Jesus can answer all of your questions.
Imagine being able to ask Jesus any question you wanted. What would you ask? If you are a parent you might ask, "How doI raise my teenager? " If you are worried you might ask, "What will happen? Will my test results be positive or negative? Will I have enough money to pay my bills? Will I get the job? Will the Cubs ever win the World Series? Will there be Cardinal fans in heaven? " The atheist might ask, "How can I really be sure that God exists?" Jesus could reply, "Just pinch me. I'm real."
During Jesus' earthly ministry there was this stretch of several days when different people paraded their questions before Jesus. Jesus was asked how many times a person should be forgiven. See Matthew 19:21-35) He was asked about paying taxes. (See Matthew 17:24-27) He was asked about divorce and remarriage. (See Matthew 19:1-12) Jesus had just finished answering the touchy question about divorce when a young, attractive bachelor approached him with a burning question. We know he was a bachelor because the Bible says he had great wealth. If he were married or had children that obviously wouldn't be true.
The rich young bachelor asked what he had to do to get eternal life. (See Matthew 19:16-30) This guy kind of reminds you of that kid you always wanted to beat up after Sunday school. You know, the one who always had the right questions and answers, and who arrogantly asserted his knowledge and generally sucked up to the teacher. "Hey Jesus, here's a softball for you. What good thing must I do to get eternal life? "
The wealthy young man virtually mouthed Jesus' response. "There is only one who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments." Of course the wealthy young man wasn't satisfied. He wanted to show off a little. So he asks Jesus a quick follow-up question. "Which ones? Which commandments?" Again, he virtually mouths the words to Jesus' response. "Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself."
But this guy doesn't know when to button it. So he takes a third shot at Jesus. "All of these I have kept", he boasts. "What do I still lack?" He no more than finishes his sentence when Jesus says, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
The Bible says that the young man went away sad because he had great wealth. And then it records Jesus' commentary. "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to 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 man to enter the kingdom of God." A few verses later Jesus affirms that despite this fact, all things are possible with God. God can do miracles. God can squeeze camels thru the eye of needles.
Who, me? Rich? Yeah, right!
Very few if any of us would see much relevance between this story and our lives. First, none of us think of ourselves as being rich or wealthy. There is always someone else we think of when we talk about the rich. This summer I bought a used boat for fishing. It is a nice used boat, nothing fancy. Most of the time I have to nurse the temperamental motor to get it started. Every once in a while I have to pull out jumper cables to jumpstart it!
You can imagine me sitting there in my dirty fishing gear trying to jumpstart my beleaguered boat as some guy next to me is backing his slick, twenty-five foot long, jet-propelled cabin cruiser into the water. They always give me funny looks as they roar out into the water. They are the rich, whereas we see ourselves as the less-well-to-do in life. They're from the prestigious neighborhood. We are not. They have a Hummer, but we have a lemon. They have the big house, but we have a shack. They have the toys and time to use them. We're lucky to meet our bills at the end of month.
I don't know many people who would characterize themselves as rich, do you? And yet by any standard of measurement, every person in this room is rich. If you earn more than six hundred dollars a year you are wealthy by the world's standard. Half of the world's population doesn't even make six hundred dollars a year. You have more money sitting at home in your penny jar than many people around the world would have if they were to completely liquidate their assets. If you spend one dollar on coffee and a doughnut each morning, you are spending more than twice the annual income of one third of the world's population. Who are the rich? We are!
William Boyce, minister of First Christian Church, had this to say about the rich young man. "If the wealthy young man was rich, what am I? He never owned a car, a television, a VCR, a telephone, a computer, air conditioning, a washer or dryer, microwave, or dozens of other things that we take for granted."
What? Sell my possessions?
The other reason we distance ourselves from this story is because we cannot imagine any possible reason Jesus would ask us to sell all of our possessions. Come on! Have you ever heard this passage preached before? I have. More effort is made to distance ourselves from and soften the edge of Jesus' words than to understand and personally apply them to our lives.
We reason this passage into irrelevance. We surmise that maybe this wealthy young man had a psychotic attachment to his possessions. We think that maybe he wasted his wealth on jewelry, mansions, art, fine wine, and excess. We reason that there was something uniquely wrong with him that only Jesus could see. That there was something different in his heart that couldn't possibly reside in ours.
Why can't we just be honest and admit the possibility that we are more like the wealthy young man than we'll ever know? Had we been in that young man's shoes, Jesus might have given us the exact same prescription for spiritual progress.
I mean, could it be true that our possessions somehow stand in the way of deeper devotion to Jesus Christ? Could it be true that we are more consumed with getting more, and less concerned with getting God? That our obsession with possessions has rendered us spiritually incapacitated and unable to experience the deeper life that God has in store for us? That our zeal to acquire more is destroying us?
A few years ago I came across Richard Foster's book Freedom of Simplicity on a clearance table. It's one of the most challenging books I've ever read! I like the book because Foster doesn't pull any punches. He courageously invites us to reflect on the imbalances in our lives and in culture at large. Here's what he says about us.
"We tie ourselves up with extraordinary amounts of debt. We run up credit cards. We take out bank loan after bank loan. We mortgage our homes and our future. We take on multiple jobs, working ten to twelve hour days, sponging up every once of overtime that we can, skipping Sunday worship and communion in order to earn that extra cash. We uproot and transplant our families as we pursue job offer after job offer. We hire out our parenting responsibilities to total strangers. We take enormous risks in the stock market, day trading, looking for easy, get-rich-quick solutions, and we gamble our wealth away on the lottery. We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not even like. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. We're made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. We define people by how much they can produce or by what they can earn. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposely becomes rich, rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. We grasp and grab and never have enough. We are always behind, never ahead. We trapped in a maze of attachments, craving things we neither need nor enjoy."
"Things" do not equate contentment.
We thought that a better life could be found in all these things, but we are left with an inexpressible discontentment. Foster says it well. "It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick."
All of this explains why Jesus' prescription for the wealthy young man was so radical. Spiritually speaking, the wealthy young man was terminally sick. He was so busied by and consumed with the things of the world that he had no room left in his life for the eternal or for God. He went away sad, but he was already sad.
He didn't understand Jesus' words in Luke 12:15 (NIV). "Then he said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.' " We are every bit as rich as the wealthy young man, and we are every bit as prone to materialism as the wealthy young man. Somehow, by the grace of God we need to make sure we don't end up like the wealthy young man. Before it is too late we need to discover that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions.
This morning I would like us to briefly consider Hebrews 13:5 (NIV) which reads, "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.' "
There is no freedom in loving money.
A couple of points are in order. First, there isn't any freedom in loving money. When a person becomes obsessed with money it squeezes the life out of everything. First, it squeezes the life out of your relationship with God. Think about all the people whose love for money has eroded their passion for Christ. Everyone thinks that he is going to be the exception, but few ever are.
In Matthew 6:24 (NIV) Jesus says, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
Second, the love of money squeezes the life out of our relationships with one another. Think about all the marriages that have ended in divorce, or families that have become divided over the distribution of an estate, or business partnerships that were destroyed because someone's love for money grew out of control. Think about all the big news stories right now. Enron. Martha Stewart. Laci Peterson murder. The love of money is the initiating factor in all of these disasters.
In 1 Timothy 6:9-10 (NIV) Paul warns, "People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."
Third, the love of money squeezes the life and enjoyment out of things. We can get so caught up in sowing and reaping and accumulating and hoarding wealth that we never get around to enjoying the simple pleasures of life. You see it all the time. People work their entire lives, living just beyond their means. When retirement rolls around they have to keep working in order to sustain their lifestyle. And by then, their health is deteriorating.
In Luke 12:16-21 (NIV)Jesus tells a parable about a certain farmer. "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. 'Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? 'This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."
As you can see, there is no freedom in loving money. Those who love money will suffer in their relationship with God and with other people. They will always be wanting more out of life, but will never find time to slow down and smell roses. Instead they will be filled with stress and worry. They will anxiously wait for the fifteenth and thirtieth of every month. Like the wealthy young man, they forever be walking away sad.
There is contentment in loving Jesus Christ.
There is contentment in loving Jesus Christ. In Hebrews 13:5 (NIV) we find the secret to contentment. "...be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you' " In 1 Timothy 6:6-8 (NIV) Paul makes a similar statement. "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."
And let's not forget about Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:25-34 (NIV). "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"
"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Emphasis added)
So long as we are infatuated with money, we will be running. We will be chasing every mirage and shadow. Our lives will be filled with worry, discontentment, uncertainty, fear, stress, and questions.
The day we begin seeking God first and above all else, the day we start loving God, is the day we stop running. It's the day when all these things will be given to us. The key to contentment is in what we seek first. The wealthy young man wasn't interested in following Jesus, so he went away sad.
How will you leave this morning?