The Bible is full of instruction about wealth and riches and it often warns about the special power they seem to have to turn us into idolators. Jesus speaks of it in his important Sermon on the Mount:
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, ... 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ... 24 ... You cannot serve God and money.
The story of the rich young ruler is a real-life parable of this truth. Here is a young man who is conscious of the fact that he lacks something in his heart; that somehow, even though he's been trying to be righteous, yet he knows he still has a spiritual need and that he is not assured of having eternal life. And he feels this need so sharply, that he throws aside all social restraints of his class and religious standing, and falls down before Jesus, this man that all his peers disdain. And he does so, somehow knowing that Jesus - who obviously is not a servant of the devil but a good man - somehow he will have the answer.
And he was right, wasn't he. The ruler came to just the right place, the feet of Jesus, who is himself the source of eternal life. And he is given all hope of having what he lacks, for Jesus invites him to follow him; Jesus is willing to receive him. But what happens? Jesus knows that the man's wealth has an idolatrous grip on his heart. The young man is going to have to get rid of this idol if he is to follow him. So Jesus confronts the young man about this idol. How? He picks up on the cue that the young man thinks he needs to do something else beside what he has already done. How true that was! The young man thought he had been keeping the ten commandments, but Jesus puts his finger on how the young man was actually breaking the commands about idolatry and covetousness. He did it by telling him to sell all he has and give the proceeds to the poor. The young man couldn't do that. He loved his wealth too much. This was the one thing he needed to do, but he couldn't. He thus walked away from the answer to his quest, subject to the idol in his heart.
This visit by the rich young ruler set up an interesting scenario for the instruction of the twelve about the nature of the discipleship that they had begun. First of all, they are reminded that a disciple cannot serve God and money. Jesus has again confronted someone about forsaking their wealth to be a disciple. He has done so because we cannot follow Jesus and the idols in our hearts - whatever they may be.
But this incident has left the disciples confused, and Jesus knows it. He knows what they are thinking. After the young man walks away, Jesus stands there and just looks at the twelve for a minute, probably giving them a moment to digest what has just happened. He knows that they think that material wealth is always an evidence of God's favour on a person - just like Job's comforters did. You'll recall, that Job's comforters could not understand how Job could be righteous and have his wealth taken away from him at the same time. To them, prosperity was a sign of righteousness. But Jesus knows that the two don't always go together, and so he flat out tells them, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And he has to tell them twice, because they are so amazed at this. They can't help but thinking that, if anybody was going to have eternal life it would be this young fellow, and so they can't help but ask, "Well, then who can be saved?"
Jesus' answer to their confusion is to point them to the grace of God. They have asked a universal question, "How can anybody at all be saved if someone like this young man cannot be?" Jesus gives a universal answer, "When it comes to anybody being saved, it's an act of Almighty God. Since nothing is impossible with God, he can save anybody - poor or wealthy or in any possible condition."
Thus Jesus here brings home an important lesson for the disciples: if they are his followers, it is because Almighty God has had mercy on them and done for them what it was impossible for them to do for themselves; God gave them the gift of repentance from their idols. They had left behind their worldly occupations and goods to follow Jesus, not because they had some innate moral strength in themselves, but because God had graciously worked in their hearts to love Jesus more than the things of this world. God had done for them what Paul says God does for every disciple of Christ: "For by grace are you saved, through faith, and even that faith is not from you, but it is the gift of God, lest anyone should boast that they had saved themselves" (Eph. 2).
That, by the way, was another problem with the young ruler: he thought he was saving himself by keeping God's law - he just needed to keep something else, to do one more thing, and he would be fine. Jesus gave him a situation to make him realize that he needed more than a greater effort at being good; he needed God's mercy to deliver him from his idolatry.
But having responded to the disciples' confusion with an affirmation of God's grace toward them, Peter - being Peter - blurted out the next thing that came to his mind: “See, we have left everything and followed you.” In other words, "Well, we have not failed like that young ruler failed; we have left all and followed you." What was going on in Peter's heart, we do not know. It's more than likely that a lot of things were going on in his heart. But it doesn't seem that Peter's statement was without merit, as if he was being purely mercenary. It's likely Peter is speaking before he's taken enough time to digest what has just happened and what Jesus had said. And Jesus' answer does not seem to be a rebuke, but seems to be more of an effort to further ground Peter's faith and to encourage him. Instead of a rebuke, he gives Peter a remarkable promise - a universal promise for all his disciples. He tells them that God's reward for whatever they may give up to follow him will exceedingly surpass anything they have left behind.
This is a very comforting promise to all followers of Jesus. There is reward for turning away from all our idols to serve him, not only in the world to come, but in this life as well. Even the mention of persecution was a promise of blessing, because Jesus had said in the Beatitudes that persecution was a blessing.
This promise has certainly come true for me. When I began to follow the Lord as a senior in highschool, I lost the respect of some people and I lost some of my closest friends. Even greater costs came as time went by. But I soon had many, many more friends - even people who were like family to me. And today, I look back, and I have a multitude of loving brothers and sisters, not only here in the States, but in other countries as well - and some are already in heaven, too. You can probably say the same.
This past week, I was told by a member at First Pres, that he knows a dear, Christian lady, in one of the lesser tribes of Brazil, who is in a coma. But she is surrounded by friends and family who care for her. But there are also other Christian friends in the greater country of Brazil that pray for her. And, beside that, there are people in the United States praying for her. And her friends beside her will take calls from people on their phones and let them talk to her while she lies on her bed. Isn't that beautiful? This poor elderly lady, is loved and befriended by people she has not only known, but by believers she has never met and never could meet in this life.
Friends, may I quote from a Baptist commentator? He writes: "A Christian is a man who follows Christ and obeys Christ and gives Himself to Christ for love's sake. But Christ never calls a man to an unreasonable service. The life Christ calls a man to, is the best life and the highest life, the rich life. And that is what the Christian doctrine of rewards amounts to; it is the assertion of the supreme reasonableness of the Christian life." (J. D. Jones, x. 28-31, p. 310.)
Think of it: using your earthly wealth to lay up eternal treasure in heaven is a reasonable thing to do, isn't it. To forsake all possessions and relationships that keep you from heaven so you can gain many more possessions and relationships - with persecution in this life but glory to come - makes sense as well, doesn't it? Peter did not need to worry about what was going to happen to them for following Jesus.
So can we sum up the three lessons for the disciples here?
1) Beware of riches - they can become idols;
2) Remember that you are saved by an almighty God of grace; and
3) Jesus is no man's debtor; he wants to bless us more than we can imagine.
I close with famous words by C. S. Lewis from his book, Mere Christianity:
"Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
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