Harvest Pointe Methodist Church
Join us for our Sunday sermons.
Harvest Pointe Methodist Church
Sons of Thunder
Gospel according to Mark, chapter ten. The Gospel according to Mark, chapter ten.
00:00:10
We've been in this chapter, and here we find ourselves again with a very powerful story this morning. Notice these words found in Mark, chapter ten. And if you would stand with me once you've found that for the gospel reading this morning. Mark, chapter ten. And we're going to start reading with verse 17.
00:00:31
Notice these words. This is the word of God. As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
00:00:57
You know the commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.
00:01:06
You shall not defraud. Honor your father and mother. And he said to him, teacher, I have kept all these since my youth. Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, you lack one thing. Go sell what you own and give the money to the poor.
00:01:30
And you will have treasure in heaven. Then come. Follow me. When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
00:01:55
The disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. They were greatly astounded and said to one another, then who can be saved?
00:02:18
Jesus looked at them and said, for mortals it is impossible, but not for God. For God, all things are possible. Peter began to say to him, look, we have left everything and followed you. Jesus said, truly, I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news. Who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age, houses brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions and in the age to come, eternal life.
00:03:10
But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. Jesus, we thank you for your holy word to us. And we pray that you would send your spirit this morning to us in this room, in this place of worship, as your people, as your children, to teach us, to call us, to make us born again, to fill us with your spirit. We pray in your most holy name. Amen.
00:03:40
And you can be seated.
00:03:47
What do you want. This was asked of Solomon, wasn't it? Do you remember? God comes to Solomon and says to him, what do you want? Name it and I'll give it to you.
00:04:03
And of course, you remember what Solomon asked for. It was wisdom, wasn't it? It was wisdom. And wisdom's a little different than just knowledge. You know, knowledge would tell us that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom tells us that a tomato doesn't go in fruit salad, right?
00:04:26
That's how this works. You know, wisdom is doing something with the knowledge that we have. And this is why we sometimes will even joke around that the person may be really smart as far as knowledge goes, but kind of dumb as far as wisdom goes. They have no common sense. We might say, well, what do you want?
00:04:49
What if God, literally, I mean, really, just think about it for just a second. I know we probably have done this before, but just stop and think. Like, if Jesus were here, just as I am before you now, and he were to ask you, like, what do you want? What would it be? World peace, perhaps bigger bank account?
00:05:13
All the money in the world, all the pleasure in the world. What might that even look like? What do you want? In some way, this pericope, this morning, this passage of scripture here, found in not only Mark, but also Matthew and in Luke, the three synoptic gospels all record this encounter of what we call the rich young ruler. Not RTR, but r yr.
00:05:44
Okay? You know, roll tide, row. Not that, no, but rather rich young ruler. All right. Now, Mark doesn't really tell us that he's very rich, but Luke does.
00:06:00
And Luke also tells us that he's a ruler. So he has power socially, politically, we don't really know, but he's got power of some sort. And then Matthew tells us that he's young. Mark just says, this guy ran up, okay? And then he ends with, he had a lot of possessions.
00:06:17
We hear that when he leaves, right? He's got a lot of possessions. Well, we're not told he's very rich, but we are told elsewhere that he's actually very rich and he's young. So notice this combination, because I think if we actually just will look at this this morning, that we'll see these are the things we want, at least naturally want, at least pursue at some point in our life, being young. Who doesn't want that?
00:06:44
You know, especially those of us who have unfortunately gotten older, right? Where I think about, I actually like, I've never considered my hair that much. You know, just like, do it up and then that's it. But now I'm like, there's less to do up there. You know, it's finding itself in other places, you know, like my back, which is odd, and it's weird, you know, some personal information, but it's just true.
00:07:13
It's like, where's my hair going? Okay, and what's going on with it? We're turning gray, right? Like, I've never considered dyeing it, but, like, I've had that thought, and then I thought, well, everybody think I'm weird because, you know, I guess a 43 year old should have a little gray hair, maybe not as much as mine, right? We pursue youth.
00:07:32
If you don't believe that, just watch 30 minutes of tv, and you'll see some commercial that promises if you put on this deodorant, oh, youth will happen, right? You wash your hair with this kind of stuff, you're going to look young and fresh. You know, I've tried it, by the way. It doesn't work, that old spice stuff. No, I don't feel any fresher, really.
00:07:52
I'm still tired, you know? Listen, we pursue youth, don't we? This guy's got it. You see, we also pursue wealth. We pursue riches.
00:08:06
Who wouldn't in this room love to be able to leave this service and go to the Huntsville airport to get into your plane and fly wherever you wanted to go? That'd be pretty nice, wouldn't it? I mean, instead of having to drive like I had to this week, while I drove to Atlanta, and then I had to drive to Jackson, Mississippi. Those are two opposite directions on two different parts of the week. First part of the week is Atlanta.
00:08:29
Second part of the week, I was in Jackson, Mississippi. Listen, that was a lot of driving. I sat for a long time in my car. It would have been super nice if I could have just simply walked up into a private plane, had my pellegrino to drink in there. You know, as I'm flying across America, most of us would love to have that kind of riches.
00:08:51
That kind of wealth, right? This guy's got it, you see? And a lot of us would love to have power. In other words, when we walk into the room, people take notice. When we walk into the room, people applaud for us.
00:09:06
When we walk into the room. We're not just an average Joe. Well, guess what? This guy, the rich young ruler, he's got it. He's got it.
00:09:16
He's got the wealth. He's got the power. He's got the youth. And yet we find him unsatisfied we find him here. Seeking.
00:09:30
This is a good thing for us. This is a lesson for us to learn. All right? Now, most of us already have learned this lesson that riches just aren't going to do it in this life, okay? Most of us have learned that power isn't going to do it in this life, that we're going to keep seeking more, no matter how much power we get, no matter how much money we get.
00:09:51
And most of us have learned that we're not going to be able to retain our youth. It's just not going to happen. Well, here is a guy that is in a position that some of us are not in. Maybe most of us are not in. Kind of like Solomon, right?
00:10:10
Solomon, who's young when he becomes wise, who's young when he becomes super wealthy, who's young when he plays around with pleasure and beauty and so on and so forth. It's interesting, though, this man's approach to Jesus, even though he has all this stuff, he knows it's not enough. So he asks this question about eternal life. But notice the way he comes to the Lord because it tells us something about him. He's running, okay?
00:10:43
Just like in this world, rich people, powerful people, don't run. All right? You know, even world leaders, like, they don't run. Like, except for exercise. Don't get me wrong, okay, maybe they do that, but they don't run in public.
00:11:00
You don't do that. It's inappropriate. I mean, can you imagine, like, our. Our world leader, of course, they're all old. It seems like, you know, and can you imagine them running?
00:11:08
We'd all be worried, like, he's gonna fall, you know, and it's gonna be bad. You know, it's not gonna be turned out good for him. No, no. You know, imagine you're CEO of your company. You know, say one of these DoD companies around here, right?
00:11:20
Just name them. There's plenty of them to go around. And you see him in the hallway just running, you'd probably be like, what's going on? I didn't hear the alarm. 911 would be close behind.
00:11:31
Right? Because shouldn't be running, right? And this is why. When in the story of the prodigal son, when the father runs, it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
00:11:40
Jewish people, particularly men, did not run in public with their robe on. It was inappropriate. There was a way to do it, but not with your robe on. So it's like being in a full suit like I was yesterday and running, you know, something's wrong? Because if I was gonna go running, I'd put on shorts and a t shirt, not a tie.
00:12:01
What's going on here? Well, this guy is serious about his question. It's a burning question for him, and he's enthusiastically passionate about having it answered, so much so that we see him running, running and kneeling before Jesus. Notice he also kneels before Christ. Now, we have many encounters in the gospel of people meeting Jesus.
00:12:29
Rarely do they kneel before him. Upon first meeting him. There's a few. This is one of them. This is one of them.
00:12:38
What's going on there? Well, he thinks Jesus is not just any old body, but he's really somebody worth coming under his teaching. So he's kneeling. And of course, as you know, and as we often say here, worship has to do with kneeling, getting low, right, bowing our heads. These are ways that we show that we are coming under Christ's rulership, under his authority.
00:13:04
Well, this man does this, and we see him asking a question. A lot of powerful, rich young people don't ask enough questions. They're on social media, influencing others by their thoughts, not asking questions of others. So what I'm showing you is this. This man has all of what the world has to offer, so to speak.
00:13:28
And he's actually a good man. He's humble, he's asking questions of Christ. He's submitting himself to Christ, and he's enthusiastic about learning from the Lord. And he's even asking the right question. Lord, how can I inherit eternal life?
00:13:50
That is the fundamental question for all of us. We're not gonna live forever. So what does that mean? Well, I need to figure out eternity on this matter, because eternity comes, so to speak, when we pass from this life to the next.
00:14:09
And so he's even asking the right questions here. He was pious, he was worshiping, and he was somewhat wise in asking questions, because if you ever notice, the wise are the ones who ask questions, not the foolish. Foolish people never ask questions. They just do it without asking. It's the wise who ask.
00:14:32
So now, none of those things that this man has, rich young ruler, okay? None of those things are bad in themselves. Instead, they're all three good means, but they are not good ends. In other words, they're not things to hang your whole life on. They are means to an end, but never the end.
00:14:59
In other words, riches are not the end. Youth is not the end. Okay, we're all gonna, you know, again, we stood right here and we. We went through the marital vows. Richer for poor, right?
00:15:13
Sickness and in health. I got you young people in here. One of these days, you know, you won't be able to eat all of what you want to eat and still stay the same. Nice figure you are. You know, I've had to continually reduce the amount of what I eat at a meal because if I even want to stay close to where I'm somewhat just overweight, you know, it's like, yeah, getting old changes us, and we're not going to live forever.
00:15:41
So these things are not something to hang our life on. Okay? In other words, this body will pass away. No matter how many plastic surgeries make up, how much we doctor it up, we are going to pass away from this life and enter into another. And we need to prepare now for that.
00:15:59
And this man is ready for that. That's what I'm showing you is even though he's got the plane, he's got the power, et cetera, et cetera, he still knows that eternity waits him.
00:16:13
No, Jesus being a good rabbi, as he always is, how does he answer a question? You already know this with a question. I mean, it doesn't take long to read the New Testament to figure this out. Jesus always going to answer a question to him with another question. And he does the same here, except the question asked by the man, how do I inherit the.
00:16:39
What do I need to do for eternal life? That is not the question that Jesus asked, though, is it? He doesn't go after that part of it. He says, sir, why do you call me good? Only God is good.
00:16:54
And what is Jesus doing here? Well, it's quite simple, really, is. If you know who Jesus is, then this is a claim to divinity. Some people have proposed, scholarly wise, that Jesus never claims to be God in the gospel of mark, for instance. And that is just untrue.
00:17:14
He's claiming it right here with this man, and he's trying to get this man to think, okay, hang on. You're asking this question about eternal life, but who is the eternal one? Because guess where eternal life comes from? The eternal one. Eternal life is not some subset of goddess.
00:17:34
Eternal life is the very life of God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, three persons, one God, one God in three persons. So he says, why do you call me good? Why do you call me good? Only God is good. And of course, I don't know if it goes over the man's head or nothing, but what we have next is this.
00:18:03
Jesus says this. You know the commandments. You know the commandments. Notice what commandments are mentioned here? None of them deal with our relationship with God, but instead with others.
00:18:18
You remember, in the ten commandments, there's four that deal with God. The first four, in fact. And then the latter six commandments deal with our relationship with each other. So we've got vertical commandments and horizontal commandments. And here Jesus lists out the horizontal ones, the ones that we can see, such as our neighbor.
00:18:40
Right, how we treat our neighbor. And he lists them all. And the man says, jesus. Teacher. Teacher.
00:18:49
Now, notice he corrects himself. Did you catch that in the text? If you look, he says, good teacher at first. And Jesus says that whole thing. Why do you call me good?
00:18:57
Only God is good. Now he just says teacher, which tells us he doesn't believe fully that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is God, teacher, I've kept all these since my youth. Now, some people have said like, hey, he doesn't really, he's lying to Jesus. I actually don't think he is. The more I've read and studied this text, I don't think he is.
00:19:27
I think he's actually kept these commandments. These are not impossible to keep, by the way. Read back through them. I mean, you could actually keep these commandments, especially with the help of God. We certainly are called to keep the Ten Commandments, in fact.
00:19:41
And so he says, hey, I've kept these from. If you would have known this guy, he was a good dude. Like you're thinking, man, not only is he wealthy and young and powerful, but this guy, he's actually a moral person. He cares about what is right and how he treats other people. That is a rare combo right there.
00:20:01
Most of us could applaud him right now and just say, man, better guy than me. If I had all of that, I probably wouldn't be that. I probably wouldn't care about the Ten Commandments at all, in fact. But he does. He does.
00:20:14
This is a rare guy. In fact, this story has always haunted me in some way.
00:20:22
Not like Halloween haunt, but just like stuck in my mind. Because if you know how it ends, as we just read, it's a really sad text in many regards of a good guy, someone who we would all look at his life and say, you know, this is a good mandeh. Really. He's a good dude.
00:20:44
And Jesus thinks so too. Watch, here's what he says to him. Teacher, I've kept all these since my youth. Jesus looking at him. Follow this.
00:20:57
Jesus looking at him, loved him. Now, I can tell you this. This guy is not like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Here's why Jesus didn't look at them and then show love toward them, but rather rebuke. Why?
00:21:19
Cause they were filled with pride. Filled with pride. Look at what I've done. I can pray like this. I pray on the street corners and so on and so forth.
00:21:28
And yet their heart was far away from goddess. I think this man's heart was so close to believing in Jesus, that is, to trust him fully. That's why he's kneeling. That's why he ran. That's why he's asking.
00:21:44
He's so close. And Jesus loves him because he knows he's followed these from his youth. He looks at him and loved him and then he says this, you just lack one thing. He finally gets to the answer. This is one of those places where Jesus doesn't keep asking a question to lead us to something higher.
00:22:09
Rather, he forms a statement here, point blank statement about the question asked, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? Jesus, point blank. One thing you lack. Just one. You've done all of this.
00:22:26
One thing you lack, what is it? Go sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven. And then come follow me. Let's go. Let's go.
00:22:43
Come on. Push it all in and let's go. Let's go together.
00:22:52
I wonder how long he stayed kneeling after that. Was it a pretty quick decision? I can't, Lord. I can't. The text tells us that his countenance fell.
00:23:10
Another translation would be, his face fell. You can imagine the man kneeling before Jesus listening to every word. Yes, Lord, I've done that. Yes. And now one thing.
00:23:22
One thing you lack. And Jesus tells him he doesn't even have to go searching for it. And it's like the man knows. I thought you were going to ask that. I can't do that.
00:23:37
And he gets up and he turns around and walks away. And some translations in the other text in Matthew and Luke say he went away sad. And when I read it, I go away sad.
00:23:58
Now, some of us may like me immediately, be like, hey, Lord, I mean, one thing. And he, he goes away.
00:24:16
You know, we in America in particular, we have this philosophy. I don't know if we even recognize it sometimes, but. Well, we do recognize it legally, but we don't always recognize it, just culturally. And it's this, it's the idea that you can be good in all these different ways, you know, just have all this good, good things going on in your life, but just that one area and it's okay. Don't worry about it.
00:24:43
I got em to you. And so we just immediately dismiss, we excuse ourselves of dealing with that one thing, but you know as much as I do, Ted Bundy was a pretty good dude, except that he had one thing that drove him lust and it drove him to do atrocious things that we all are still shocked by. But it was just one thing.
00:25:27
You see, sin is a cancer and we all have it and salvation is the cure. Christ Jesus wants to heal us and I'm telling you this and it's the truth, is the whole trajectory of the Bible, he won't stop until we are made perfectly whole. In other words, what if your oncologist just said, you know what, you've just got this one spot and look, all the rest, it's been in retreat and you know, whatever language they use, forgive me, I'm not a medical doctor, it's all in remission. Okay, but you just got that one. Don't worry about it.
00:26:09
Listen, you've got, most all of your body is good to go except for that little bit there. But don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Okay. We've made such good progress.
00:26:19
Just, you're fine. I think you need to get a different oncologist.
00:26:28
That physician isn't doing, because that physician should be on a pursuit to rid your body of all the cancer. Not just part of it, all of it.
00:26:42
We don't know what happened to this man is one reason this story haunts me. It's almost as if like we're just left in a lurch to try to figure it out ourself. But I think the bigger point is this, the reason this story makes it into three of the gospels is because this man is us. This is us. And some of us have enthusiastically come to Jesus.
00:27:07
Some of us have followed him since our youth. Lord look, I'm doing what's right. I'm not mistreated, I'm not doing these big things. And if Jesus were to come and ask us, what do you want?
00:27:23
Because it's Jesus, we may say something else. Oh I'd love for everybody to be a Christian. We'd give a church answer, I'm sure. I'm convinced of it. But it wouldn't be really the intention of our heart if we really had it our way.
00:27:41
What would you want? It's probably scary what crosses your mind. And if it's not, then you haven't really thought about the question. We're all little devils when it comes to what we want. Which is why.
00:28:01
Which is why the only way to follow Jesus, according to Jesus himself and according to St. Paul in the New Testament, is to die to yourself. In other words, it's actually not about what you want that must be put to death.
00:28:27
This is a hard lesson, and yet it is normative Christianity, the high calling that this man had. Because some of it's like, man, we're like the disciples, aren't we? Who then can be saved? Isn't that what they ask? Because they understand what's at stake here, because we all have that one thing, that if we could just really shape the world, it would be that the great philosophers, starting with Aristotle, moving on to Boethius and the likes of St.
00:29:04
Thomas Aquinas, have posited kind of four or five different variations of things that we typically pursue as humans. You'll know them all. So I don't have to spend any time explaining them. Wealth. Wealth.
00:29:24
How many of us have spent time thinking about that? How many of us have spent time protecting that? And have you ever noticed, like, I guarantee that wherever you are in your wealth management, you know, if you would go back ten years, you'd probably never thought you were there. But now you're like, I still don't have enough money. You ever notice how that works?
00:29:43
Because we just keep upping our lifestyle, you know, it's just what we do. It just is wealth, it never, never gets us there. The philosophers say position. How many of us have pursued position, given our very lives and times and missed ball games and missed time with this or that for position? Stepped on other people, cheated, in fact, to get ahead?
00:30:08
Power. How many of us have pursued power? Even some of you, like, no, no, no. Power. You know, but some of you do it in subtle ways.
00:30:18
You manipulate people. That's power. That's a power play. You subtly do it. Nobody would ever.
00:30:25
Oh, no, not that person. They're not pursuing. Oh, yeah, trust me. You've run into them. I've run into them.
00:30:32
They're subtle, but they're really after power.
00:30:37
What about fame? How many times am I scrolling along and everybody I'm looking at just aiming for fame? In fact, I read a sad statistic back in the day. People, you know, little kids, they ask them like, I don't know, maybe eight years old, ten years old, maybe it was ten years old. And they did a study.
00:30:56
They said, you know, back in, I don't know, in the nineties, the biggest thing for kids would be like an astronaut, you know, some crazy, you know, thing like. But something pretty cool like that today. You know what it is? You probably already know this youtuber, influencer.
00:31:15
What is that? We want to be seen. We want to be liked. I want those likes. How many views?
00:31:22
You don't think people pursue fame. You just. You don't. Not looking around. You must not be on social media.
00:31:29
Everybody seems to be pursuing fame. And then finally, pleasure. That one gets a lot of us. Pleasure. We want the nice things in life, we want the sexual things in life, and we want it the way we want it.
00:31:48
The philosophers say all of those are means to an end and never an end. They're never what we're going to hang our hat on, what we're going to hang our life on. You'll always be in misery. In fact, the philosophers say, and never happy. If you want to pursue happiness, it's going to be through those, okay, but never those things.
00:32:14
In other words, these things should always point us up higher. When riches don't do it for us, when we roll through pleasure and it still doesn't do it for us, we ought to look higher for our end, for where we belong, for our purpose. And I hope many of you and I know many of you have already learned these lessons, and that's great. You remember the seven deadly sins, right? This is another way to speak about this.
00:32:37
And the seven deadly sins end with the worst one, pride, who, unfortunately, our culture has tried to make into a virtue. Pride is not a virtue. It's the worst of the vices.
00:32:56
You see, what we offer is equal in a way. I was teaching on Leviticus just this past week, and it's not equal offering, but really, it's equal sacrifice. Follow what I'm saying? In other words, when people had to bring a goat or a sheep or a cow or a bird, it wasn't always the same. In other words, the poorer people brought birds, richer you brought cattle.
00:33:33
Okay, but the sacrifice was always meant to be equal. But wherever you were at with your riches in a similar way today, it might. Following Jesus may look different, is going to look different for you than it is for me, than it is for the person to your right or left, but it's the same requirement. And this is your whole life. Just a little thing there.
00:34:03
Your whole life.
00:34:06
And most of us have that one thing, just like the rich young ruler, just that one thing. And we've excused it. The world will excuse. Oh, yeah. Don't worry about it.
00:34:15
I will. Oh, yeah. You're such a great. I mean, I don't see it in you. I really don't.
00:34:20
But you know who does? Christ. And he's the one that we will give an account to in the end, and he's the one asking us to give that away for something higher. See, this is the good thing. And this is where we'll end.
00:34:44
This is the good thing. We give away our life. He would have given away his riches. To whom? The one who owns everything was standing right before him.
00:34:56
He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. We're told in a poetic way, to say he owns it all. Christ owns it all. You think this man's life would have been worse had he given away all his possessions? Of course.
00:35:10
Nothing. Of course not, because Christ owns it all. And he was the one asking if I would have asked him for it. Of course his life would have been worse. But not when God asked, what is God asking of you?
00:35:27
What do you really want? That's probably where it'll like. I mean, in your heart of hearts, what would you really remake the world to be making the world your pearl? What would that look like?
00:35:44
Solomon shows wisdom and prudence, and ultimately, Bonhoeffer has it right. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hung by the Germans, by the way, in 1945, they could hear the gunfights of the allied forces coming in, and they hung him nonetheless. He was a christian pastor. He said this, when Christ bids a person come and follow me, he bids them come and die. Because ultimately, it's not about our possessions or money or position.
00:36:20
It's us that Christ is after. It's us. He wants you. And he doesn't just want a little bit of you, three fourths of you. He wants it all.
00:36:34
He wants your heart. This is the hebrew way of saying, all of you, the heart. And if our heart is set on riches, if our heart is set on comfort, if our heart is set on retirement, if our heart is set on pleasure. Listen, we only have one heart. That means that's what we pursue.
00:36:51
That's what we worship. We idolize it instead, pursue God, and all the rest is thrown in. Then we'll understand how to use riches for good. We'll understand how to use pleasure for good. It's not that God takes it all away.
00:37:06
No, no. He's the one who created pleasure. He's the one who created a world where we can have wealth and nice things and so on and so forth. But when we pursue them, we pursue something far less than what we were made for. He is the highest good.
00:37:29
GK Chesterton famously said, the christian ideal, which is that giving up your whole life denying yourself, taking up your cross. Follow me, he bids us, come and die. The christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. Instead it has been found difficult and left untried. I could spend the next 4 hours telling you sad story after sob story of people who all of a sudden had all the good things going in their life.
00:38:02
If we would look at their life, we'd say, wow, they've got it made. And they blew it all up. You know, people like that, they just blew it all up. They just threw it all. Maybe they were bored.
00:38:15
Maybe they had an addiction, maybe this, this. Listen, it boils down to a simple thing, a three letter word, sin. We try to medicalize everything today. Listen, some things need medicine 100%. You know, I've said it from here.
00:38:32
I'm not against medicine at all. But our fundamental problem is not medical. Our fundamental problem is that we don't like God's way. Our fundamental problem is we hate goddess because he stands in the way of me doing everything that I want. And that's why we must die to ourself in order to live with him.
00:38:57
And if we don't, if we hold onto our life, we'll lose it. If we give our life, Jesus says, and he is God, we get to keep it and it will be fruitful and it will be blessed and we'll experience happiness, but not if we don't give it away.
00:39:21
So today, don't walk away from Jesus sad. No, there's no reason for that today. No. Pursue happiness by giving him that one thing that we're holding back on. Enter into the high calling the journey that he has set for you.
00:39:39
So many people, I've told you, have blown up their lives. What if we blew up our lives for Jesus? What if we just did the opposite? You're feeling all these things inside all of us. Feel them.
00:39:49
Yeah. I just wanna do something crazy, you know? Yeah, we'll do something crazy for Jesus. Who's tried that in the past 20 years? Who's just sold it all and go.
00:40:01
We even used to use this language. Some of you old enough to remember sold out for Jesus, right? What if we just sold out for Jesus? Let's push all the chips in on his way and not the world's way, not my way. What if you did that today?
00:40:19
What if the rich young ruler says, done, let's go? What kind of story would that be? He wouldn't have walked away sad. I can tell you that. Those riches that he clung to, nobody even knows what they are.
00:40:35
That's the point? Nobody even remembers. You can't take it with you into the grave, can you?
00:40:44
Nobody's ever taken that private jet down into their casket.
00:40:50
They won't. That thing would deteriorate before the body deteriorated. Listen, we all know it. He's the highest good. Would you pursue him with me?
00:41:02
Let's go all in together. Let's get crazy for Jesus together. So that we can give our life away. So that he can give us. So that we can be inheritors of eternal life.
00:41:16
Nothing less than God himself will do.
00:41:22
Nothing less than Jesus will do.
00:41:27
What do you want, Jesus? Let's pursue him above all else. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.