[Machine transcription]
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
you lack one thing. You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. Dear Saints of God, this is a
beautiful but difficult text that we have in the Gospel. Mark chapter 10, as we
continue to read through the Gospels. I have two things that I want to
give you by way of preface to warm up to the Scriptures.
The first is to note that there are three stories in the Bible that are somewhat similar
of a⦠of a young man coming to Jesus and asking Him a similar question and having a
similar conversation, and it’ll be good to get those three stories sort of distinguished
in our own mind.
The first is in Luke chapter 10 when a lawyer comes to Jesus to test Him and asks Him the
same question that the man we heard today asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
And Jesus says, what does the law say? How do you read it? And the man answers him, you
should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you should
love your neighbors yourself. And Jesus said, you’ve answered well, go do that and you’ll
live. And the man, Luke tells us, in order to justify himself, asks Jesus, well, who
is my neighbor? And then Jesus tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan, teaching what
that means.
The third story, and we’ll come back, the one that we have is in the middle.
The third time that this happens is on, in Holy Week, in fact it’s on Holy Tuesday
when Jesus is teaching in the temple, and first the Pharisees come and ask Him a question
about paying taxes, and then the Sadducees come and ask a question about the resurrection,
and then a young lawyer comes to Jesus, also to test Him, and asks, what’s the greatest
commandment?
And Jesus answers, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and
strength, and you should love your neighbors yourself. On these two commands
hang all the law and the prophets.” And that man, Mark tells us, that man went on
to respond to Jesus. Basically, he said, Lord, you’ve answered well. That’s right.
And then Jesus says to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. And from that
moment on, no one dared to question Jesus at all. We find that account in Mark
chapter 12, and in Matthew chapter 22.
But this is a third story of a rich young ruler, Mark 10, our text, also in Luke 18
and Matthew 19, who runs and finds Jesus.
Jesus is down in Perea, this is the region where John was baptizing.
It’s on the east side of the Jordan River.
It’d be right where the people came before they crossed over and attacked Jericho, right
down in that area.
you, Jesus is going down there and this is preparing us for the last sort of press of
Jesus up the mountain into Jerusalem for Holy Week and this man runs to Jesus.
Jesus is about to leave and he runs and he finds him.
He says, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
So it’s good to have all three of those stories kind of clean in our mind.
The other thing that I want to put by way of preface is that as we now are in Mark chapter
10, we’re sort of ramping up towards the end, getting closer and closer to Passion
Week, to the Lord’s suffering for us on the cross, and the mood changes in the Gospel
of Mark.
I want to read you just a couple of lines. I brought a few quotes from Alfred Edersheim
today. I think I’ve told you about this book before, but if I hadn’t, by way of reminder,
one of my favorite books to read on the background of the Gospels is Alfred Edersheim’s The Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah. I think it was first published in 1899. I have the edition
from 1901, but it’s really wonderful. If you’re looking for a book that kind of fleshes out
some of the background of the gospel, it’s a great one. And Edersheim says this about
this section that we’re entering into in Mark. He says, as we near the goal, the wondrous
story seems to grow in tenderness and in pathos. It is as if all the loving condescension of
the Master were to be crowded into these days, all the pressing need also, and the human
weakness of His disciples. And with equal compassion does He look upon the difficulties
of them who truly seek to come to Him, and on those which, springing from without or
even from self and sin beset them who have already come. So let us try reverently to
follow His steps and to learn of His words.” I think you get that feeling in this text
because unlike the other two gentlemen that we’ve mentioned before who come to Jesus,
they come to test Him, they come to tempt Him, they come to trick Him, this rich young
man doesn’t. In fact, we see it already in how he approaches Jesus. He hears that Jesus
is about to leave and he runs to him. This is an act of⦠if you were a rich person
or a person with authority, if you were a person with any sort of status in society
in the Middle East, you would never run. You would never condescend to run anywhere. That’s
one of the great truths of the⦠remember the parable of the prodigal son, when the
father pulls up his robes and runs to the father. He doesn’t care what anybody thinks
of him. Well, so this man. Jesus is leaving. I gotta get him. I gotta get there. And so
So he runs to Jesus and then he falls down in front of him.
A true act of honoring Jesus, he kneels before him and he says something that no rabbi would
ever say, good teacher, good rabbi.
And then he asks the question, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Now Jesus already sort of hinting at what he thinks the problem is going to be, and
Jesus knows what the problem is going to be, responds and says, why do you call me good?
No one is good except God alone.
And it’s going to turn out that this man’s issue is what he’s calling good.
We’ll come back to that.
Jesus says, you know the commandments.
Don’t murder, fifth commandment.
Do not commit adultery, sixth commandment.
Do not steal, seventh commandment.
Do not bear false witness, eighth commandment.
Do not defraud, probably an addition of the seventh commandment or maybe even the summary
of the tenth commandment for this man in particular, on your father and mother, fourth commandment.
Now we just⦠maybe we can pause here just for a brief aside because the way we think
of the commandments is pretty important.
We know the distinction between law and gospel, and we know that the law is given to us, not
Not so that we might have life, but so that we would know the will of God and so that
we would know our own sin.
The law reveals the depth of sin and makes us conscience stricken, but the law itself
is not bad.
The problem is not the law, the problem is us and our sin.
The law, and this is consistent through the entire Holy Scriptures, the law tells us the
way of life, and sin is the way of death. In fact, Paul will pick this up over and over
in his epistles, that we walk not according to the flesh, for those who walk according
to the flesh will die, but those who walk according to the Spirit will live. So the
law teaches us how to live. In fact, the law in a really beautiful way protects those
good gifts of God. The fifth commandment protects our life, the sixth commandment protects our
marriage and chastity, the seventh commandment protects our property, the eighth commandment
protects our good name, the fourth commandment protects our families and our order in society
and our honoring of one another, so that the commandments are protecting these good things.
And we should, we Christians, should be striving to keep the commandments of God.
We should know that we’re sinners because we’ve tried to not sin and failed.
Because we’ve tried to live according to the law of God and failed.
Now, now, what happens next is very interesting because Jesus gives him the law, at least
the second table of the law, and he says to Jesus, teacher, all these I have kept from
my youth.
Now we know better.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And no one is righteous, no, not one.
We know that this man has not perfectly kept the law.
And so we could read this as if he was boasting in his own righteousness, which he knows he
doesn’t have.
The pharisaical sort of works righteousness thing.
But I think there might be another more generous way to read his answer.
And you might have to bear with me.
The reason I think this is because Jesus, who looks at him and he loves him, Jesus is
He’s always angry with the self-righteous, but Jesus is not angry with this man.
He’s very tender-hearted and he’s dealing very kindly with him.
It even just tells us that, that Jesus looks at him with love in his eyes, so that this
man might have actually thought that he had kept the law according to the teaching of
the time.
Remember the Pharisees taught an external keeping of the law.
They taught that if your hand had not reached out to kill anybody, then you’ve kept the
law and you haven’t murdered.
murdered, that if you’ve never committed adultery, you’ve kept the sixth commandment, that if
you’ve never reached out your hand to steal something, that you’ve kept the seventh commandment.
This is why Jesus comes along and says, if you’ve been angry in your heart, then you’ve
murdered, and if you’ve lost it in your heart, you’ve committed adultery.
That sin is not just what you do on the outside, but also what you do on the inside.
Even what you say, what you think, and what you feel, and what you want, it goes all the
way down.
And so maybe this man just simply had this pharisaical idea of that if you avoided the
external behavior, then you hadn’t broken the commandments.
And let’s read it that way with innocence, he says, teacher, all these I’ve kept for
my youth.
So Jesus looking at him, loves him, and says, you lack one thing.
The Gospel of Matthew gives us a little bit more detail.
In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, the man says,
what do I lack?
And Jesus says, if you desire to be full,
one thing you need to do,
go and sell all that you have
and give it to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven.
And come and follow me.
Now this is an amazing command,
and instruction and invitation that Jesus gives to this rich young ruler.
In fact, it’s quite incredible.
Can you imagine?
There was times when people came and they were⦠they wanted to follow Jesus and He
would send them away.
Time after time, He would send them away.
But here, He gives the same invitation that He gave to the disciples, come, follow Me.
And if this man would have done it, if he would have sold everything and he would have
come to follow Jesus, then maybe instead of talking about the twelve apostles, we talk
about the 13 apostles, and we know His name. It’s incredible that Jesus gives this invitation
to the man. But He gives it to him knowing precisely where the problem is, right? Knowing
precisely where the trouble is in this man’s heart, that he loved his riches and he loved
his wealth and that he was unwilling to part with them in order to follow Jesus.
In fact, if we look at the text in Mark and in Matthew and we put them together, it’s
quite incredible, is that Jesus considers his wealth to be a lack. His wealth is a void.
His wealth is a problem because his wealth is precisely what is standing in the way of
his faith and his following of Jesus.
Now Jesus explains this in the text following our text and so I really want to lean into
that next week.
That’s something for you to look forward to, a sermon all about money and the idolatry
of wealth.
We need it, but I want to be a little more general this week.
Look at whatâ¦
Here’s another Edersheim quote.
it. What he lacked, this man lacked, was earth’s poverty and heaven’s riches. A heart fully
set on following Christ. And this heart could only come to him through willing surrender
of everything. And so this was to him alike the means, the test, and the need. To him
If it was this, sell all you have and give it to the poor.
To us, it may be something quite other, yet each of us has a lack, something quite deep
down in our hearts which we may never yet have known, which we must know and give up
if we would follow Christ.
And without forsaking, there can be no following.
This is the law of the kingdom, and it is such because we are sinners, because sin is
not only the loss of the good, but the possession of something else in its place.
We are idolaters.
We set up in our own hearts things to love, things to trust, things to be afraid of, and
And those take the place of Jesus.
Let’s just say it simply, and this is the problem of the⦠of Jesus and, is that Jesus
refuses to stand alongside any other gods.
He refuses to share the throne.
This is the first commandment, you shall love the Lord your God and serve Him alone.
You shall have no other gods before me.
Jesus goes straight after this, straight after it with this man and with us as well.
That we want to hold on to something alongside Jesus so that I can have Jesus and my wealth,
or Jesus and my stuff, or Jesus and my good reputation on social media,
or with the people at work, or Jesus and my other idols, or Jesus and my life, or whatever else.
us. Whatever it is that we trust in, whatever it is we look to for all good, whatever it
is that we cling to in time of trouble, whatever it is we think that makes us sturdy and stands
us up, any of that stuff is simply an idol. And if we cling to those idols, we go away
from Jesus, sad, disheartened, sorrowful. We’ve been training in this way and preparing
for this exercise of throwing over these idols our whole lives, especially when we sing in
the hymn, Take They Our Life, Goods, Fame, Child and Wife. Let these all be gone, they
yet of nothing won, but all of these things would creep into our own hearts and ask us
to trust them, to rely on them, to lean on them, to look to them for all good. The man
had an idol in his heart, Mammon by name, and so he leaves Jesus sorrowful.
Now, I think there’s hope for us.
I think there’s hope for this man, even, who left sorrowful, and we don’t hear another
word of him, but at least he left sorrowful and not angry.
At least he left sad.
At least it seems like repentance was begun.
And I think the church has always held up hope that this man, in fact, did repent and
become a Christian and we’ll meet him in the resurrection.
Here’s one last from Edersheim, it’s nice.
He describes him leaving Jesus.
He says this, so with clouded face, he gazed down into what he lacked within, but also
gazed up in Christ on what he needed.
And although we hear of him no more, who that day went back to his rich home, very poor,
because he was very sorrowful, we cannot but believe that he whom Jesus loved yet found
in the poverty of earth the treasure of heaven. And this is our hope too, that
Jesus who refuses to compete with your idols, who refuses to share a seat with
your false gods, Jesus who refuses to be loved and feared and trusted along with
other gods, that Jesus who asks us to lay down our lives and take up our crosses
forces and follow Him, that Jesus is not asking us to do something that He Himself is not
willing to do, in fact, that He Himself has not already done. Because if this man thought
he was rich, imagine the wealth of Jesus, who sat in eternity on the throne of the universe
and basked in eternity in the glory of God, who had all things, the whole world in His
hand who is the maker and the creator of all and who yet gives all of this up so
that he might be to you a friend and a Savior Paul says it like this he says he
who is rich became poor so that you through his poverty might be made rich
Church, Jesus has forsaken all. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He took on your flesh
and blood. He carried your sins and your sorrows. He was stricken, smitten, and afflicted by
God. All, dear saints, all of this so that He might give to you the riches and the treasures
that heaven and earth could never purchase and never buy. You could have all the riches
in the world, and you could never afford an ounce of His blood and the forgiveness of
sins that comes from His cross, but He has given this all to you, all freely, all without
cost, all because He looks at you and He loves you.
Oh, He loves you.
He delights in you.
He’s forgotten your sins.
He smiles.
He’s washed you and made you holy and clean.
He’s written his name with his blood in his book of life, and he stands
working and serving and blessing even now feeding you his body and his blood
and promising you this cleansing. He’s forsaken it all so that he
might have you. And even though this word of the law is hard, you shall have no
other gods, we leave here not sorrowful, but forsaking all and clinging to Christ,
we share in his joy. May God grant that for Christ’s sake, in the name of Jesus,
amen. And the peace of God, which passes all
understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
