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Most of us have something we’d rather not put on the table before God—something we’re holding just tightly enough that we hope He won’t notice. In Luke 18, a ruler who has kept the commandments since his youth comes to Jesus asking what he still must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus names exactly the one thing he isn’t ready to hear.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
That was great.
So, we’re continuing our series in the Gospel of Luke, as you well know, and I hope you’re buckled in. I hope you got your naps in last week while Tim was preaching, because it’s my turn, and I can be a little fiery at times. I’m not seeing any words on my little screen here, Tim. They’re going to be up there? Okay, lovely. All right. So, there we go. We’ll get to that.
Let me set us up and remind us of some of the things that Tim preached for us last week. Tim brought the word to us about being excited that the Lord was here. We were confronted with the tax collector and with the publican who was thankful that he was not like other men, and Jesus said that that man was looking to justify himself. What the Lord wants of us from Tim’s sermon last week is not only to be excited to receive Jesus, but this is a big theme, to have humility to receive Jesus. That’s the difference between the publican and the tax collector. The tax collector knew that he was basically before God; that he was dirty at the very least, and it was God’s grace that enabled him. He didn’t even raise his eyes. He said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And that is why he went away justified.
This is what we need to know. This is a tension that we’re living with before we get into tonight’s passage, because on the one hand, Tim reminds us not to hold on to anything or not to try to polish up anything; that who we are before God in and of ourselves is who we are, and we’ve got to bring Him that, because He can’t heal that if we hold on to it. But the other thing is that He loves us, and Tim wasn’t leaving that out intentionally. I’m just reminding us God loves us. We have a dignity that is unimaginable because we are meant to be sons and daughters of the king, and if we have faith in Jesus Christ, so we are. That’s our dignity. So, He’s going to raise us up even when we feel like we’re pressed down. He’s going to raise us up. And so as we look at tonight’s passage, just know for the times when God needs to humble us and then for the times when God’s going to raise us up.
So we’ll go ahead and look at tonight’s passage. Let’s read it first and then I’ll pray.
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 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. And come, follow me.” But when he 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.”
Wow, what a lot to think through.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, the Savior, the one who died upon a cross and rose again and turned that cross into a throne, Lord Jesus, we come before your throne seeking only the gifts that you have for us, because we are not only now the ones you have saved, we are now your family. Just when we think that we don’t deserve any more, you keep giving and giving and giving. Open our hearts to this word, Holy Spirit. Take from the things that belong to Christ and declare them to us. We ask all this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
So let’s take a look at the beginning of our passage here.
Back to “Good teacher.” A ruler came and asked Him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Good question. Somehow, as I was praying through this, the word “good” triggered in my mind, because I kept thinking and asking, “Lord, why did You say this? Because, in fact, You are God. No one is good except God alone.” Yeah, well, you’re God, so I’m confused. But as I thought more through it, you ever meet somebody—and I’m not saying it’s a bad word to use—but you ever meet somebody and they start telling you their life story and then they say, “and the good Lord, dah, dah, dah, the good Lord,” as a phrase people use. Nothing wrong with saying “good Lord,” but every so once in a while, you get that vibe like maybe the person saying this is Christmas and Easter only, you know? Maybe they don’t really spend a lot of time with the Lord. Maybe that was what Jesus was reacting to. Maybe flattery, maybe He heard flattery in the man’s voice. Who knows? But it’s a good question. “No one is good except God alone.” Great point.
Which invites us to consider Jesus even further because we know He is God in flesh. But, and then the guy says, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And one of the things, why is he asking us this question? Why is he saying, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Maybe because this person was in the community at the time. He believed that obeying the commandments or at least appearing in a human sense to obey the commandments was good enough. You’ve heard us here at this church beat that drum before. How does that work out? When we think that we have kept the commandments, we usually find out that we are incorrect. So maybe he thought, maybe this guy thought, “Well, I’ve kept the commandments. I’m a pretty decent guy.” But Jesus says, “One thing you still lack.” Is it because He says, “Go and sell all your possessions and give them to the poor,” basically? We’re going into the Jason translation of the text: “One thing you still lack. Take all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.”
First of all, let’s go to the good part and then work backwards. Following Jesus is going to be the point of this. There’s no point where you can say, “Well, I’ve kept all the commandments. I’m relatively free of sin. I’m good to go when the new era of God’s grace comes.” No, everyone is humbled before the light of the Lord, the light of perfection that shines into every human heart and reveals the truth. Does it mean that we will always feel guilty? No, but it does always put us in our place. That’s why in John chapter one, it says the light was coming into the world and men loved the darkness because their deeds were evil. Human beings love to hide from the light of God, from the grace of God. We love that. We’re so good at it. Why? Because our first parents were so good at it.
This morning, one of the scripture readings at my church was from Genesis three, and it was when Adam and Eve ran away from the call of the Lord after eating the forbidden fruit. Why do we run so well? Why are we so good at it? Because we know that holiness, when it comes into contact with unholiness, makes unholiness run. That’s why on the encouraging side, our enemy has nothing for us because he’s a little scaredy cat. When goodness comes, when the light of Christ comes, he will run. He has no power. But in our own human weakness and folly, we forget the love of God that can separate us from sin and bring us into His holy kingdom. We run. We’re so good at that.
And why does this person in this text this morning, this afternoon, this evening, why? Well, it’s always morning in the light of Christ. Amen. So, why does this person, why does he think that he has something to offer? And why does Jesus answer in this way? He says, “One thing you still lack. Go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor and then come follow me.”
A lot of us are thinking, “Well, I don’t have anything.” If Jesus, to paraphrase a recent meme, if Jesus broke into my house looking for money, I’d laugh and help Him look for it. So, a lot of us, you know, we’re not the rich, you know, I’m a school teacher. I’m definitely not the rich. But this is that thing that this person in this text is still holding on to. It’s his wealth. That’s the one thing that was holding him back. And the Lord, in human flesh, knew that for this one man, what was holding him back was all the money that he had. It doesn’t mean that we have to put ourselves in the poor house. You’re going to hear people say that. “You got to give everything that you have all the time.” Listen, don’t give away all your money so that your family is struggling and you can’t help the grandkids and you can’t keep the lights on. Don’t do that. That’s not what He’s talking about.
But, if you’re like this guy and your money is getting in the way of your heart giving your heart to God, the theme of this passage, the theme of all these passages here in Luke, as we’ve seen over and over, is humility and surrender. Surrender. You know, I’ve got a fair amount of money stashed away, but I’m not storing up in barns. I could lose it tomorrow and it’s fine because I’ve got Jesus, which means I’ve got everything. If you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got everything.
That means if somebody comes up to you and says, “I need such and such,” or “I need money for the bus,” or “I need money for this or that,” if you’ve got it, you can give it. You can give it in total freedom because He who did not withhold His own Son from us, will He not graciously give us all things? Romans 8, 34. Maybe 32. Anyway, Romans 8, it’s in there. But, you know, we have freedom to surrender the things that we have given. Yeah, here it is: He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, with Him, graciously give us all things?
So, all our gifts, all our talents, all our money, all our time belongs to the Lord. Let me read the rest of this: Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. And who is there to condemn? Nobody. Nobody, because we have Christ. And so, we can give in freedom. We can have open hands with the things of this world because we have the treasure beyond price. We have the pearl of great price, which is salvation in Jesus Christ.
That frees us up to say everything else belongs to everyone else. Lord, it first belongs to You, and then You can decide where it needs to go. You ever have that? Let’s stop for a second and talk about this. You ever have that moment where you’re sitting in church and you hear, you feel the whisper of the Holy Spirit, and He goes, “Come on, give that money.” Yeah, I know it’s a lot. Give it anyway. Give it anyway.
I did that one time. I’ll just be direct. It was a $20 bill, and I felt the Holy Spirit saying, “Put it in there.” And the lady, she was so shocked. She was like, “Is He sure He wants to put all that in there?” And my friend said, “I don’t know, He can talk, ask Him.” And I said, “Yeah, I’m sure.” And she goes, “Okay.” I don’t know, maybe she saw a lot of $1 bills that day, but if you feel the call, you’ve got to do it. You know what I mean?
And the Holy Spirit never, we know from 2 Corinthians that God loves a cheerful giver. Why? Because a cheerful giver gives in freedom. And that’s money, that’s talent, that’s everything. When you are free, you don’t need rules. That’s why there’s no rules for the gifts of the Spirit. There’s no limitations on the gifts of the Spirit. Why? Because they come from the Lord, and everything good comes from the Lord, comes from God, the Father of lights, who, again, graciously gives us all things.
So this man, in our passage tonight— I went on a little detour. This is what I always do, Tim. Detours everywhere. A little Baptist air conditioning going on here. Flipping through the Bible, there we go. So this man, he wants to hold on to his wealth. That’s the thing holding him back. We don’t know. We can’t say for sure, and I praise God that we don’t know. We don’t know what his final destiny was. We just know that in this moment, he wasn’t ready to follow Jesus. He wasn’t ready.
What could Jesus ask you tonight that you would not be ready to give up? That’s an interesting question. I didn’t plan on asking you that, but I’m going to ask it again. What could Jesus ask of you tonight that you would not be ready to give up? What is He calling you to? He’s calling you to something specific right now. Something that you’ve been afraid of. Something that doesn’t seem possible.
Dude, I mean, with God, all things are possible. I’m on the wrong side of the Reformation, and I’m still at this church. I’m preaching at this church. This is crazy. So what could God be asking of you? What is it? What is He calling you to? And know that the Lord, who brought you into His kingdom by the blood of His Son and by the power of His Holy Spirit, He has plenty of power to do whatever He wants to do in you. Remember, it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. From the book of Ephesians. I hope it’s from the book of Ephesians.
But we say this over and over again. We do not live in our own strength. This man was not going to get himself into the kingdom on his own strength, even if he was really good at being obedient. And I’ve said this before at this church. I could wax eloquently about the development of natural virtue and the classical virtues as understood by the great theologians through all the centuries. But the supernatural virtues, the ones that get you into heaven, those are gifts. They cannot be bought anywhere. They cannot be traded. They cannot be sold. They cannot be manufactured. They are given as gifts.
So if you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m doing all right. Like, I’m a good person. That’ll get me into the kingdom.” No. The blood of Jesus will get you into the kingdom. Faith in Jesus as the Savior of the world will get you into the kingdom. That’s it. Not even your good deeds, because when He rewards you with merit that He talks about all over the scriptures, you just give it right back to Him.
We had Trinity Sunday a couple Sundays ago. That was a couple Sundays ago, wasn’t it, Tim? And, you know, we’ve got casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. That isn’t our gold. That’s His gold. We’re giving His gold right back to Him. If it wasn’t, if it wasn’t the very economy, as it were, that God Himself set up, that we should give Him back everything that He already gave to us, it would be ridiculous. You know, but like I said last time I was here, six pence none the richer. The dad is giving the money to the children to buy him a birthday gift. Is it ridiculous? Sure it is. But it’s for our salvation. Everything that He does is for us.
What does God need that He doesn’t already have? He doesn’t need anything from us. But what does He want from us? He wants our hearts. He wants everything that we are. He wants even our faith that He gave as a gift to us. Even our good works that we do, they’re just His. They’re not ours. He prepared those in advance for us to do that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10. That comes right after He says, “For it is by grace you have been saved.” Three times He says that in Ephesians 2. St. Paul, there I go, going all over the Bible again.
But according to the clock I have 12 minutes and I’m just going to have to deal with it. So it’s like everything good that we could do, every good work, every joyful moment, every celebration, basking in the glory of God, basking in the mercy of God comes from God. We bring nothing. We bring nothing except whatever God has to clean up. It must be annoying. It’s like… Anybody got kids in here? Yeah, and probably some grandkids too, judging by a large portion of this audience.
But… and I know this even as a single guy. You know, little kids, they get sick in the middle of the night and vomit all over the house and you got to clean it up. And, you know, we’re like the sick kids and God has to clean us all up and put us back in bed and we can rest. But isn’t it wonderful to rest? Isn’t it wonderful to say, “I don’t have anything to give. Nothing is mine, it’s all yours,” and now I can rest.
Isn’t it wonderful to go to the foot of the cross and say, “There’s nothing left to do except stay here with you, Lord.” Remember how all the disciples, the apostles, they ran? They ran. Why did they run? Because they were afraid. Because, you know, and even though they’re great heroes, they ran because they were afraid of human opinion. They were afraid of what would happen to them.
What brought them back? The reappearance of our Lord and the commissioning of our Lord and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. That’s what brought the apostles back together to continue their mission. And who would lead them? Who would lead them? It’s ridiculous. The person who would lead them is the guy who denied Jesus three times. The leader of the apostles is a Christ denier and a coward and he’s the leader and he would go on to preach the sermon in the book of Acts that led to the baptism of 3,000 people. This is that guy.
Jesus, God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, they will take anybody and go, “Here’s a big mission for you.” This guy, in our passage tonight, I’ve been babbling for the last 15 minutes. But this guy in our passage tonight, he wanted to hold on to his money and Jesus said, “That’s the one thing in your way, man. That’s the one thing in your way. Treasure in heaven. Distribute all your money to the poor because there’s more treasure in heaven than you’ve ever even thought about.”
No eye has seen, no ear has heard what the Lord has prepared for those who love Him. A quote from Isaiah, and quoted again in one of John’s letters. We have no idea. And to even talk about it is a little bit crazy on our parts because we’re just human. We don’t even, listen, we don’t even know what the spiritual bodies in 1 Corinthians 15 are. We just know they’re going to be great. We know that death can’t hold us. There’s so much we don’t know. But what we can rest in is that our Lord, our God, is good. And He’s so good that things that we haven’t even thought about or hoped for are the things that He wants to give us in His name.
Let’s think about the different things that the Lord could be asking us tonight. Where does He want to take these people and this church? Where does He want to go? What amazing, unthinkable, unimaginable, crazy thing is the Lord going to do with this church? Who’s He going to ask us to help? Are we going to, is this church going to be one day like really, really big one day? Is Tim going to accidentally become a mega church pastor by accident? Like, we don’t know. We don’t know what the Lord’s going to do.
But, and there’s lots of people, let me stop and say this, there’s lots of people saying that talking about the individual discipleship mission that God has for each one of us will burn people out. They’ll get burnt out and they’ll feel like failures because they don’t want to go back to their ordinary lives. You know what? The mission field is your ordinary life. It is your ordinary life.
Man, I’m going to tell you what, I got to be honest for a second here. Not that I’ve been lying the whole time. But, but, you know, I have come back to St. Louis for the summer and I recognize that my purpose is to spend a ton of time with my mom and go to baseball games. Like that’s my, you can see, you can see that I literally went to the Cardinals game and then I came straight over here. And then as I said before, I got saved again during the worship portion of the church.
And sometimes, mother and son, that can be challenging at times because you’re still a son and she’s still your mom and that’s still sort of frustrating. What if, and there’s nothing wrong with my mom, my mom’s the best. You know what I mean? Like I’m being ridiculous. But what if your mission field is sitting right across from you at the kitchen table? What if that’s your, what if that’s your mountain of sanctification? What if Tim’s mountain of sanctification is having to put up with my face every couple of weeks?
So even the little things are the big things. Why? Why are the little things the big things? The little things are the big things because the little things are all we have, first of all. We’ve said that before. We’re not bringing anything. So when He gives us a mission, it can’t be, you know, He’s not going to call up and say, “Hey, guess what? You’re the Savior of the world.” He’s not going to do that because that’s ridiculous. He’s already the Savior of the world. He’s not going to ask you to do something that He hasn’t already done.
Humbling, yes. Because you ever complained to God in prayer? Jesus, oh man, this, this person doesn’t like me and I’m so anxious and I’m a school teacher. And here come the weird examples. My planning period’s not long enough and why do we have so many bells and why can’t I go home at three instead of 3:20? And Jesus, Jesus goes in His way, goes, “Really? Really?” He goes, “You got five crucifixes in your house. Why don’t you stop and look at one once in a while?” You know, and you look at the cross and go, “Yeah, it’s not that bad.” You know, what I’m dealing with isn’t that bad.
But we also have to come to Him again, like Tim said earlier, and bring Him all the time that we failed in that small way or sometimes a big way to do what God’s asking us to do. But know that the same, the same place before the cross that is the place of humility is also the place of exaltation. The place of humility is also the place of exaltation because He turned that cross into a throne. Am I right or am I right?
He turned that cross into a throne. They tried to execute Him as a disturber of the peace and they executed Him between two thieves. I remember in the other gospel the one thief said to the other thief, “We deserve what we got.” He didn’t do anything. The totally innocent lamb crucified for us. And yes, the other thing is in the Romans’ eyes and maybe some of the leaders of the people of that time, it didn’t have a theological meaning. It didn’t have a theological purpose. It was just the machinery of the state doing what the machinery of the state does.
But church, I hope you know what that cross means. That cross means we have everything that we could ever hope to have. Strange as it sounds, that blood poured out, that grisly scene is again the place of our humility and the place of our exaltation. That is why we can surrender all our money, all our time, all our treasure, all our hopes, all our dreams to the cross. And even if we spend the rest of this life struggling, it’s a worthy struggle because there’s something waiting for us in heaven with Christ as sons and daughters of the king that cannot be matched by anything on this planet. Nothing.
So that’s our hope tonight. And the same one who draws us back in to once again forgive us of our sins and clean us up and send us out is the same one willing to give us everything that He has. There’s nothing we have to hold on to. There’s nothing that we have to hold back because He is everything, He’s got everything, and He’ll make us into everything that He wants.
Amen. Let’s pray.
Lord, you have given us everything. You have showed us the way of life, the way to eternal life. You are that way. You are that truth. You are that life. Jesus, go with us. Strengthen us. Give us hope for the journey. Give us food for the journey. Help us to endure. Holy Spirit, when we are challenged, give us the words to say. May they not be our words; may they be your words. May your kingdom come. May we join in that. May we be heroes in our own time, even if no one else knows about it. We ask all these things through Christ our Lord.
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