(Full disclosures: 1, this message is based on a sermon preached at First Baptist Church, Chamois, MO, on 2-26-2023. This is not an exact transcription.
(2, Sermon Central has accepted another message on this text, called “Go thy way-Jesus and the rich young ruler” but this is a different message.)
Introduction: This is the last Sunday in February, the traditional month of love. We’ve seen some of the good and the best of love, with Isaac and Rebekah, and some of the worst, the dark side of love with Samson and his Philistine “bride.” Let’s hope none of us have to go through that kind of “love”, such as what she and her friends did to Samson. In a word, that isn’t love, no, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Our text comes today from Mark’s gospel, chapter 10
Text: Mark 10:17-27, NASB: 17 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and began asking Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, Do not defraud, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’” 20 And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.” 21 And looking at him, Jesus felt a love to him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But at these words his face fell, and he went away grieved, for he was one who owned much property.
23 And Jesus, looking around, *said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus *answered again and said to them, “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.” 26 And they were even more astonished, and said to Him, ‘Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus *said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”
<opening prayer>
I’ve used this text before, and there are times this message still speaks to me in many ways. For one thing, it shows how someone can see the Truth in front of them, but will still reject it—or Him. Another thing is that someone can be sincere at first but sincerely uninterested after hearing what they, he, or she, really didn’t want to hear.
So let’s see what’s happening at this moment. In the context, Jesus and the disciples are on their last journey before Calvary. In what could be just a few days, He is going to be arrested and crucified—the worst form of death anyone could suffer. And just earlier, He had blessed any number of small children. :”Jesus Loves the Little Children” is a song that could be sung for over 2000 years!
And as Jesus heads towards Jerusalem, one of the strangest things in the Bible took place. Comparing the words of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we can find this man, who came running to Jesus, was rich, young, and he was a “ruler”, probably the “ruler” of a synagogue. But no matter who he was, he was concerned enough to come to Jesus and ask Him something very important.
By the way, for some deeper Bible study, use any kind of concordance and see how many times a person was “running” for one reason or another. One of my favorites is the story of Abraham, who ran to various places when the Three Visitors came to his place (Genesis 19). Now, Abraham was 99 years old and he was still able to run! When I turn 65, that will make me officially an “old man” or senior citizen, and running is a lost art for me! I’m only one-half of Abraham’s age at the time, and I probably have one-tenth of his running ability!
The young man, as I’ll call him, ran to Jesus and as Mark records, “knelt before Him.” Dr. Lightfoot and some other commentators explain that this wasn’t worship, but a token of deep respect from a learner to a leader. “For it is written, ‘AS I LIVE, SAYS THE LORD, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW TO ME, AND EVERY TONGUE SHALL GIVE PRAISE TO GOD’” Paul wrote in Romans 14:11, but this young man may have had something different in mind.
At the very least, he was concerned about his soul. Everyone should be! Nobody knows for sure how long we’re going to live on this earth, and there are only two places, according to the Bible, where a person goes when his or her life is over. Like Lazarus in Luke 16, all believers go to Heaven, and like the rich man in that same passage, all unbelievers go to Hell (Hades), a place of torment. Forever. And these are the only two destinations for anyone to face.
So now the young man asks Jesus, after calling Him “Good Teacher”—and nobody could teach anything like Jesus did—“what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To his surprise, Jesus asks him a question in reply: “Why do you call Me good?”
Now, there’s been a lot of debate from just about the moment Jesus spoke these words. What some people don’t catch or realize is the next sentence Jesus uttered: “No one is good except God alone.” This young man had no doubt seen his share of evil, just like us today, and as a synagogue ruler, surely he would have read or heard, Jeremiah’s statement, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it (Jer. 17:9, King James Version)?” during the reading of the Law and the Prophets.
So Jesus is saying, in so many words, “If you’re calling me good, you’re calling me God” We’re not told here what the young man might have thought, nor the expressions on his face, but these words of Jesus surely made him think!
Then Jesus probes the young man’s sincerity even more with this statement, regarding the last six of the Ten Commandments. He reminded the young man about these commandments, just quoting them (could any of us do this?), and waiting, it seems, for the young man’s reply.
And what a reply! The ruler tells Jesus “Teacher (note, he didn’t add the word “good” in this reply), I’ve kept all of these from my youth up to now.”
I have to confess, every time I read this, it’s stunning. I don’t know of anyone else in the Bible who would dare to say “I’ve kept these six commandments, all from my youth up.” Someone observed this man must not have had any children or he’d see rapidly that it’s not difficult to keep these commandments, it’s impossible! But this man did!
To be fair, there are a couple of options. First, he could be stating he had followed the Law, by offering the required items as sacrifices per Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The problem would be if he was trusting in the sacrifices themselves instead of having faith in the God Who instructed Israel what to do and how to do it.
Besides, where is his faith?
Second, he may have been following the traditions of the elders (scribes, Pharisees, and others). Jesus had some very strong words for those who trusted in tradition (Matthew 23, for example) rather than the true Word of God. Being a ruler, perhaps a synagogue ruler, it would be easy for him to hear, and perhaps follow, the traditions instead of the Word. A chilling possibility is this: did he want the approval of the leaders, higher in rank than he, more than God’s approval? If that’s the case, no wonder he was concerned about his soul and wanted to talk to Jesus!
The third possibility, and I admit this one’s a bit of a stretch, is that he’s lying or “gas lighting” Jesus here. “What do you mean, by quoting the commandments to me? I’m a ruler and I know what I know! I’ve kept all of these commandments and how dare You ask me about it?” Think about it: even when people are face to face with the Lord on judgment day, they’re going to say, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do thus and so—like casting out demons and so forth?” But according to Matthew 7, the only thing they’re going to hear from Jesus is “Depart from Me!’ or “GET AWAY FROM ME!”
But no matter what this young man had said, and in spite of what he may have been thinking, Jesus felt a love for him. Note that He didn’t embarrass the man by saying something like, “Oh, really? Kept all of these, have you?” And He didn’t stare at the young man (what a piercing gaze THAT would have been) trying to make him squirm or anything like that. No, I think Jesus did love that young man and truly wanted the best for him. He wants the best for us, too!
Even so, Jesus knew there was something between Himself and the young man. Something that would keep the young man from finding and receiving God’s very best for him.
And that something was his possessions, or his “stuff”.
Now, this brings us to the dark side of love. First, there’s nothing wrong with having things. Jesus taught the disciples to pray, in the Model Prayer of Matthew 6, for “our daily bread” and He also told the listeners to not worry about the food or clothing. The Lord clearly knows what we need and He is never taken by surprise.
Yet even though there is nothing wrong with having material goods, possessions, whatever you want to call it, there is something definitely wrong when, say, my perspective shifts from how the Lord has blessed to, like the rich man of Luke 12, “what am I going to do with all this?” That was the real problem for this young man, this ruler, speaking and listening to Jesus.
Not only did he have his stuff, which was fine, but his stuff owned him, and that’s the real problem. Solomon mused on this when he wrote in Ecclesiastes 5:12, for the working man, his sleep is sweet but a rich man can’t go to sleep for worrying about all his stuff. That’s a pretty loose paraphrase, but we get the idea. Someone once observed that having plenty of stuff now is one road block to becoming the best we can be later.
And Jesus knew the young man’s problem: he loved what he owned more than anything else. Thus, when the young man replied, from whatever perspective, “I’ve kept all six of these commandments from my youth (and I’m still doing this, by the way)”, Jesus had another reply for him. Doesn’t He always?
Mark tells how Jesus felt a love for this (outwardly, at least) sincere man and then gave him a challenge, we might say. Jesus said, “You still lack one thing” and gave the young man a brief description of just what that one thing was. Jesus said, “Sell all you have, give to the poor, and you’ll have treasure in heaven, and come, follow Me.”
Silence.
Again, the dark side of love comes into full view here. Mark doesn’t quote the young man as saying anything after hearing what Jesus said, and neither does Matthew or Luke. Mark’s account is graphic, as he says the young man’s face fell, and he went away grieved.
Now, those of us who have raised small children know exactly what this means! We’ve seen our children all smiles when they get something they want—at least mine did—and we can guess that when they’re smiling, it may mean they want something. We’ve also seen what happens when a small child, let’s say around 2 or 3 years of age, doesn’t get what they want. (Here I made a face like a child’s frown face). They cloud up and rain, don’t they! Oh, they might shed tears, or pout, or even weep, and these days it’s anybody’s guess what else they might try to do. But to his credit, the young ruler here said nothing.
He didn’t have to. His departure and demeanor told everything.
It’s true that in the Old Testament, God did promise Israel prosperity IF they followed His instructions. The problem, first, was—as we saw a little while ago—that some people, just like this young man, owned a lot of property, and who knows what else, but the stuff owned him! Maybe he thought that somehow he could take it with him? Some may think so, but I’ll tell you what, I’ve preached at a good number of churches, and I’ve seen a good number of cemeteries, but none of them have safe deposit boxes! In fact, back a number of years ago, there was a song titled “You’ll Never Find a Hearse with a Trailer Hitch (one of the audience laughed)!”
We could look at this a lot longer but let’s stop here. First, the young man was concerned about his soul. That’s why he came looking for Jesus and asking one of the most important questions ever. Don’t we all wish more people would be concerned about eternal life?
Then, second, something happened after he heard Jesus remind him about the last Six of the Ten Commandments. Was it pride? Was it rebellion? Disgust? We may never know, but we do know he was almost defiant in saying, “I’ve kept all these from my youth (and I’m still doing it, by the way—implied)” to Jesus. Dare any of us say the same thing?
And finally, he let the dark side of love choose his stuff over his soul. He walked away, not saying a word, but his facial expressions said everything. Again, there is nothing wrong with having possessions, in and of themselves, but the problems come when the stuff gets in the way of loving the Lord as we should.
I hope, sincerely, none of us ever fall victim to the dark side of love, like this man did. Your everlasting soul is worth so much more than anything we can purchase down here. May the Lord Himself give all of us wisdom in this matter, and every matter. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Version of the Bible (NASV) unless otherwise stated.
