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There’s always one thing we’d rather not put on the table when God asks us to give something up—and we usually know exactly what it is. In Luke 18, a rich man walks away from Jesus grieving because that one thing is precisely what Jesus names, and the disciples’ stunned question in response—”then who can be saved?”—turns out to be our question too.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon distinguishes between giving up things that don’t cost us versus things that actually matter to us. What is something you’ve been asked to surrender that felt like a real sacrifice—and how did you know it was the thing God wanted?
Jesus doesn’t call everyone to the same renunciation: some are called to poverty, others to release influence or status. How do you discern what your particular idol or false source of worth might be? What makes that discernment hard?
Peter says to Jesus, “See, we left our homes and followed you”—essentially reminding Jesus what he’s already given up. Do you catch yourself doing that with God? How does that impulse reveal something about where you’re still looking for worth?
The sermon says God is “more demanding than people care to think, but also more generous than they dared to hope.” Can you think of a time when you experienced both sides of that tension—where God’s demand felt harder than you wanted, but his provision or presence turned out to be richer than you expected?
In what ways can good things—morality, generosity, influence, or service—become idols or sources of self-righteousness rather than gifts held loosely before God?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So tonight we’re gonna pick up with a question that Jason confronted us with last week. What is God asking me, what is God asking you to give up? Have you thought about that question this week? If you were here or you were online last week, if you’re online or in person I should say last week, you heard that question. I thought a lot about it. It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? What is it that God is asking me to give up? And the question quickly leads us to one of two places. It’s sort of like, for those of you perhaps that have participated in giving up something for Lent in the past, same place. We have two options. Sometimes we come to a time and we say, okay, so I’m gonna set aside for this season, I’m going to give something up. And you say, like for example for me, okay, I am going to give up tuna. I am going to give that sacrifice for God. Now, if you know me, you know I don’t want to be within 10 feet of anything tuna. I’m sorry, I try to be polite, but if you someday decide to bless me with a tuna casserole, I will thank you profusely for it, but you will never see me eat it. I just, I won’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t. I just can’t bring myself to do it. So if I give that up, it’s not really giving anything up, right? In fact, if then I now have an excuse to come up to me with the tuna casserole, here Tim, have this hot, piping hot, fresh tuna casserole, and you place it down in front of me, and I say, I can’t, I gave it up before the Lord. Well, that hasn’t been a sacrifice, that’s actually been a blessing that now I can sound all spiritual when I turn down the tuna, not just like I’m being picky.
So what am I going to give up? The other option, and this is any time that we’re confronted with the opportunity to give up something before God, is to actually give up something that matters to us. The problem is, we don’t know what really matters. Can I take us all down memory lane for a moment as we begin tonight? How many of you remember this place? Show of hands, how many of you remember this place? Yes, a Blockbuster video. For the younger members of our church family, let me just tell you about the glories of Blockbuster video for a moment, may I? And the rest of you, maybe some of this will remind you of times past. You’d go in there, right? Now, you wanted to see a movie. Here’s the amazing thing, you didn’t have to go buy it, you just got in your car, you drove there, you showed them your card, they charged you a few dollars, and they handed you this cassette, this big video cassette that you could take home, had a wonderful saying on it, a little poetry, Be Kind Rewind. You took it and you put it into your VHS player, it’s sort of like a streaming box but with a hole in the front of it you can stick stuff into. You stuck it in there, and magically the movie played. Now, you might say, that sounds so archaic. I go on Amazon, I hit play immediately, boom, it’s playing. But here was the thing that was amazing, you didn’t have to wait for it to get released and figure out if you had the right streaming services, you just went there and you picked it up on the day it was released and it was there. Now, it got even better. I know we have a few video gamers amongst us here, right, yes? Now, here was the thing, every new release game, you could go in there and I think it was like three bucks, you’d get it for two days, and you could try it out, you could see if it was any good, and you could play it, and play it, and play it. Now, my personal favorite part though was when the games weren’t new releases any longer, you’d go in there and get them really, really for rock-bottom prices after everyone else got done playing them and keep it for, you know, like 25% of the original cost or something. It was fantastic, it was so good, and yet what happened? Streaming.
Now, why am I reliving blockbuster video? It’s not because I mislaid fees. Here’s something that’s remarkable about blockbuster. Blockbuster in 2000 was the dominant force that put out all the other video stores, it was in control, and there was this little bitty scrawny upstart had gotten the idea to mail DVDs by mail, called Netflix. And Netflix’s two co-founders went to blockbuster, they’re having a hard time getting people to subscribe, and they were having a hard time getting enough funding to make this operation work where they could mail out the DVDs, they hadn’t come to streaming yet, but they realized something. People would rather subscribe to get movies, and then you just pay a flat fee and you get movies. That was the concept, that was what they were going after, and they realized this, and so they go to blockbuster and they said, we believe we have something here, we would like to sell it to you for 50 million dollars. As the story goes, they were laughed out of the blockbuster boardroom. Now let me put this in perspective. Netflix is valued at over 200 billion dollars today. Blockbuster is out of business.
Blockbuster looked and said, we have all the stores, no one’s going to put up a challenge to us, we are in control, we are the dominant player, no one can catch up with us. The last thing we need is some geeks from some tech company saying that they know something that we can’t already do. It took just over a decade for blockbuster to go out of business. Imagine if they made that 50 million dollar investment where they would be today. We wouldn’t be talking about going and watching the latest Netflix original, we’d be talking about watching the latest blockbuster. That actually worked pretty well, wouldn’t it? But they’re gone. They didn’t know what to value, and so often we don’t know what to value. God comes to us and says, you don’t even need to pay 50 million dollars, you don’t need to pay 1 million dollars, you don’t need to pay 1 dollar, you just need to follow me. Turn to me. And that’s where we left off last week with Jason’s question, because the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, I’m following all these laws, I’m doing all these things, I’m paying, you know, I’m paying a hundred million dollars in morality, I am just doing a great job.
Jesus says, but there’s one thing you lack, you need to give up all your money. Who are you, Jesus? You’re some upstart rabbi. I’m rich, and everyone knows I’m moral, I don’t need you. He went away. He wouldn’t give it up. He didn’t know what was truly of value, because while Blockbuster could have acquired Netflix and had something of great value, that man, if he never changed his tune, if he never turned around and repented and said, I do want you, Jesus, give something infinitely more valuable. Where are we doing that? Let’s pray that God would help us tonight as we go through his word to see.
Father, we come before you as those that are constantly looking for things of value. We talk about a story, a success story in this world, where someone missed the opportunity to make an investment that turned into a huge amount of money, and we think, wow, how unfortunate, or we make an investment and it works out well, and we say, wow, wasn’t I wise, but Lord, how often is it that we come before you? And as we do, we miss out on that even better investment, the investment of your grace, of your salvation. Would you help us to see those places where we are turning away from you and missing out, whether, even if we trusted in you, Lord, but we still are clinging to other things to give us value, would you help us to see that and to turn all the more to you? We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Here’s the problem when we mix up value. When we mix up what is of value, we mix up where our strength is. The rich young ruler mixed up where his strength was, but as we go on to the latter part of this story, we see the disciples were having a hard time with this, too. Take a look at verse 26 of Luke 18. Those who heard it, the exchange between Jesus and the rich young ruler, said, then who can be saved? But he, as Jesus said, what is impossible with man is possible with God.
This can seem a little peculiar to us today for a really simple reason. In our culture today, oftentimes we’ve come to the point where we view the wealthiest people as the most depraved people. We hear that all the time in our media today. Oh, this person’s stepped on how many people to get to the top. This person has manipulated the political sphere to get to the top. We hear that over and over again. Although there’s also a sense, I think, in parts of our culture where we say, look at how smart that person was to get to the top. And that’s really the primary, that positive sense is really the primary approach the people of Jesus’s time would have had towards the rich. Not necessarily they were smart, but they were blessed. If you were rich, it was assumed you had God’s favor. And so if you have someone come to Jesus who is really, really rich and he comes and you see the money oozing out of his pockets as he’s coming up to Jesus, everyone knows that this is a go-getter, an important person. And he comes up to Jesus and says, not only am I really, really rich, I’m really, really good too. I keep the commandments. Jesus, if we already had saints that we canonized in this world, I would already be a saint before I even die because I am so good and I’m so rich and I clearly have God’s blessing. Jesus says, you know, the problem is that you’re holding on to that wealth. That’s what you are valuing.
And Jason talked a bit about this last week. It’s not about whether a person who’s rich can be saved or a person who’s poor can be saved. The problem is where are we placing our value? And for this man, his value is in his wealth. Sure, he can give up all kinds of other sins, but many of the things that he wasn’t doing, those were the things that were tuna casserole to him. He didn’t want them anyway. The things he wanted, he could buy. He didn’t need to steal. He didn’t need to testify and bear false witness against his neighbor. He didn’t need to do these things. He was important and influential and he had access to what he wanted. The one thing, though, that he wouldn’t give up was being important and influential and rich. And that’s why Jesus challenges him there. Because it’s not that Jesus was against the rich. It was that Jesus was against all of us putting our value and our strength in something other than him. And for this man, the only way he could come around to seeing that would be if he gave up his wealth. As long as he kept on holding on to that, it would always be Jesus and all this money I have. There’s my security. Jesus says, give that up.
So the disciples, as they’re listening to Jesus and they hear this conversation, they hear the exchange and they say, oh, but there’s a man who is depending on his wealth. Or, down with the rich, down with capitalism. You know, some kind of chant like that. That’s not what they’re thinking. They’re thinking, I always thought if I followed God enough, that would be me. I always thought if I was the most faithful person, that’s the kind of person that has that. How can it be that he can’t get into heaven? And if he can’t, if he can’t, then how can I?
Here’s the challenge for us as we confront that question that Jason left us with of what is it that God’s calling each of us to give up. It’s so much harder, so incredibly hard when the thing that he’s asking us to give up are the things that we count as marking our worth. Whatever that might be. For some of you, it might be your money. For some of you, it might be your power. For some of you, it might be your morality. And I’m not saying God’s ever going to call us to give up our morality, but he is going to call us to give up our self-righteousness about it. He wants us to be moral, but the last thing he wants us to do is the other thing that the young man that comes to Jesus is doing. The way he can come up to Jesus so confidently is he says, look how good I am. And while Jesus doesn’t confront that head-on, he’s implying it here because he says, you’re not good enough. What is it that Jesus is calling you to give up, calling me to give up? Is it the status we have in our work? Is it how we accomplish something in school? The friends we have? The social circle, right? Oh, I feel secure because I have X number of friends that always want to spend time with me. Or I’m secure because I have so many followers and I’m virtually an influencer on the internet. You know, what is it that God is calling you to give up, me to give up? I have value because I volunteer to animal rescue and I make sure that all the homeless cats and dogs have some place to go.
Now here’s the interesting thing. Sometimes it can be that these things are just outright bad, right? I know how to step on other people and so I can get to the top. Well, clearly, I mean, there’s so much wrong with that. You give it up and it’s just, well, of course everyone should give that up. But for a lot of things, most things, it’s not going to be that everyone’s called to the same thing. That’s even true with the wealth of this man. Probably if you’ve been around enough people for enough time, you interact with people, you will encounter at some point someone who is wealthy but you don’t even know it at first and who is generous constantly, quietly, not to bring attention to themselves. They see their wealth as something God’s given them to bless other people.
And then on the other hand you see someone who you know from the moment that you meet them, this is someone who’s rich because they see their wealth as a way to have value amongst other people. And as God calls us to give something up, what we need to ask as we are asking that question isn’t necessarily only what sin do I have in my life, it’s just clear, explicit sin no matter who does it, no matter when it’s done, but what things have I turned into my idols, what things are sin for me because while another person might use it well, I’m not using it well. What are those things for me? They look different for each and every one of us. Maybe some overlap, but it’s not always the same.
Here’s the problem though, if that’s where our value is, if that’s what I think, this is why I am important, this is why I have value in this world, this is why people should listen to me, this is why I live, it’s really, really hard to give it up. Some of you have been confronted with those sorts of moments where you know what you need to give up. And if you’ve already been there, you know that that’s agonizing. And sometimes we do the right thing and we say, by God’s grace, give me that strength God, let me do this, and you’ve done it, and you’ve broken free from it, and you’ve said, this is not for me, I’m running from this. We’ve done that, praise God for that. But too often what we say is I’m going to walk away sad, just like the rich young ruler.
Now I want to be clear, as far as we know, we don’t know the status, and Jason and I were talking about this, I would love to think that the rich young ruler ultimately repents, he was impacted by actually interacting with Jesus, and a few years later, he turns his life around, he follows Jesus, he goes and becomes an evangelist, and because he’d taken the lesson so to heart, we don’t even know his name. Wouldn’t that be lovely? I’d love to think that. I don’t know that that’s the case. It could be very well that he walked away and he never thought about Jesus again. Some radical rabbi. I wasted my time even standing in line to talk to him. I don’t know. I think that’s partially intentional though. Because if you’re wrestling with whether you’re going to follow Jesus at all, if you’re going to become one of his, then this story’s for you. But by not knowing exactly the whole process that the rich young ruler goes through, the story is also for those of us who’ve already chosen to follow Jesus, because he’s constantly confronting us with, what things are you still holding on to that are keeping you from more fully being with me? Every one of us has those things. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you don’t.
Challenging working through this passage, preparing this week, because they’re like, God, I really don’t want to think about this. And it’s when we hit those points where it’s the things that we don’t want to think about. That’s where we need to invite the Holy Spirit in and say, God, help me. Help me to see. Help me to see in this dark place what it is that you want me to do. Because not accumulating a certain level of compliance with the law that’s going to give us importance. It’s not having enough wealth that’s going to give us importance. And that’s what the disciples were being confronted with here. Because there’s the two markers they could think of. Visible righteousness before the law and material blessing. Those are the two things they thought, here is a source for the strength and here is the sign of that strength. You take those two things together, you have a surefire kingdom member here, and Jesus turns them away. They had to be confronted with that over and over again.
That society did, and we do, because we go right back into it. Matthew 5, verse 20, Jesus says, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That man thought he had it all down. I’m following all the laws. I have it down. And technically, we have no reason to think that the money he had, that he was in any direct, easily definable, measurable sense, sinning. He may have gotten it all legitimately. He may have followed every single law. He may have given all the alms that society could ever expect of him with it. The problem is something that Jesus could see, because Jesus knows his heart and my heart and your heart, and that was that he could see what that man was doing, that he thought that’s where his source of righteousness was. That was his ticket to the kingdom.
For the Pharisees, it was purely focused really on how much people thought they were righteous, and they thought that was what was going to get them in. And the disciples sometimes scratched their head as Jesus confronted the Pharisees, too, because they’re thinking, Jesus, do you understand? These guys are the cream of the crop. It’s like going on a major league baseball team and clearing out everyone and going and bringing your church softball club and saying, we’re going to make the Cardinals win this year. Don’t you understand, Jesus, what you’re doing? Jesus says to them, yes, I know exactly what I’m doing.
Because here’s the thing, you can’t be righteous enough, and you can’t have enough money. You can’t have enough power and authority. You can’t have enough of any of those things to ever get even halfway into the kingdom of heaven. Quarter of the way. Eighth of the way. But there’s something else. What’s impossible is made possible with God, and that’s what Jesus wants them to understand, that I’m telling you, disciples, yes, it’s impossible. If you’re trying to get into the kingdom of heaven, if you think that somehow you’re going to solve this problem, you’ve already lost the battle. There’s no way you’re going to do it. But with God, what is impossible becomes possible.
God’s been working that from the very foundations of time. We see that in Romans 8. I encourage you to go start, well, read the whole chapter. It’s such a beautiful chapter in general, but if you have just a moment, go to Romans 8, 28, read to the end of the chapter, and it will remind you of exactly why what is impossible in my strength and your strength is possible in God’s strength, that God, before he even created the world, knew you and intended good for you. And there is the source of strength. There is the source of hope. It’s not in how many stores you have in your video rental chain. That’s going to fade. It’s in God.
I like what Neil Richardson says. He says, God is not only more demanding than people care to think, but also more generous than they dared to hope. And those two are what Jesus, those two sides are what Jesus is bringing to the disciples and to the rich young ruler and to us. Because our first step is to think that God isn’t really as demanding as he is. He doesn’t demand total and complete allegiance. He doesn’t say, whatever it is that you think is going to get you into heaven that isn’t me. No. Don’t even think about it. But he also takes us from that point where the disciples then land, which is, woe to us, because they can’t. Pharisees, really, really rich people, they can’t get into heaven and we’re doomed. And he says, no, you’re not doomed. You just need to understand where your strength is. It’s not in those things.
Do you ever go into a store to shop for something? Go into the grocery store maybe and they’ve had a power outage. All the registers are down and they have to go back to that archaic setup where you take these pieces of paper out of your pocket, they’re green, and you have to hand them to them to buy something. I remember the last time that happened to me at the store. I went in there and because I love everything electronic, I prefer to pay electronically. I go into the store and they say the register’s down and I have stuff in the cart and you pull up to the cash register. And I have the strength to buy this, right? Because I have my card here. I also have my phone with Apple Pay. I have two different ways to pay here. Walk up, register’s down. We’re going to have to take cash. Well, I have these two ways to pay. They don’t do me any good though, right? If you’ve had that experience, or maybe you do have cash but not enough because you weren’t planning to use that to make that purchase, suddenly you go from feeling, I’m strong enough to do this. I have everything under control to, I guess I’ll go put everything back. Or can I put the cart over here? I’ll be back in a bit.
The disciples were watching people. They said, they have those credit cards that don’t have any credit limit on them. They’re like the full-fledged premier American Express. And the rich running ruler says, here Jesus, I can pay whatever I need to. I have good credit. And Jesus says, you’re going to have to give unlimited cash to me. Do we understand that no matter what we think we have that gives us the strength to accomplish what we want, to get to the end goal that we want, that we don’t have enough. We don’t have the right type of way to pay. To understand how impossible it is to get into the kingdom of heaven is crucial. Not so that we become depressed, but like the disciples, we can start to wrestle with what Jesus has done for us and understand what truly is possible through God. We don’t understand how indebted we are. If we don’t understand that whatever that thing is that we’re not willing to give up right now, it’s the thing between us and God. And that no matter how important it makes us feel, no matter how much it feels like it’s giving us value, that doesn’t do it. Until we say, Jesus, I know I can’t do it. Then we’re shut out of the kingdom of heaven. And even once we’re in the kingdom of heaven and we start to try to take those things back, we say, okay, Jesus, I said everything that I had I knew couldn’t get me there. I know I’m counting on you, but can I still hold on to this because it makes me feel important. It makes me feel like I have value.
That’s where Jesus says, well, let’s work on that because you can’t fully experience my freedom if you’re doing that. You can’t fully experience the blessing of being a follower of me if you’re doing that. And that’s not to say that we’re saved by how well we let go of everything either. What it’s saying is that even as we follow Jesus, we get in our own way and we end up missing out on the joy of following Jesus because we add stuff back in over and over again. And maybe for some of us it is how we think that we’re actually doing what is right. And so we say, look, I am a good Christian now unlike those other people. Or we do think, well, I am a Christian and I’m also an important business leader. So look, I actually can influence the culture unlike a lot of those people at church. I have value to the kingdom.
Whenever we start to find those places where we’re thinking, this is what I add into the equation, those are the places that Jesus is confronting us tonight to say, I want to let go of those. Again, to be clear, he’s not calling every one of us to take a vow of poverty. He might be calling someone to take a vow of poverty. He’s not calling all of us to quit any place of influence in society. But he might be calling someone to let go of that place of influence. It’s going to be different for each and every one of us. We just need to be willing to hear.
When we understand that, when we understand that we’re so indebted that nothing that we can bring is going to do us any good and nothing that we add after salvation is going to somehow make us a better member of the kingdom. Once we understand that and we start to understand the pros of what Jesus is doing and the cons of what we’re holding on to, we start to realize that it’s like when you go and you were counting on paying with your credit card or your phone or whatever and they say you only have cash and you go out. I’ve done this before too when that’s happened. You go out to the car and you start kind of feeling through the cupholder trying to see there’s some coins tossed down there and they’re kind of sticky from the drink condensation. So you think, okay, let’s see, here’s a dime, here’s a nickel. I’m never going to get there. And everything we bring is even less valuable than those coins.
It takes us knowing that debt and then he says, now let me give you what is truly a value. You’ve been holding on to those sticky worthless coins. Let me give you something of true value. As long as we’re holding on to those mixed up values, we don’t even see it. That’s why we need to let go of that. When we let go of the things that we’re putting false value in, then we can start to understand and start to see the truly valuable that God presents to us. And we see that starting in verse 28. Peter said, see, we left our homes and followed you. And he, Jesus, said to them, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life.
Peter’s doing actually the same thing that the rich young ruler is doing, even though it seems like he’s doing the opposite. Because know what he does there. Know what he does. Peter says, okay, well, okay, if the rich can’t get in, okay, I’m starting to catch on to this, Jesus. I’m not rich. I’ve given up everything. Look at us. We walked away from everything we had, Jesus. You ever do that to God? God, look at what I’ve given up. I had this opportunity and I think you’re calling me something else. So now God, look, I’ve done this. See what Peter’s doing there that’s exactly the same? Because he’s saying, I’ve still done something. I’m still bringing something. There’s value here that I’m carrying.
Jesus doesn’t say, Peter, you unrepentant heathen, get away from me. I want nothing to do with you. No, I mean, Peter is sincere. He really has been following Jesus. He just doesn’t fully get it. And that is where I think with him, we see very clearly a picture that we often find ourselves in in the Christian life. We’re right there kind of following Jesus and also trying to hold on to this other thing that we think is going to provide some value. And Jesus wants us to think, whatever it is that I’ve given up, whatever it is that you’ve given up for the kingdom, understand that what he intends is what’s truly of value. And nothing that you give up is, it’s just that sticky change in the cup holder compared to what God has in mind.
Now, this is not a promise that you’re going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise in this life, or even one of the three. God may choose to provide blessing. Sometimes God does actually bless us. We should, I mean, if God gives us material blessing, we should thank him and praise him for it and give him the glory for it and not ourselves, and that’s a wonderful thing. And we should be asking God, why have you placed this in my life? What do you want me to use it for? But may we not be thinking in terms of, okay, now I’m going to give everything up. I’m going to lay down the things I wanted to hold on before God, and when I do, the God slot machine is going to just overflow for me. Because we’re not really trusting in God, we’re trusting in the material stuff we think God’s going to give us in exchange. We’re not trusting in God, we’re trusting in how he’s going to give us health or give us wisdom in exchange.
And what is God saying? God’s saying, don’t trust anything material, anything earthly, trust in me. Weigh the actual pros and cons. The actual pro is so clearly above the cons, it’s not even, it seems almost absurd. It is absurd to even think about it, because the pro is eternal life in the presence of the Creator who loves me and calls me his son or his daughter. The con is eternal separation from God. In light of that, the things that we normally think, I know God’s calling me to faithfulness in this, but I don’t know if I want to give it up. I mean, we know it’s absurd, and yet our hearts still say, no, it’s not.
The project I was working on this week, as of course all of you know, we have a pretty advanced internet presence here at Little Hills Church. Our church is very internet forward, and that takes time and resources. It costs money to operate, and one thing I was working on this week, I happened to run into a sale from the internet provider we use, and if I switched over the server that we host all of our information on, I could make it more cost-effective. Substantially so, and it would allow us then to expand into the future. I thought, well, that’s a pretty good pro. Then I saw the con, though. I’m going to have to switch everything over. That’s a lot of work. I don’t know if I want to do that. I went back and forth and back and forth. Do I? Do I? Don’t I? Do I? Don’t I?
Have you ever been in that situation where there’s something that seems like it’s great, but it’s just so much work to do, and you’re not sure you want to do it? I don’t know if that’s really a pro. Sometimes we decide it is, sometimes we decide it isn’t. Sometimes that’s the way it is with following God. We get to that point, we say, wow, eternal life in the presence of the Creator, everything made right and no longer broken, and it sounds really good, but I don’t know, God. I’m really busy, and this sounds really hard. I don’t know. Now, and many things in this life where we ask that question, it really is a set of pros and cons, and we have to weigh what really makes the most sense in the moment. Sometimes it’s our time, sometimes it’s our money, sometimes it’s some combination thereof or something else, but when we think about that equation with God, when we think about that table of pros and cons with God, there is no comparison.
We go right back to it. Think about Lot’s wife in Genesis 19, verse 26. They’re escaping Sodom and Gomorrah. The towns have committed so much immorality. God said that he’s going to destroy them, and he’s called, he sent an angel to rescue those who are even marginally faithful out. And as they’re fleeing, it says, but Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. One translation says she looked longingly. I think that’s a really nice way to capture what she’s doing there. Here’s the problem. It’s not, I think sometimes we make it too simple. Oh, she accidentally, she got a crick in her neck, she looked back, and the next thing you know, God’s destroyed her. No, it’s not that. She looks back and says, I don’t know, God, that you rescuing me out of this evil, wicked place is really such a good deal because I was comfortable there. It was my home.
And yes, you’re offering me salvation. You’re offering me, you’ve sent your angels to escort me out. I mean, who gets an angel moving service? They do. I’m not sure. I’m not sure the pros outweigh the cons. How often do we look longingly back at the very things God’s even rescuing us from and say, but God, I don’t know. Do we understand the pros and the cons? Sometimes it’s not clear to us in the moment. That’s why we need to ask and pray.
I have a little candle here. It looks like a sack of money. My grandparents came in from Indiana one time years ago, and my grandmother had this little candle for me. And the thing is, it’s a money bag candle, and apparently, as you can see, I have not burned, but it says your sack of cash will bring you good fortune. A one, two, five, twenty, or even fifty dollar bill awaits discovery as the candle burns. As you watch the flame in anticipation, allow the spirit of the Old West to ignite in you and relive the experience of the gold rush. I remember she was really excited. She thought she was gonna give it to me, and I was immediately gonna get out a match. I was gonna light this thing on fire and see what bill was inside of it. And I said, this is such a neat money bag. This candle, look at the sparkles. It’s really good. I mean, isn’t it neat? It looks so real with the burlap and so on. I said, well, I don’t know if I really want to burn it.
Well, but there could be a $50 bill in there, but then I won’t have this candle you’ve given me. I don’t know if I want to burn it. Obviously, I didn’t burn it. And I thought about this little guy this week, and I thought, that probably seemed like a foolish trade in the moment. I was probably, what, eight, ten years old, something like that. And for those of you that are younger now, let me tell you, if you rewind, say, 30 or so years, $50 is a nice amount of money right now. Would anyone like a $50 bill right now? Yeah. It was, if you’d like it now, yeah, I’ll take one now too, sure. If you like one now, it was worth way more then. You could probably basically, I think, double it or so. Maybe even triple it. It was worth a lot more.
And so here was, perhaps, say, $150 in here at the time, equivalent. But you know what? If I’d gotten that $150 equivalent, if I’d taken that and I’d bought all the things you could imagine buying with $150 today, if I’d bought all that, I bet I wouldn’t be using any of the stuff that I’d bought then, still today. And if I had set it aside for something in the future and I just never even remembered to spend it, you know what? I probably wouldn’t even remember which $50 bill had come out of here. Even if I tucked it away, it would have gotten mixed in with other money and money comes and goes. You buy things, you need things, whatever, right? I wouldn’t have any clue what this candle had provided. If I saw this candle and I look at it and I remember the story of this candle and everything behind it, and still as a candle, I’m glad I still have it. It seemed like a really foolish trade. But for me, I’m glad I didn’t make the trade.
And a lot of times when we’re being called to follow our God in something, we say, there’s a $50 bill in here and I’d really like it. There’s a $50 bill in here, I want to burn it. It’s okay if I lose some of the trimmings of God’s kingdom because there’s something so valuable inside, and God’s saying, but hold on, there’s something more valuable. And for those of you that have something that a loved one’s given you that’s no longer with us, aren’t you glad you have that, even if in the moment you could have had some cash? If you could have had something that seemed more necessary in the moment, but you have that thing years later. Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you thankful?
Well, whatever we have now, whatever we think might be of more value, it won’t be of more value in the time to come. The rich young ruler said, but Jesus, there’s not just one $50 bill, there’s bags and bags of money in my treasury. I’m not giving that up for some trimmings and glitter of a candle of God’s kingdom. It might burn away. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with that.
Here’s what you need to do. You didn’t need to be better. This is not, this sermon is not calling us, well, just be stronger and more moral and then you’ll understand how to give up the right stuff. No, it’s not about that. It’s about understanding we can’t. It’s about saying, God, this is too high a cost for me. I need your strength because it’s not too high a cost with you helping me. Help me to recognize your promises. Help me to understand the value of your kingdom. Help me to understand the difference between the $1 bill or $2 bill or $50 bill in here and the thing that I will treasure going forward. Help me to understand that because with your kingdom, right now it looks like everything else is more valuable. Help me to understand.
Jesus tells Peter, Peter, something better is coming and it may feel like you’ve given up everything in this world, but no, you haven’t given up the things that are truly of value as you follow me. God wants us to give up the seemingly impossible things, to give up those things that we stake our lives on, but why does he want us to do that? It’s not because he wants us to suffer and it’s not because he doesn’t want to love us as his children. He wants us to do it so we can experience the impossibly better that’s only possible through him. And may we experience that today. Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, we come before you as those who struggle to give things up. We know what seems to be a value, we know what it is that we want to hold on to, and we say, Lord, you surely don’t want me to give this up. But God, we know that you do. Would you help us to see those things that we idolize, those things that we trust in, that are in our power, and not to think that somehow we can will the strength to give them up, but that we would come to you and say, God, take those things that I depend on and give me the strength through your spirit to give them up, to walk away from them. Help me, Lord, to see what is truly a value, that I can experience the joy of truly being in your presence and depending on you and you alone. Would we ask this in the precious name of your Son, our Savior, Jesus.
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