Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
At Faith Presbyterian Church we are seeking to exalt Jesus Christ the King and to exhibit and extend his Kingdom through worship, community, and mission.
Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Luke 18:18-30; Rich Young Ruler
Martin Wagner February 16, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL
Bulletin
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If you've been here for the last few weeks, you know that we are in a series in the Gospel of Luke on meals with Jesus. One thing you learn in ministry when you are hosting a meal is that you need to remain flexible. You need to learn to adjust on the fly, and Jason came down with COVID this week and we had to make a pivot late in the week in terms of preaching, and so I'm going to preach from Luke 18 today. You'll notice this is not one of the meals of Jesus, but if you will grant me the grace of coloring outside the lines a bit in our sermon series, we will look at the rich young ruler in Luke 18. Though this interaction we will read about happened 2,000 years ago, there's a sense in which it could have happened yesterday, because the rich young ruler asked a question that is a fundamental, foundational question that all of us ask what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is it that I need to do in order to get to heaven? Are my afterlife affairs in order? Every religion has their own version of an answer to this question, and even those who are not religious have weighed in on the topic. In 2006, warren Buffett announced that he would give away the vast majority of his wealth. He committed to give $37 billion to the Gates Foundation. When asked about his gift, warren Buffett replied there's more than one way to get to heaven, but this is a pretty good way.
Speaker 1:In the gospel, according to Warren Buffett, the answer to the question what must I do to inherit eternal life? Is thou shalt give away $37 billion. So what about those of us who have slightly less than $37 billion to give away? What about those of us whose lives are a wreck? What about those of us who don't want to give away anything, who all we have to offer are moral and spiritual liabilities? Because the bad news is that, according to the Bible, even $37 billion won't cut it. The gospel, according to Buffett, is bad news for us, but is there any hope? What I hope we'll see in this passage is that there is good news for all of us who will hear it, because Jesus says that what is impossible through human effort is made possible for everyone through the work of God alone. And this passage tells us how any of us can be assured of eternal life.
Speaker 1:And so let's read the passage. We're going to read Luke 18, verses 18 to 27. Hear God's word to us today. And a ruler asked him 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 he said All of these I have kept from my youth. When Jesus heard this. And he said All of 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. Come and follow me.
Speaker 1:When Jesus 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? But he said what is impossible with man is possible with God. Let's pray. Lord, come now in the midst of our doubts and our fears, midst of our discouragement and disappointment and anxieties, and we pray that you would show us the compassion and mercy of our Savior, help us to believe that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And so, lord, we pray that you would take this passage in this time and that, by your Spirit, that you would speak to us, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:I want us to see ourselves as we look at the rich, young ruler this morning, because I believe that the rich, young ruler has a lot to teach us about how it is that we relate to God. I want to look at three things. The rich, young ruler shows us our fears, he shows us our foolishness and he shows us our failures. So first, our fears. We refer to this man as a rich, young ruler, but in order to get that profile of him, you actually have to look at all three occasions in which this passage shows up. Our account in Luke says that he was a ruler, matthew says that he was young, and Mark's account and our account today tell us that he was rich. He's young, he's powerful, he's influential. He's everything that our culture values. He is who you wish you were. He's morally upright. He is a good citizen. He is fervent in his religious life. We all know people like this. They are the ones who seem to have their life together. They are the ones who actually did all of the reading for the homework assignment at school. They are the ones who actually read the terms and conditions of the contract. They don't just click. Yes, I read the terms and conditions. They have a balanced checkbook, a clean car, an iron shirt, a well-manicured lawn.
Speaker 1:We were talking about this sermon at the dinner table this week and my kids gave me a middle school interpretation of this man. This guy is Sigma with W Riz. According to my kids, if elders in PCA churches were selected in a draft, this guy would be your lottery pick. This guy would be your number one draft pick, your superstar elder. You can even get a sense of that with the disciples In verse 26,. They ask if this guy can't get in the kingdom, if this guy doesn't have what it takes, is there any hope for any of us? And they're probably thinking Jesus, what are you doing driving this guy away? This guy's got money and connections. He's who we need in order to make it in life, but even though he's got what we might consider the ideal life.
Speaker 1:What struck me this week was to think about just how scared this man really was, how fearful he was. Why is it that he was working so hard to be good? You get the sense that there is this restlessness in his soul, that even after he has done everything that he knows to do, there is still a fear that he's not good enough. He's fearful just like we are. We're fearful that, beneath the veneer of our morality, we know that God looks at us and we are fearful that he is going to find us lacking, that we're deeply insecure and scared. We fear that the big sins that we struggle with will somehow exhaust the mercy of God. We're fearful that God's going to look down on us and he's just going to decide to cut His losses, but he's going to move on to someone who is more committed, someone who is more faithful than we are. Beneath our projections of morality, we are scared and we are fearful, just like this man. What do I need to do to inherit eternal life is at the core of our fears. So let's move to our second point.
Speaker 1:Not just this man does this man show us our fears, but he also shows us our foolishness. The first way that he does that is, he shows us our misunderstanding of what it means to be good. He comes to Jesus and he addresses him as good teacher and Jesus replies why do you call me good? No one is good, but God alone. There have been a lot of explanations as to why this seems a really confounding answer of Jesus, but what I think Jesus is doing here is blowing up this man's definition of what it means to be good.
Speaker 1:The rich, young ruler defined his goodness horizontally, in relation to the people around him. His goodness was relative. And Jesus says goodness is not defined by those around you. Goodness is defined by God alone. If you want to be good, then compare yourself to the goodness of God. You see this in the next verse when Jesus tells the man well, you know the commandments. And then Jesus lists half of the Ten Commandments Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and your mother.
Speaker 1:Jesus lists what is known as the second table of the Ten Commandments. The first table of the first four commandments deal with our relationship to God. Second table of the commandments deal with our relationship to other people. And so Jesus says let's test your goodness. How do you relate to other people? And that leads us to the second aspect, of which the rich young ruler's foolishness is exposed. He is foolish about his own record. And so Jesus asked this man how are you doing in keeping these commandments?
Speaker 1:And the man says all of these I have kept from my youth. He says I've done what you require, says I've done what you require. And there's a part of me that hears this response from this man as sincere but just mistaken or naive. And there's a part of me that just rolls my eyes when I hear this response and I think in my best condescending Willy Wonka meme face oh really, tell me more about how you have kept all of the commandments of God since your youth. What is it like being perfect? Is it a burden to be better than everyone around you? It would be like me saying in our service each week, one of us saying in our service, when it comes time to confess our sins, that we just say well, I'll pass. This week, I've actually had another perfect week, a sinless week, and I'm going to skip this one. I'm going to take a nap. You guys wake me up when it's time for the sermon.
Speaker 1:You would say that I was deceived about reality if I said that the rich young ruler obviously missed the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said if you lust in your heart, then you've committed adultery. If you hate your brother, you have murdered him. And so how does the rich young ruler get to this point in his life? How is he so foolish about his own record of righteousness and so foolish about the surprising lack of a record of sin in his life? He does the same thing that you and I are really good at doing we deny our sin by redefining the law of God. It's not denial, it's just redefinition. We look at God's law and we say, well, it can't really mean that God doesn't really mean that we are to be perfect. What he means is that we are to try our best. He doesn't mean that we are to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. What really matters is that we perceive ourselves doing it better than those around us. This man redefined the law to make it something that he could manage, to make it something that he could do.
Speaker 1:I saw a vivid picture of this in my second year of seminary when a group of seminary students flew out to Los Angeles for a Billy Graham crusade at the Rose Bowls to be one of his last crusades, and each night we would walk into the Rose Bowl and we would pass a group of protesters with these huge signs that would protest all of the things that they thought were wrong and compromised in the American church. This was an interesting group, to say the least. This is the type of people that would live to debate theology and argue outside of Billy Graham crusade. But it just so happened that there was another group of people who were just foolish enough, who were just crazy enough, to want to argue about theology outside of Billy Graham crusade, and that is a group of second year seminary students. So, rather than taking the advice of our leaders, we decided that we would succeed where thousands had failed and we would convince them of their wrong. We had three semesters of seminary under our belt and we were scholars, to say the least.
Speaker 1:And so we go and we engage this group in conversation and we come to find out that they believe that they are completely sinless, that a part of their program was complete sanctification, that every time that we asked them they would say well, they were completely sinless. There's a sense in which these people thought of themselves as the rich young ruler in this passage, that they had actually done what God requires of them. They had sold everything and they're living in a commune in the woods together. But we start asking them well, what do you do about the Sermon on the Mount? Have you ever been angry? Have you ever insulted anyone? And to each of our questions they had a way of redefining the law of God. They would say well, the Bible doesn't really say that, because you don't read it in the King James Version like we do, or you haven't received a vision from God that we've received that says we can do this or that. At each turn they redefined what it meant to be good and they made it fit their own record.
Speaker 1:But are we any different? I know that I have that tendency as well To define my goodness relative to those who are around me At least. I'm not as bad as that guy. My life is a wreck, but it's slightly less of a wreck than the person sitting next to me. We use fuzzy math when it comes to making up our own righteousness, creating an equation of righteousness. I know my life is a mess in this one area, but I more than make up for it in this other area. Wherever we are at estimating our own goodness, we can always find someone who's further down than we are. We can be just like the rich young ruler in the Billy Graham protester. We can change the law to make it doable. You may have seen that Saturday Night Live is celebrating their 50th anniversary this weekend and in those 50 years they have not done a lot of sketches on encounters with Jesus. They have not done a lot of sketches on encounters with Jesus, but they actually have done one on this passage. In the 22nd season in 1996, they did a skit on the rich young ruler. That is just too funny and too true to pass up. So I will read the script of the skit from Saturday Night Live Hello, I'm John Hayward, president of the Hayward Foundation, and I'm a very wealthy man.
Speaker 1:I'm worth billions and always have been, but I haven't always been a man with a conscience. I thought my money was all I needed to be happy, but that changed one day when I came across this book, the Bible, and I saw where it said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. That passage changed my life. It moved me to start putting my riches towards a worthy cause, and that's why I established the Hayward Foundation for the development of a way to make it easy for a camel to pass through a needle's eye. I'm not going to hell if my billions have anything to say about it. We are doing God's work here at the Hayward Foundation.
Speaker 1:I found all these cancer researchers made them stop whatever it is they were doing and devote their energies to trying to force these camels through needles, just like it says in the Bible. I know it sounds impossible, but we have made a lot of progress. We started small. We tried to cram a horse through a drinking straw. The result was pretty ugly and completely unsuccessful, but we learned a lot. Next we tried pureeing a camel into a thin liquid, then pouring the camel through the eye of the needle. Sure enough, the liquid camel will pass through the needle. But we think that might be cheating and we are consulting our lawyers. But a liquid camel is only part of it. I've also invested millions of dollars to build very large needles in very small camels. Unless I've completely missed the message of the Bible somewhere in here is my ticket to heaven. So we're working on a beautiful future. Here at the Hayward Foundation, we dream of a day when camels pass willy-nilly through the eye of needles, while billionaire industrialists like myself can look towards an eternity spent in the pure white light of heaven. And if we can't get the camel through the needle, we have another plan. We're prepared to spend millions to get that part taken out of the Bible. Don't worry about me.
Speaker 1:While that passage or that skit is humorous, it's not far from reality. Just like John Hayward and the rich young ruler, we can be the fool when it comes to our own record. We think that we can make really small camels and really big needles, and God will be pleased with us. We think that Christianity is just an enhancement to our otherwise good life. We think Christianity is just a program of scorekeeping, a game of winners and losers, of have and have-nots. But this man doesn't get it and we don't get it either. We are fools in regard to our goodness and our record. And to expose this foolishness, jesus shows him his failure which brings us to our third and our record. And to expose this foolishness, jesus shows him his failure, which brings us to our third point today. After the man responds that he has kept the law since his youth, jesus says you lack one thing. Since you are really good at law keeping, why don't you try this on for size? Go and sell everything that you have. Give it to the poor. You'll have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.
Speaker 1:Jesus exposes what this man lacks, and the rich young ruler decides that the price is too high. He is disheartened and he goes away, sorrowful because he was very rich. In reality, this was a man who was possessed by his possessions. What he owned owned him, and he walks away from Jesus very sad. This is a man who built his life around being very good and finally he realizes that he has failed, and so, at this point, a lot of sermons on this text will take this turn To go down the road. If you want to be really good, then go sell everything you have and follow Jesus. Or, corollary, what is the one thing in your life that is standing between you and God? For this man, it was money. What is it for you? Give away what you love most in life and go and follow Jesus. While it is true. God owns everything. We are commanded to be generous. Following Jesus means self-denial and sacrifice.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's the major point of what Jesus is trying to tell us in this passage. The first thing that we take away is that you and I need to be better rich young rulers, because that's falling into the exact same trap that this guy was in. And besides, who can really do that? Is that the good news that you and I really need? Jesus is not telling the rich young ruler you need more goodness. What he's actually saying is you need to come to grips with your badness. How did the rich young ruler fail? He failed in his understanding of his sin, in his understanding of the need of a Savior. Jesus is wrecking the mask of goodness that this man is hiding behind. He is exposing how he's gotten it all wrong. Jesus says do you really see that what you are trusting in is your wealth? You think that you followed all the commandments from your youth because it was out of love for God, but what it was actually doing is you're trying to get leverage with God. It was a power play. The rich young ruler thought that Jesus needed his wealth, that God needed what he had to offer. But Jesus exposes him. He shows him that God's law is not up for redefinition and revision.
Speaker 1:Mark's account of this passage makes explicit what is implicit in this passage that Jesus loved this man. What is implicit in this passage that Jesus loved this man and Jesus' exposure of this man's fear and foolishness and failure is actually an act of grace. That God is being gracious to this man by exposing him, by bringing him to the end of his delusion. Jesus loved him enough to smash his self-deception and denial. And Jesus loves me and you enough to do the same.
Speaker 1:How is it that you know? When you've encountered your own sin, when you have encountered the law? It's when you give up. God's law is holy and good and gracious and it is a gift from the hand of God. God's law shows us his character and His holiness and His goodness. But the law is a hammer of God that will break you when you see that you have not and cannot keep it. Martin Luther writes the law says do this. And it is never done. The law makes demands of us that we have not and we cannot keep.
Speaker 1:The law of God tells you that you are to love God alone, with the entirety of all of your being, with your heart, soul, mind and strength, that we are to love God perpetually and completely, not just on Sunday, not just for a period of time, but we are to love God in all of life. For all of life, we are to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect. And so how do you know that you've heard the law of God as it was meant to be given to you? You know that you've heard the law when you cry uncle, when you give up, when it nails you to the wall and you say I can't do this, I give up. When you are like the disciples and you say this is impossible. When you are like the disciples and you say this is impossible, that my salvation on my own is as impossible as a camel going through the eye of a needle, and that if I am ever to be saved it must be a work of God, that if I am ever to be a part of the kingdom of God, it must be God's work alone. You've encountered the law when you come to the end of yourself.
Speaker 1:The rich young ruler lacked an understanding of what God required of him. The rich young ruler had not heard the law of God. Is that where you are this morning, when you think of yourself in relation to God? Are you a pretty good person, trying to get better? Are you looking for something to add to your record of morality? If so, perhaps in the mercy of Jesus, he will show you what you lack. He will show you that you lack the same thing that this man lacked that you don't know your sin and your need, that you don't know that you are a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure without hope except in His sovereign mercy. You know, I wish this story had a different ending. I wish that the story would have ended with the rich young ruler turning around and coming back to Jesus in tears and falling at His feet and saying Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. But that's not how the story ends. The story ends with a sad man and perplexed disciples.
Speaker 1:And so what do we do with this text? How do we wrap this up? Is this text just bad news for us? Does it just show us our fear and our foolishness and our failures? This passage also shows us a fourth thing. This passage points us to the faithfulness of our Savior.
Speaker 1:What I want us to see in this passage is that it is not just a story of one rich young ruler, but this is actually a story of two rich young rulers. What will give us hope as we look at this passage is to see the true and better rich young ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the one in this story with real wealth and real power. He is the eternal God who owns all things, who controls all things, who created the world by the word of his power. He is the rich young ruler who truly kept the law of God. He is the one who can say with all integrity all of this I have kept since my youth. He is the rich young ruler who had everything, all the glory, all the power, all the righteousness, and he gave it away. He lost it all.
Speaker 1:And who does he give it to? He gives that righteousness to us, those who can't earn it and who can't get it right on their own. On the cross, jesus, our rich young ruler, gave it away for you and for me. He took the punishment for every way that you and I break the law of God, every way that we have failed to do what God requires of us, and he gives us. Everything that is His, all the obedience, all of His righteousness, all of His holiness, all of the riches of the Father, eternal life and the glory of heaven is all given to us in Christ. He lost everything on the cross so that he could make you and me and all who trust in Him, his treasure.
Speaker 1:The rich young ruler asked what must I do to inherit eternal life? Let's pray to give you everything that you need. Let's pray, our Father. We thank you that, in Christ, that you have done for us what we could not do for ourselves. We know that when we look in for our salvation, we know that it is impossible, but when we look to Christ, that you receive us and that you welcome us as your beloved children. And so, lord, take this word now by your spirit. We pray that you would use it to bless your people, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.