Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Josh.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm Gabriel.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today we are studying the event. The rich young man. This is found in Matthew, chapter 19, and goes from 16 to 30. It is also found in mark, chapter ten, verses 17 through 31. And Luke, chapter 18, verse 18 through 30. Follow along with us in the Gospel of Matthew as we read this, beginning in chapter, chapter 19, verse 16.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: And behold, a man came to Jesus saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?
And Jesus said to him, why do.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: You ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: And he said to him, which ones?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: And Jesus said, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: The young man said to him, all this I have kept.
What do I still lack? And Jesus said to him, if you.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful. For he had great possessions.
And Jesus said to his disciples, truly.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, 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.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: With man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Then Peter said in reply, see, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have? And Jesus said to them, truly, I.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Say to you, in the new world. When the son of man will sit on his glorious throne. You who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones. Judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left house or brother or sister or father or mother or children or lands for my name's sake. Will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.
So this story here is a very known story in the Bible. Where this young man, he seems to be doing pretty well in his life. Has come to Jesus. And he's wanting to know what more he can do to get eternal life.
Jesus answers his question.
Here's what needs to be done to be saved. But later he says, it's impossible.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: The way I see it is a man who was keeping the Ten Commandments. According to the way he was raised, he was educated, based on the other gospels. It seems that he was one of the leaders of the people of Israel, a member of that large religious body called Sanhedrin.
And he realized that he still needed something else, needed more. What do I still lack?
And Jesus said, if you want to be perfect, and by the way, perfection here is not sinlessness. It is mature, complete completeness.
If you want to be complete, if you want to get what you are missing, beyond keeping the Ten Commandments, you need a relationship.
Come and follow me. Stay close to me, as Jesus said in other places, and learn from me because I am humble and meek. Learn from my character, and also learn the skills of winning other people for God.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Life would be easier if we had a checklist.
I love when Friday is a preparation day. It's a day we clean the house and get ready for the Sabbath, get it ready for time with God. And I love when my wife has a list on the table of everything she wants done before Sabbath comes. She's got a list for my kids and a list for me. And I can go down, check off the list, and I know that when I'm finished, finish with the list. My wife is happy.
And we want this for God. We want this list where we can go down, check off the list. And when we're done with the list, God is happy.
And this is what this rich young ruler is trying to do, is make sure he's checked everything off the list. But it's not a list.
God doesn't want a list. God wants relationship.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And two way mature relationship.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And go sell all you have and follow me and you'll find treasure in heaven.
This, you know, he turns away and Jesus talks about, it's easier for a rich person, or it's difficult for a rich person to enter into heaven. This section here, you know, in the world we live in, we might say, well, I'm not rich. I'm not Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or any Bill Gates or any of those people. I'm not rich. So it's easy for me. But richness can come in other forms, can't it?
[00:06:37] Speaker B: This is not about material possessions. It is about everything that ties us to this world. It can be a gadget, it can be a car, it can be, you know, desire for social status and recognition, investing everything in, achieving a highly recognizable title in your profession and so on.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So this, this richness is anything that keeps us from this relationship with God and with our neighbors, right? Any, anything that would hold us back the other way we could think of it is anything we'd have a hard time going to heaven without.
You know, when we go to heaven, we have the U haul truck show up at our house and we load our belongings and we head up to heaven. Or you think of the pharaohs of old. They get buried with everything they want to take to the afterlife in miniature form. It's supposed to get big afterwards. And we think about this up in heaven. What could we not live with?
I know someone who had told me, I don't want to go to heaven if there's country music in heaven. Like, I am not interested in being in heaven if there's country music in heaven.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Someone told me I didn't want to go to heaven if there is work in heaven. I'm tired of working.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: And so these are the things that are keeping us. What is it that we need to do if we're in this place? Like this rich young man, let's say we were this rich young man, we've come to Jesus, we've asked, we've gone through this, and he says, if you would to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, then come follow me.
What should we do?
[00:08:26] Speaker B: The invitation is come follow me. It is the same invitation Matthew received and Peter and Andrew and other disciples.
So technically, Jesus Christ invites the rich man to be one of his disciples.
And if I were Jesus Christ, and I saw this very educated, successful young man with a very good heart, because another gospel says that Jesus looked at him and loved him, loved to have him in his team, loved to him that this rich man, as a catalyst of other disciples and other groups of twelve disciples, Jesus Christ loved him, but he decided not to follow Jesus Christ.
And that is the main point of this story.
It is possible to come to Christ but not follow him because this man came to the right person at the right time to ask the right question, but he made the wrong decision not to follow Jesus Christ.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah, and I hit this at the beginning, but Jesus, you know, the disciples see, all this says who can be saved? If this is the bar that's being set, who can be saved?
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Because salvation was based on that checklist, as I mentioned before.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's where Jesus comes up with the. With man, it's impossible. With man, we cannot meet the requirements. We can't do it.
And this is the point. So this rich young ruler was looking for the checklist. God gave him the checklist.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: What I can do.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah, but we can't do it before this Jesus had preached a sermon on relationship with God and everything, and so this man was coming for extra. We don't know what the details that led up to this or what knowledge he had, but with man, this is impossible. And that rings true today. That rings true to you, to me, to anyone listening that with man, salvation is impossible.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: It's a gift from God, and it is a gift that is offered 100% by God.
By following Jesus Christ, he would not have bought salvation. Right.
By following Jesus Christ, he would have had that opportunity to know Christ, to learn from him, to resemble his character, and day by day, to prepare to live with God for eternity.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And to desire to be with him, make that his heart's desire.
You know, as we read through this, what can we take home? What can we do?
[00:11:25] Speaker B: So let's summarize what we touched so far.
Salvation is God's gift, 100%, or the work of salvation is not a checklist.
Salvation is somehow related to following Christ.
And let me put it in the big picture here. God could have entrusted the work of sharing the gospel to the holy angels.
They would have done it easier without that much training, without errors. Perfectly. But God decided to involve us as messengers of his good news, to share the gospel around the world for our own benefit.
By doing this, we disconnect from this world, by getting involved in other people's lives, we trim our own selfishness little by little, and we look to other people's interests. So by doing this, we grow spiritually.
We stay away from apostasy. Right. That means falling away from our faith.
We continue to grow our first love and into a mature love for God.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
And the good news is, as we do, that we find better treasure, we find better anything you have that you think when I'm with God, life will be worse?
That's false. You know, when. When we worth God, life is going to be better. We might not have the same thing, but it will be better. He'll give us something else, something new. And I can look back in my life at everything that I had before I was a Christian to now.
And there's nothing that I regret, there's nothing that I'd rather go back and have than what I have now.
This is what Christ gives us when we're in a relationship. He gives us the best, and our focus can be on getting to know him.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Let's pray.
Father, it is so easy to hold on to what we have for fear of not knowing the future because we love it or for many other reasons.
And I pray that you will help us to surrender those things.
It doesn't mean we need to walk away and not have them, but to be willing to put you first.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: I pray, Father, that we will focus on relationship and get away from the checklists and look at learning to dwell with you and be in your presence.
And I pray that you will do that thing that you promised, that you will create in us a clean heart and help us to desire to do the good things. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
