, something is wrong. Any wealth we have is to be used in loving God and loving others as ourselves – every last penny is for this purpose. Now recognize love for yourself is included in there, but along side of loving others. And when I face that clear call from scripture I feel just like the young ruler. For it says, “But when he heard these things, he became very sad, …” .

When his wart got exposed he realized that he loved his sin more than he loved God or others. You see, this man’s faith was in his money, it was his God. And when God’s call to use my money to love him and others as myself makes me sad it is because my faith is in my money – all $10 worth. I don’t need to have any money to put my faith in money. The poor can be just as idolatrous with money as the rich. When how much I have becomes a measure of how good life is it means my faith is in money and not God. And this means that I am rejecting Jesus as the source of life. And to follow Jesus means that I must turn from faith in money and self and anything else that promises to fulfill me outside of God, and place all my faith in Christ alone. I must repent of sin and trust Christ. For whatever is not of faith in Christ is sin.

Question for us this morning – what are you putting your faith in? What makes you happy? What is your hope? What is your ultimate joy? What gets you up in the morning and keeps you going? Is it a paycheck? Is it a comfortable lifestyle? Is it acceptance by friends? Is it fame or power or fun? Where are you placing your faith? To follow Jesus is to heed his radical call to place all our faith in him.

Now the young ruler couldn’t do it and so he walked away very sad. And the gospel of Mark says Jesus loved him and our passage says Jesus was saddened by his poor response. And he went on to say, “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.” Now this is not very encouraging. Jesus basically says, “I’m saddened but not surprised by this response for it is easier to squeeze an elephant through a keyhole than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” A camel was the largest animal around and an eye of a needle was one of the smallest portals around, so he used this hyperbole to illustrate how impossible it is for a rich person to enter into eternal life.

You see, the radical call to follow Jesus, to abandon faith in wealth and other things and place it in Jesus is impossible for man to heed. The disciples say, “Then who can be saved?” And Jesus replies, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” If it depended on us to enter the kingdom of God no one would ever get it. For you and I would rather put our faith in wealth or power or comfort or anything else besides God. The bible teaches us that mankind is predisposed to reject God and trade him for something of lesser value. The book of Romans puts it this way: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles”.. and later “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, Romans 1:21-23,3:23 (ESV) The sad reality is that we have exchanged the glory of God in all its splendor for lesser things. You’ve heard of how they catch monkeys. They put a nut in a jar with a narrow opening and tie the jar down beneath a tree. The monkey comes down out of his tree and reaches into the jar to get the nut but once he closes his fist on the nut he can’t get his hand out of the jar and he won’t let go of the nut even when you approach. Well, we are like that monkey and we won’t let go of our sin even when we encounter Christ himself. Unless..

Unless something miraculous happens. For Jesus said it is impossible for man to push the camel through the eye of the needle. It is impossible for the monkey to drop the nut. But it is not impossible with God. You see, God the Holy Spirit must move first before we will let go of the nut. The very first thing that must happen is that the Holy Spirit must grant us the ability to let go of the nut. The way he does this is he shows us something better than the nut – something truly better than our sin. Do you know what this is? That’s right – it is Jesus Christ. The chief ministry of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Christ. And God the Holy Spirit, in revealing Christ to us, does the impossible and grants that we might enter into the kingdom of God. For only when you see Christ for who he is will you let go of riches or whatever else you are holding onto. And the ultimate revelation of the beauty of Christ is in the gospel – that is his death for sins and resurrection for life. And we must value Christ as shown in his death and resurrection as supremely valuable if we are going to let go of the nut. You see, in Christ, in the gospel is everything we could ever want and need. First, he deals with all our sins, those serious warts we all have, those short comings and transgressions of God’s perfect commandments. We can either deny we have them or pretend they aren’t so serious or, when we see Jesus in His great eternal love for us, a love he had for us before time began, willingly giving up his perfect life to bear your sins and suffer and die for them to pay the just penalty for sin, separation from God and the just wrath you deserve.

In Christ is not only the payment for our sins but a resurrection. The Spirit would also show us the resurrected Christ, risen from the grave victorious over sin and death, reigning in heaven and returning soon to establish an eternal kingdom of sinless bliss in God’s presence with God’s people. This glorious King is to be our King. And he has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. He has promised to work all things for our good – even the very toughest trials and disappointments of life. He has promised to take us into his presence upon death and fill us with perfect joy and grant us everlasting rewards.

Folks, I hope this sounds better than any nut in the jar you may want to hold onto. I trust the Holy Spirit is working the impossible in your life – that you might truly see Jesus Christ as more precious and truly be able to heed his radical call to repent of your sin and put your hope in Him for all of life.

You see, the story doesn’t end with the rich young ruler. There are a group of disciples following Jesus. And after he says all this Peter exclaims, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” Peter basically says, Jesus, we have given up everything and put all our hope in you – we have heeded your radical call – what about us? And Jesus does not disappoint Peter or the disciples. You see, when the Spirit empowers you to heed Jesus radical call to repent and put all you hope in Jesus, He never disappoints. Listen to what the Savior says: “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, ³⁰ who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Right here is a promise from the Savior himself that all who heed this radical call to abandon all to follow Jesus will receive multiple times more both in this life and the age to come. Those who have left a house, a place of comfort and security, those who have left family, those who have left careers and familiar locales, those who have left anything for the sake of following Christ will find reward for their faith.

“How?” may you ask. Well, let me speak from my own experience. We left a good career, a wonderful church family and a large home to serve God for the sake of the gospel here in New England. We have found that in every way we are richer now. Folks, there is no greater career than serving the Savior and no greater honor for me in my vocation than to get to count my career as studying God’s word and leading God’s people. I loved research but I love this way more – I wouldn’t trade it for the world. We miss our church family in Maryland but if we didn’t come here we wouldn’t have you guys. And I would rather have you guys and Chesapeake, even at a 400 mile distance, than have Chesapeake only. I wouldn’t trade all the wonderful things God has done in and through King of Grace Church for the comfort of remaining in Maryland. I wouldn’t trade the fruit of gospel centered relationships, wonderful friendships, changed lives, healings and the hope of a greater harvest to keep a hold of what we had. And finally, we left a large home in Maryland to find a home of our dreams with 12 acres of woods and a deck and a pool in a beautiful neighborhood. And more than that, we have found a new church home that will remain long after we have gone on to be with the Lord. It will remain long after 16 Alpine Dr. is a pile of rubble. Folks, I have already found Jesus’ promise to be true and that isn’t even counting the eternal rewards that will never perish, fade or spoil. It is all worth it. And I know the testimonies of many here would echo the same.

So, as we close, which will you choose today? Will you choose to be like the rich young ruler or to be like the disciples? Will you see your sin or ignore the obvious? Will you choose to see what the Spirit shows you as infinitely precious – Jesus Christ – as Savior and Lord, our only forgiveness and righteousness before God and our life and the rewardor of the faithful – or will you hold on to the nut?

What is the nut you are tempted to hold onto? What promises true life to you? Is it Christ or something else. Repent and believe the good news. Run to Christ for forgiveness and righteousness and life eternal – he never disappoints. Is this a struggle for you? You are not alone – come and hang out with us and see how Christ day by day rescues us from our sin and empowers us to follow him. You can only do it by the power of the Spirit and with the help of others.

Have you forsaken something to follow Christ? Do not doubt, do not despair. He is indeed the rewarder of the faithful and he has promised to reward your sacrifice to follow him many times over – in this life and in the life to come – believe this promise and wait on him – he will deliver.

To follow Christ is to heed his radical call and receive abundant rewards – by the power of the Spirit. Repent and believe, follow and receive. Let’s pray.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot