Word of Salvation – Vol.48 No.5 – February 2003
When Being Good Isn’t Good Enough!
Sermon by Rev S Bajema
on Mark 10:17-27
Scripture Readings: Matthew 6:19-34; Mark 10:17-27
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What a keen young man our text begins with! The words we’ve read couldn’t help but show up this guy who’s just bubbling over with enthusiasm. I mean, he’s running up to Jesus, he falls on his knees before Him, and then he heaps the respect on Him with what he says to Him.
Boy, what a teacher would give to have a student like that! How much wouldn’t a leader love to have a boy like him in his group! Of course the girls are always like this! Aha! None of you boys are going to let that pass, are you? “Girls, Mr Preacher, are just like us – you just don’t know them well enough!”
Well, I think I do a bit, though you’ve proved the point. You see, this young man in Mark 10 is pretty unique. He’s not your average kind of guy. I mean, Jesus gives him a bit of a grilling. He takes him up on that high view he has about Jesus, with that title of “Good Teacher” and checks out just how serious he is. He reminds Him that only God is good, and then He reminds him about the high standard that God has.
Jesus gets specific about those commands. Notice that they’re commands from the second table of the Law, rather than the first table. They are commands to do with how we treat other people, because they’re very practical. If he obeys those commands that proves where he stands. Jesus really wants to know if that young man is serious about it.
And he is. He’s deadly serious: “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” That’s saying something! We could honestly say that here we meet THE ALL ROUND NICE GUY.
Our first point is:
THE ALL ROUND NICE GUY
That’s what he is. Mark’s gospel says that Jesus looked at him and loved him, and it isn’t because He knows that this guy really doesn’t know, and so He pities him. No, Jesus genuinely loves him. And we can’t help but do the same!
Just think, mothers, this is the boy who would be the “white sheep” in your family. He would be the son who just doesn’t ever complain. He cleans up his room and he hangs up the washing. He even takes it off and irons it afterwards. He can whip up great meals. He always lets you know where he is, and he’s always home on time – usually earlier. It’s just unbelievable!
And that’s precisely it, with a play on words, because there is unbelieving here. He’s got such a massive insecurity complex. That’s exactly why he pushes himself to be so “good”. He’s trying so hard to get rid of that nagging doubt he has. It really bugs him.
An artist, George Frederick Watts, painted an interesting picture of this rich young man. He pictures him after he was leaving the Lord, so after he’s spoken with Jesus. But it doesn’t show his face – only his back. What it shows about that back is how stooped it is. It was hunched, as though he was carrying a heavy load when he went on his way. And he was! He had come with a burden on his heart, but when he was told how to get rid of it, he decided to keep it. And it was much heavier than when he came to the Lord.
He could have gone away with no burden on his back, with his whole frame strong in the Lord, and being released of all his sin. But no, it couldn’t have been more the opposite. He hadn’t been saved at all.
From where we have met in the first place THE ALL ROUND NICE GUY, we now meet, secondly:
THE ONE THING MONEY CAN’T BUY
In a way we should already have guessed it with the question the young man asked. If he had truly known what Jesus was about, he would have known. And what’s more, in his response to the Lord’s words about the commandments, he would have answered quite differently.
Well, that’s a bit of relief for our boys and girls, and perhaps for many of the rest of us, too. You couldn’t possibly be that good! But let’s not think we have an excuse for not doing “good”. The commandments are in the Bible for a reason.
It is what the Bible is really about that this guy doesn’t have. Because what is the Bible except God meeting us right where we are and telling us that unless we believe in the doing and dying of His Son Jesus Christ, we’re just no good at all! The only true “good” is that which connects with where the word itself originally came from, which is “God”. The Bible is about the one thing money can’t buy – His love.
In fact, this love is the one thing that nothing we do can get, even if we think it’s the best “good” anyone can ever do. It’s not what you show – it’s who you know! I know that’s a bit of a twist on an old saying, but it’s what makes sense of the Bible.
That’s what the apostle Paul later on in the New Testament couldn’t stop going on about. You get to go to heaven not because of the credit you have built up with God, but because of the merit He gives us in Jesus Christ. That’s what Paul warned the Philippians about, when people there were trying to put the guilt trip on them about what they had to do.
He wrote, “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh [in other words, to depend on what he does], I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What’s more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things” (Phil 3:4b ff).
So, Paul is saying, if you’re like this young man who thought he was doing really well, you’re in trouble. Because then you are not trusting in God; you’re trusting yourself! And that’s where Jesus hits that guy right where it hurts. He says to him, “One thing you lack, go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (vs 21b).
It’s only one thing, isn’t it? The one thing just happens to be for him, though, his everything! And that’s how we have to understand what Jesus is saying. It’s not because you’re rich that you’ll have a lot of trouble getting into heaven. It’s if you love your riches more than the one who came from heaven, that you miss out.
Just like if you love your car, your house, your clothes, your hobby, and I’ll say it – even with the [insert the closest sporting event here] right upon us – if you love your sport more than the Lord, that means you miss out.
We all have something just like that guy. Each one of us here will have a particular thing that could keep us away from the Lord. Because if we don’t love the Lord, then we have to love something else. That’s the very nature of our humanity. And it’s that other thing we love which can stop us from coming to love the Lord Jesus.
It’s not a matter of how “good” we are in our own eyes. It all depends on the relationship we have with God. Here’s an example. There was a man who was a fine Christian. He had given up a terrible lifestyle when he first became a Christian, which included an addiction to alcohol. That was still a strong temptation for him, because whenever he did drink he really let himself go. But now and again the temptation used to be too much for him and then he’d give in. It was pretty bad while it lasted, though he was always very sorry afterwards. He felt that he’d let God down and he’d let the Church down, to say nothing of letting himself down.
Of course there were plenty of people who were only too glad of a chance of saying, “There you are, you see! And he calls himself a Christian.” But that man is desperately miserable when he fails like that and how very hard he tried, with God’s help, not to fail again.
I would say, that, in God’s eyes, he was a better man than most of the people who criticised him, because he was really trying as hard as he could to serve God, in spite of his failures.
Congregation, that’s the whole point of true religion, it’s trying to serve God, putting Him first, and trying to live as He wants us to, with His help. And if you fail (as I’m afraid I do only too often), then picking yourself up straight away without losing heart and starting all over again.
Religion isn’t for “good” people (or people who think they are good); it’s for people who know perfectly well they’re bad but want to be better. It’s not just being a nice guy and so being kind and doing the right thing – though it does involve that as well, naturally.
It especially means realising that God gave me my life, because His Son died for me. One day you’ve got to meet Him and tell Him what you’ve done with your life. So you are to try and make your life the kind of life God wants it to be and try to keep in touch with Him all the time, so that you’re sure you’re on that right track.
There was once a time in history a little bit like ours – England at the beginning of the 1700s. A period of time where there were no major wars, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. There was a lot of gambling and pornography and prostitution. People got really wrapped up in their entertainment. If you saw some of the sketches of social life from that time, you would see what I mean.
In that time when people were taken up with so much of what they loved to do, God brought a biblical revival upon England. There was such a powerful movement of the Spirit through the preaching of the Bible that nearly the whole country was changed. Many of those who had been in the poorer classes suddenly found themselves middle class. Some historians believe it was because of this Great Evangelical Awakening that there was no social uprising like the French Revolution, which would have devastated England.
Congregation, those people didn’t get to become better off because of some generous handout from a recently elected government. There was no welfare state. It was because those people met THE ONE THING MONEY CAN’T BUY!
Yet it was a meeting they would never have arranged. Instead, God came down and met them, and us, where we are. That meeting has changed every meeting we have had since, for it’s the relationship we have with God by faith in Jesus, which makes the whole of this life so different.
In fact, a Christian doesn’t really have much time for this life. That’s not to say we don’t enjoy things here, and it’s certainly not to say that we’re not concerned about what’s happening in this world and the difference we have to make to this world, but it means we have a whole different focus.
Look at that young rich man in verse 22. How was he looking? It says that man’s face fell. He went away sad. And he could have gone away glad – without a brass razoo in his pocket!
Just doesn’t make sense does it? And the world can’t see how it could make any dollars either. But do that, dear friend, and you’ll be richer than any of them – from Bill Gates to Rupert Murdoch. You see, your treasure will be in heaven, where the interest rates are truly out of this world!
Congregation, let’s pray for a revival in our world, a biblical revival that brings men and women, and boys and girls, on their knees before the Lord. But let’s most of all pray for the revival to begin in here – in our hearts – as we give up what we love in this world and follow Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, with our everything!
When Jesus looks you in the face and loves you, and then asks you to give Him the love of your life, then don’t go away sad. Instead, give up whatever holds you back, and go His way – glad!
Amen.
PRAYER:
O LORD God.
How privileged we are! For not only have we met your Son through the Word, it is your Spirit that has changed our hearts, to make that meeting change the rest of our lives! Please help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, that we will more and more show Him alive in us.
In His precious Name we pray,
Amen.