Who is the rich man?
Who is the rich man in this passage this morning?
YOU are the rich man. You are the rich man in this passage this morning.
To us, when we read this passage, to us, the rich man is always someone who has more money than we do. As a result, we are able to step outside the situation and look at the rich man as a man out of touch with reality because of his wealth. We are able to see what a fool he is, we are able to see his ignorance, But the truth is, we deceive ourselves, you and I, we are far wealthier than 80% of the world’s population - here in America, even if we are considered poor, we are still rich compared to the rest of the world.
So, when Jesus speaks to the rich man, when Jesus describes the spiritual plight of the rich man - He is speaking to you and I; He is describing the spiritual plight of you and I.
What is so stark about this passage is what Jesus says about us and the kingdom of God: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Just to erase any doubt from your mind, Jesus is being very literal here. Jesus describes the largest animal in Palestine and compares the camel to the smallest passageway, the passage designed for a thread, the eye of a needle.
Jesus is giving us an image of an impossibility, Jesus is literally saying it is impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. For us here in Alaska the image we could compare to is that of a moose. A camel is approximately the same size as a full grown bull moose, except in my experience, a camel smells far worse than a moose.
Years ago, Katie and I were able to ride camels in the Sinai desert….
It was 2:00 in the morning, freezing cold, and we were huddled together under the only streetlight for at least 100 miles. There we were, in the middle of the Sinai desert, waiting in an empty lot behind St. Catherine's Greek Orthodox Monastery, with high stone walls, St. Catherine’s looks like a desert fortress.
St. Catherine's Monastery has seen everything from British Tanks, Turkish Calvary, the Crusaders, to invading Islamic hordes and now we were there too, waiting to ride camels. We were scheduled to ride camels to the top of Mount Sinai. The plan was to leave in the middle of the night so we could arrive and the top of the mountain, just in time to see the sunrise. This sounded very romantic in the tour book, but now, in the pitch black dark with an icy wind blowing, it didn’t seem so romantic anymore.
Finally the men with the camels arrived. Each of us were assigned a camel and a guide. We each climbed aboard our very own camel, and started up the mountain, one by one. Katie was in front of me and the last thing I saw was Katie looking back as she disappeared into the darkest, blackest night I have ever seen. My Bedouin camel guide introduced himself, “I am Zayed, I will guide you up the mountain.” After hearing the only English sentence that my guide Zayed could speak, I was in enveloped by the darkest night I have ever experienced. Me, a camel, the dark night, and a man I just met with a thirteen inch knife strapped to his side.
Slowly my eyes began to adjust. In front of me was the silhouette of this grand desert mountain. Upon the mountain was a faint a zig zag of a line. This line was a few hundred people either walking or riding camels up the switchback that wound up the mountain. At every turn in the switchback there was an ancient stone hut glowing with a small campfire within it.
I was amazing. Here we were, riding camels up an ancient mountain, perhaps the same mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Lord. Perhaps Moses himself walked right where I was riding. I felt like I was being transported back in time to the biblical era, just me, my camel and this ancient biblical mountain….and then as we passed the first stone hut the Bedouins inside cupped their hands and cried out, “Kit Kat, Baby Ruth, Ice cold Coca Cola.”
Bam! Back to reality, I’m just a tourist on a camel.
The reality for us this morning is this: We are the rich man, and Jesus doesn’t paint a pretty picture of us.
Open you bibles and place your finger on verse 17 of Mark chapter 10. Notice, Mark doesn’t tell us that this man is rich until verse 22. Being rich was only part of this man’s problem. This man has a worse problem, it is a problem that permeates our churches in America today - it is the problem of achievement spirituality. In these first few verses, this man reveals who he really is and he also reveals his off kilter brand of spiritual devotion to God. Take a look.
“Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In his first sentence, the man reveals how he defines life and he reveals his plan to come out on top. The man defines life in terms of being good and then he reveals how he will accomplish his plan - by doing good stuff.
Here in the American church also define ourselves by being good too. Don’t believe me? Just attend a funeral in this town and almost like clock work someone will stand up and say, “He certainly was a good man,” or “She was without a doubt, a good woman.” The ultimate thing we can say about someone here in the American church is that they are a good person.
We too, like the rich man; We too define life in terms of being good.
Notice Jesus calls him on it. Verse 18, “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” Jesus takes exception to this way of defining life. In other words, Jesus does not agree with us Jesus does not agree that the ultimate thing we can say about a person s that they are good.
Why does Jesus question the man?
Jesus is taken back by the man’s greeting. The Greeks commonly greeted each other calling each other a good man or good woman, but Jews never spoke to each other in this way. Never. One Jew would never go up to another Jew calling them good. In fact, this type of greeting is virtually without parallel in Jewish sources. Simply put, no Jew did this. It simply was not done. What is with this “Good Teacher” greeting?
The greeting implies a standard of achievement. If someone is good at something, then they have achieved some level of competency. If I am good at tennis, then I have achieved a level of competency in the sport. So the man calls Jesus good implying that Jesus has reached a level of competency in religion. I want you to note that by calling Jesus good, the man is also implying that he is also somehow good, this implication is what takes Jesus back.
Look, this man, he is the man in his community. He has done well in life. He has done well in life by doing things, and by doing things he has gone far in life. So he naively believes that what works in the physical world also works in the spiritual world. The man sees that doing things has brought him wealth, the man sees that achievement has made his life work well, therefore he believes achievement, doing things, is also the way to go about things in the spiritual world. This is why in verse 17 the man asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus asks him about keeping the ten commandments. Jesus asks this knowing that this is the goal the man has been shooting for his entire life. The response of the man confirms what the man implies with his first sentence, verse 20, “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” The man confirms what he believes about himself, he is a good man. Now the reason he believes that he is a good man, is that he keeps the Ten Commandments.
This is the man’s equation of life: Good people inherit eternal life. Keeping the Ten Commandments is the ultimate good. Therefore, a person can inherit eternal life by keeping the Ten Commandments.
Jesus mocks this idea of achievement spirituality by telling us “No one is good—except God alone.”
Let’s think about this a minute. What is good? How good is good enough? See the problem with achievement spirituality is that the definition of what is good enough keeps changing. What was good enough to achieve in the past, is no longer good enough today. What was good enough for Lance Armstrong to win the Tour De France seven times, is no longer good enough today, as Lance is has lost all hope of winning the Tour this year.
What is good? What is the bar, the height, the achievement needed, to not only be good enough, but to excel?
When I was in Seminary at Princeton one of my professors had a rule that he would not read one word past the pages he assigned in a paper. If he assigned a fifty page paper, and you turned in a seventy-five page paper, the professor would stop reading at fifty pages and grade you based on the first fifty pages. He was adamant about this rule, almost fanatical about this rule, I mean if you wrote fifty pages plus one paragraph, he would still ignore that last paragraph - this could kill your grade.
As students, you might think we were thrilled with this rule of limited pages, but the truth is, we were not happy with this arraignment at all, for it would make things more difficult for us, rather than easier, because it was easier to write a few more pages than go back and edit what we had already written. With the other professors at the seminary, the amount of pages assigned was the minimum number of pages needed for a paper. A twenty page paper assignment didn’t mean exactly twenty pages, it was just a guideline of how much to write as a minimum. As students, we would just write pages until the argument was finished, however long that took.
So me and some of my buddies asked this professor after class one day if he would relax his rules a bit for writing papers. He absolutely refused.
It turns out early in the professors career, when he was just starting out as a professor, there was a student who for an assigned twenty-five page paper, would turn in a paper that was over four hundred pages long instead. Other students, fearing their grades would suffer, stated to emulate this student and also began writing vast amounts of pages for even short assignments, they too began writing papers that were hundreds of pages long. Soon the professor’s office was deluged with returned assignments nearing the length of the novel War and Peace. He thought he was going to go out of his mind reading these papers - and so he instituted the iron clad rule to not read past the pages assigned.
These students who wrote these insanely long pages, these students who severely over preformed, give us a picture of what the rich man is asking here. The rich man doesn’t only want to make the grade, he wants to over preform, he want to be extra good, just to make sure he makes it into the Kingdom of God.
So Jesus, he makes very strong a point, and he makes his point very clear by placing the man in a catch 22. He asks the man to something he cannot possibly do and remain a good man by the rich man’s own definition of achievement spirituality. Jesus asks the man to do a task, verse 21-22, “‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
Now as a general rule, when we look at these verses we assume that the man walks away because he is so attached to his wealth, we assume the man is just plain greedy, but, what Jesus asks the man to do is far more than given away his money. See, by scribal legislation, a Jew was strictly prohibited to give away his possessions. For if a person gave away all their possessions they would the become destitute, be reduced to poverty and have beg for food. So Jesus places the man into a catch 22. If the man sells everything he owns, he breaks the scribal law, violating his own code of achievement, and therefore he could no longer be a good man, yet, if the man doesn’t sell everything he violates Jesus challenge, and again fails to be a good man. With his religious system in shambles the man walks away.
It isn’t the wealth that gets in the way for this man as much as the system of achieving good that gets in his way. It is the same for us, wealth isn’t so much our problem as is the false and pagan belief that achieving good is somehow spiritual.
Don’t be deceived, good people have little chance in the Kingdom of God.
The mark of being a good Christian is not being a good person. The mark of being a good Christian is not achieving a life of good. Living a good and perfect life will not achieve anything spiritual.
Now, looking at your bibles, do you see that Jesus doesn’t call the man back. Jesus doesn’t explain anything, he just lets the man go. Then Jesus makes the chilling statement about the rich man, and what is so chilling, is that this statement that Jesus makes about the rich man, is the same statement he makes about you and I.
Verses, 23-24 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Stop.
Did that register with you?
What is Jesus saying about you and I?
It is impossible for us to enter into the Kingdom of God.
This is why the disciples say, “Who then can be saved?” in verse 26.
Now, I know what you are doing. You are focusing on the rich part. Don’t do that. We just talked about how being rich was only part of the problem, but the root of the problem here is not money; The root of problem is a system of spiritual achievement that rich people tend to set up in their lives.
See, the point isn’t that the man was rich, the point is that because the man is rich, the man equates the same system that works in the physical world to the spiritual world, The system of achievement. The man figures the better a man he is, the more spiritual a man he is.
OK.
Let’s think about this. Good equals Godly? Good equals spiritual? How exactly does being good and being spiritual parallel?
I give a man on the street a warm meal and a place to stay. That’s a good thing. How is giving a man a warm meal and a place to stay a spiritual thing?
It’s not a spiritual thing.
It is a good thing. It is a thing we as Christians should do, in fact, it is a thing that we as Christians are called to do, but it is not a spiritual thing. I mean, if an atheist does exactly the same thing, if an atheist gives a man on the street a warm meal and a place to stay. Is the atheist now a spiritual man?
A spiritual atheist is an oxymoron.
You see, an atheist can do all the good in the world. An atheist can be the best man in the world, an atheist can achieve doing the most good ever done for human kind in the history of the world. But, all the good in the world will never, ever make an atheist a spiritual man. An atheist who does all the good in the world will never know God by doing good. He is an atheist after all, he imagines that God doesn’t exist.
Now hear this. Are you ready?
Being good, will not make you a spiritual man or a spiritual woman either.
Good people don’t go to heaven.
Good people are not spiritual people.
If I don’t lie, or cheat or steal. If I love all I meet, and if I am generous with the poor. Even if I exude kindness in all I do. None of this will get me into the kingdom of God, and like the atheist doing good, all those things will not make me a spiritual person.
Good works, being good, helping others is not what makes us know God, for a Christian good works are the result of knowing God.
Clearly hear this: If you are living a life where you are doing good things in the hope that these good things will make you closer to God - you are hoping in vane, you are working in vane. This is what Jesus is teaching us this morning. You lay this aside this teaching of Jesus at your own peril. If it doesn’t work for an atheist, why do you think it would work for you?
See, doing good, being good, obedience to the commands of God, is an outgrowth of my relationship with Jesus Christ. As I grow closer to Jesus Christ through devotion, through worship, through prayer, through reading and applying God’s Word, then I am empowered by the Holy Spirit to be obedient to the Holy Spirit and part of that obedience will result in doing good and being good.
So who can be saved? Mark 10:27, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
I want you to look at that verse carefully what is the spiritual truth that you see?
First, with human achievement it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God. All the good, you have ever done, well that’s a wonderful thing, but it is not what gets you into the kingdom of God, nor does it make you first in the kingdom of God.
Second, What makes it possible for you to enter into the kingdom of God is God himself. You and all the goodness in the world can’t do it, only God can.
So here is what you need to do.
Stop. Stop. Stop, I mean stop this nonsense of doing good to get to know God. It is self deception at it worst, it is absurd at best.
Instead, spend time with God.
Hold on. If you are thinking to yourself that spending time with God is a waste of time, when you could be, instead, doing stuff for God, then I can’t think of anything that is more insulting to God.
Spend time with God in worship, in devotion, in prayer - in place of all this good you do; Do this instead of doing stuff for God.
When you spend time with God, at first you will feel like you are not achieving anything and at some point, I hope you discover how funny such a feeling like that really is. See, most likely, like the rich man, you are applying worldly concepts to spiritual concepts, you are thinking that doing stuff will draw you closer to God and the truth is, worldly concepts and spiritual concepts just, don’t, equate.
We are called not to do good, nor are we called to be good, any atheist can to that, and the truth is atheists are probably better at doing good than Christians are. We are called to know and obey the Lord Jesus Christ, first and foremost - then out of our relationship with Jesus, doing good will come about.
I think a good summation for what we have talked about this morning is found in 1 Samuel 15:22c, “...to obey is better than sacrifice…”, “...to obey is better than sacrifice…”
Obedience to the Holy Spirit as an outgrowth of your devotion, worship, prayer and study of God’s Word. This is far better than any good you have ever achieved, period.
