Matthew 19.16-26

Today, we are going to be looking in the mirror. The passage, today, contains someone in it that we can relate to probably more than anyone else in the New Testament, the rich young man.

You might push up against, this, disagree, or think this is an overstatement. Yet, we live in the richest country that has ever existed on the face of the planet!!! We are richer than 90% of the world, and yet we complain about not having much money, always wanting more.

Let me let you in on a little secret. According to the book of Revelation, the Devil uses two different kinds of strategies to fight against Christians. The first is physical persecution. He tries to come at us with a frontal attack of guns and swords and bombs and beatings and tries to scare Christians out of being Christians, or just flat kill them. The second strategy, and I think the more dangerous one, is that of cultural seduction. The devil tries to creep behind you and seduce you to slowly drift away from the faith.

We as Americans are not really experiencing physical persecution, but we are being seduced every moment of every day by TV ads, pop ups, emails, Facebook pages and messages. And our culture is heavily seduced by sex and by money.

The seduction with sexual immorality we will deal with at another time. But today, we need to address this issue with money head on.

Let's read this passage:

¹⁶ Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
   ¹⁷ “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”
 ¹⁸ “Which ones?” the man inquired.
   Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, ¹⁹ honor your father and mother,’^[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’^[b]”
 ²⁰ “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
 ²¹ Jesus answered, “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.”
 ²² When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
 ²³ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ 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.”
 ²⁵ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
 ²⁶ Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”


A young, apparently religious man, comes up to Jesus asking him about what he must do to inherit eternal life. What is interesting is that Jesus quotes the second half of the ten commandments, which deals with our horizontal relationship with man. Yet this is not what this young, rich man, is struggling with. According, even to himself, he is faultless, but he still feels something missing. 


Jesus points out what is missing by asking him to sell all his riches, everything he had and give it to the poor. Jesus is addressing his vertical relationship with God, and this young man had money as Lord of his life, rather than God. Because of this, Jesus is calling absolute allegiance, absolute trust. Yet this man could not part with the almighty dollar. 


Can you?


Is God really the sole Lord of every aspect of your life? Are you truly treating the money that you possess as God's money, and you are just his steward to use this money to advance HIS kingdom? 


I challenge you to write with a  sharpie, Matthew 19.22, on the face of your check card. Every time you use it, ask yourself, "Am I using this money to advance God's kingdom, or my kingdom?" Don't allow money to come in between you and God. 


That is one of the reasons giving a tithe is so important. It is a practice of killing the desire in your life to hoard all the money for yourself. It is looking Satan in the face and saying, "Money is NOT coming between me and God."


So take this message of the rich young ruler to heart, and don't part with Jesus because of your love for money, but part with money because of your love for Jesus.