Series:Mark, 34
April 20, 20008
LITTLE CHILDREN AND RICH MEN
Mark 10:13-31
Mark 10:13-31 NIV
People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. [14] When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. [15] I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." [16] And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
[17] As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
[18] "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone. [19] You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'"
[20] "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."
[21] Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
[22] At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
[23] Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"
[24] The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! [25] 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."
[26] The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?"
[27] Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
[28] Peter said to him, "We have left everything to follow you!"
[29] "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel [30] will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. [31] But many who are first will be last, and the last first."
Here’s a picture of our granddaughter, Kasey, who is now 5, and our grandson, Holden, who is 10 months, having a good time in the bath tub. We are so grateful for email and digital pictures and camera phones that help us keep abreast of their development. There’s just something really special about little kids. Jesus knew that, even though the disciples didn’t.
I. Little Children Mark 10:13-16
A. Who is the kingdom of God for?
Mark 10:13-16, “People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. [14] When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. [15] I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ [16] And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.” The disciples had a basic misconception of what the kingdom of God is all about, and who it is for, and that misconception has continued through the centuries. Starting in A.D. 300, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church has often gotten it wrong. Church leaders were drawn to power and prestige, so they encouraged the connection between church and state. This was evident throughout Europe, where many countries had state churches for centuries (and a few still do). In this country, which was founded partly in an effort to provide religious freedom from the state, things have looked very different; but we still see evidence of the same basic motivation. The Moral Majority, and many similar movements in the Church, have sought to give Christians greater influence and positions of power and prestige in the political realm.
But Jesus has a different idea of who the kingdom is for. He sees it not as being for the rich and powerful, but as for the weak and vulnerable, the “little ones”, the people the world considers insignificant, who are not movers and shakers.
B. Don’t get in their way
The disciples considered little children as being unimportant, insignificant, not worthy of the attention of the Great Man, Jesus. So they try to push the children away. “Can’t you see He’s busy? Get out of here; Jesus is an important man; He’s teaching the people about God!”
But Jesus sees the little ones, and wants to make sure they get to Him. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.” That made me wonder, What are ways we hinder children from getting to Jesus today? We don’t stand in the doorway, and block the parents from bringing their children in to Sunday School or church. But there are other ways we get in the way of the kids. We don’t listen to them; we give them the impression they are not important. We fill up their lives with so many “enrichment” activities—all good, of course—that they don’t have time to just sit and think about God or just sit and “be” with Him. And we sometimes underestimate their ability to understand or know God. The problem here is that our relationship with God, as adults, is overwhelmingly mental, cerebral, intellectual, whereas a child relates to God on a much more intimate, intuitive, and emotional level. They don’t know all the facts about God that we do, but they can certainly know God.
C. A child’s faith
Jesus didn’t think He was too important for little kids; in fact, He said they were just the sort of people He came for. “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” What did He mean by that? He meant that the kingdom of God is not for the rich and powerful, the people who are so full of themselves, the high and mighty who do not see their need for God. The kingdom of God is for little children, who have no pretensions, no problem with pride and ego, who are not setting themselves up above others, because they know they are children. They recognize their place in the world, and their need for God, so they are just the ones who can receive what God has to offer them.
One of the implications of this is that children can be truly and genuinely saved. Jesus accepts the faith of children as being the kind of faith that admits a person to the kingdom of God—saving faith. Our daughter prayed to ask Jesus into her life when she was about 4 years old—and she did it with Tim Feia, who was living with us at the time, and later went on to be a Wycliffe missionary. We had been reading her Bible stories from the time she was an infant, so she knew some of the facts about Jesus. She put her trust in as much as she understood of Jesus at the time, and she never wavered from that.
D. Children’s and youth ministry
As our children grew up, we explained to them that they had borrowed their faith from us, their parents, and from their Sunday School teachers, and that was a good and right thing for them to do as children. But somewhere in the teen years, when a child begins to differentiate themselves from their parents, it is important for them to make that borrowed faith of their childhood their own. They have to believe for themselves, not just because their parents taught them to. That’s why we think youth ministry is so important, to help teens make the faith of their fathers and mothers their own.
Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.” This is the mandate from the Lord Himself for children’s ministry. Some very large percentage of people who ever become Christians do so before the age of 18. How many of you came to Christ before you were 18? That’s because after we grow up, it is so much harder to believe God, to take Him at His word, to trust Him to be right and not to trust our own thinking. We get set in our ways, and come to believe that we know what is best for us—the very opposite of a child’s attitude. So it is all the more important that we reach our children, and our neighbors’ children with the good news about Jesus while they are still young, and ready to believe God.
Sandy Dykstra is our Children’s Ministry Director; Kim Wagner and Shelley Trimble are also on staff with our children’s ministry; Bill Ackerman is our youth pastor. Stand if you are here in this service, and let us thank you for your service to our children. And then let’s have everyone who helps with children’s ministry or youth ministry in any way in the course of a year stand, so we can express our appreciation to you.
E. Such as these
Jesus says the kingdom also belongs to “such as these.” In other words, it belongs to children, and to adults who have the faith of children. There is something really endearing about the faith of little children. They aren’t skeptical and cynical yet; they implicitly trust the adults in their lives. I remember when our kids were little, they’d be testing their balance on a brick wall, or some playground equipment, and if I stood below them and told them to jump into my arms, they’d do it! No fear; no hesitation; just complete trust that I would catch them.
That’s the attitude God is looking for from us. And that’s what it takes to enter the kingdom—the recognition that we cannot do it ourselves; that we are lost and helpless without God; but that He is more than able to catch us and save us. “…Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
In sharp contrast to the little children, we have the rich man. No doubt Mark put these two events side by side so we could see the contrast between them.
II. Rich Man
A. God is good Mark 10:17-18
Mark 10:17, “As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ [18] ‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good--except God alone.’”
Wow! That’s a little harsh. Jesus is right in this man’s face. The guy was just being polite, and the next thing he knows, he’s deep into the theology of God’s nature with Jesus hammering at him. Why would Jesus be so abrupt with him like that? I think it was because Jesus knew what was coming. He was about to tell this man the last thing on earth that he wanted to hear, and Jesus wants to make sure he knows right up front who that is coming from. He doesn’t deny that He is good; He’s saying, You’re right—I am good. But since only God is ultimately good, then you need to consider the possibility that I am God. You need to hear what I am about to tell you as from God Himself.
B. What must I do to live forever? Mark 10:19-20
The man asks an interesting question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” How would you answer his question? I’ll bet most of us would say something like, “Trust in Christ as your Savior,” “Ask God for forgiveness,” “Believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead.”
But what does Jesus say? I’ll bet none of us would ever answer that question the way He did: Mark 10:19, “You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'" Huh? What’s all that about? The way to get eternal life is to keep the commandments? You might be thinking, My pastor and my Sunday School teachers have been telling me for years that would never do it. What is Jesus saying?
This man hasn’t been in our Sunday School classes, though. He’s not surprised by Jesus’ answer—he’s smug. Mark 10:20, "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy." Now that, in itself is pretty amazing! This guy was serious about his faith. He had learned the Ten Commandments as a boy, and was earnestly, diligently keeping them. Even so, he probably overstated the completeness of his obedience. The Scriptures are clear that no one can fully keep the commandments. Jesus pointed out that many of these commands appear to be merely about our external actions, but in fact, God’s concern goes to our thoughts and our hearts. So he’s probably not as righteous as he thinks he is, but still, he’s trying.
C. Faith works Mark 10:21; James 2:20-22; John 14:21
But keeping those commandments is not all Jesus has to say to him. He goes on to say something else we probably wouldn’t say: Mark 10:21, "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." The problem we have with this answer is that it again seems to say that we can earn our way into heaven. Is that really what we have to do—sell everything we have and give the money to the poor? This sounds like salvation by works. Is that what Jesus really means?
I’m certain it does not. The point of His statement to this man is that these particular actions will reveal his heart, and whether he loves God or his money the most. It reveals his faith—does he trust God, or His money the most? If he loves and trusts God the most, then he will be willing to give up everything he owns; if he doesn’t, then he won’t. His actions will reveal his heart.
And right here is where a lot of Christians miss the point. The point is that faith works. We say, rightly, that we are not saved by works, but by faith; but the faith that saves, works. We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is not alone—it is accompanied and demonstrated by actions, like the ones Jesus spells out for this man here.
Many people believe that they can be good enough to earn a place in heaven.
works è salvation
Either God grades on a curve, and they are better than the average, so they’ll make it; or God will weigh their good deeds against their bad deeds, and if the good deeds weigh more (which most people believe to be true of themselves) then they’ll make it. In either case, they have earned their way in. But that’s not the case.
works [arrow with line through it x] salvation
No one can be good enough to deserve to be in God’s presence, because God is perfect, and none of us are.
Others think you need to have faith, and it looks like this:
faith + works è salvation
That’s the view of the Roman Catholic church—you need faith, but you have to have works as well in order to be saved. So they put emphasis on saying the rosary, on going to confession and mass, etc. We rightly reject that as being unbiblical.
faith + works [arrow with line through it x] salvation
But here’s where many evangelicals get it wrong. They want to say faith alone produces salvation, like this:
faith è salvation
But that’s not the case, either, because this is incomplete. It’s partly right, but not complete.
faith [arrow with line through it x] salvation alone
One of the main points of this passage with the rich man is that faith works. Yes, we are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is not alone. This man had to show his faith through his works—by selling all he had and giving the money to the poor. It’s all too easy to say we believe—something like 90%+ of Americans say they believe in God, and 75% call themselves Christians, but a much smaller percentage actually practice their faith, and an even smaller percentage live it out the way Jesus challenged this man to.
As James said, James 2:20-22, “…do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? [21] Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? [22] You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.” So James and Jesus are both saying:
faith alone è salvation + works
The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling—it acts. Jesus said, John 14:21, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." How can we know if we love Jesus? If we obey His commands. That is painfully clear. But some Christians want to say that the proof that they are saved is that they prayed a prayer, or went forward, or got baptized, or something like that. Salvation is not a matter of believing certain truths. It’s a commitment to the person of Jesus that leads us to obey Him. You can’t say you love God if you don’t obey His commands.
D. Two tables of the Law cf. Mark 12:30
When Jesus says to this man, Sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor, and then come, follow Me, this is part two of His answer to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Part one was, Keep the commandments. But if we look carefully at which commandments Jesus mentions, we see that He didn’t say all ten. Jesus carefully selected which commandments He mentioned first, because He knew the man had done well on some commandments, but not so well on others.
The Ten Commandments are divided into what are called the Two Tables of the Law. Table One consists of the first four commands, which all have to do with our relationship with God. Table Two consists of the last six commandments, which all have to do with our relationships with other people. When Jesus first answered the rich man, He only mentioned commandments from the second Table of the Law, having to do with his relationships with others. The man was doing well there. But then in the second part of Jesus’ answer, He summarized the first four commandments into one incisive command: sell everything you have and follow Me. That will reveal his relationship with God. If this man loves God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, he will gladly sell everything he has and follow Jesus. If we love God that way, we will obey His commands, no matter what they are.
And Jesus will always tailor-make His demands on us
E. A specifically-tailored demand Mark 10:22; Luke 14:26
Mark 10:22, “At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.” Here we see why Jesus told this man he had to sell all his possessions. He might not say the same thing to any of us—or He might, depending on our hearts. This man not only had great wealth, his heart was chained to it, and he didn’t want to let it go. Jesus knew that, and that’s why He told him he had to sell everything he had. It’s a question of priorities, of our hearts, as it always is with God. What, or who, is first in your heart? Jesus wants to be first, with no close seconds. Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.” That’s what it takes to inherit eternal life. It’s a complete commitment of ourselves to God; it’s loving Him with everything in us; it’s not having any other gods before Him; it’s loving God so much that our love for everyone and everything else looks like hate in comparison. This man had a lot of money, and it had gotten into his heart.
Could that be true of you? Don’t answer too quickly. You don’t have to have a lot of money in order to be guilty of love of money. But the more you have, the more likely it is to have infiltrated your heart, so that you find it very difficult to separate your love for God from your love for money. What if Jesus asked you to sell all your possessions—your house, your car, your electronics, your clothes, your sports and outdoor gear, your jewelry, your toys, your 401(k), your IRA, your investments—just get rid of it all? Would you do it? Could you do it? It would be hard, wouldn’t it? At the very least, this passage ought to give us pause, to wonder, to ask ourselves if we are in the same position this rich man was in.
It might even prompt us to ask the same question the disciples did:
F. Who, then, can be saved? Mark 10:23-27
Mark 10:23, “Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!’ [24] The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! [25] 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.’”
Now, you have no doubt heard that the “eye of the needle” was a low archway through the city wall in those days, and in order for a camel to get through it, it would have to get down on its knees (symbolizing humbling itself) to do it. There are two things to be said about this interpretation: First, there was no such arch by that name in first century Palestine; second, Jesus is clearly trying to give them an image of something that is just plain impossible. Not difficult, but impossible. Because, Mark goes on to tell us, 10:26, “The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, ‘Who then can be saved?’”
It is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God because, “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15). And rich people are generally not dependent, needy, humble, and trusting like little children are. They tend to be self-confident, capable, proud of their wealth and station in life, trusting their money to smooth the road ahead of them. Rich people don’t need to trust God for their daily bread because they’ve got auxiliary freezers in the garage stuffed with enough food for months. Rich people don’t need to trust God for the money to repair their car, because they’ve got car insurance. Rich people don’t need to depend on God when the roof leaks, because they’ve got homeowners’ insurance. Rich people don’t need to depend on God for their retirement, because they’ve got money saved up that will carry them through those years. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve got all those insurances, too, and I’d like to have the retirement money all covered, but these things money buys do minimize the need for us to completely depend on God. I remember Kelly Shane coming back from her midwife training in the Philippines, and saying, “It is so hard to be a Christian here in America! In the Philippines, we needed God for every little thing, and we depended on Him completely; but here, I don’t need Him hardly at all, and it is killing my spiritual life!” “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
G. All things are possible with God Mark 10:27
But praise God, it is not impossible! Mark 10:27, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’” The power of wealth and position and influence to make us think we don’t need God means that left to ourselves, we would never be saved. We would never, on our own, see our need for God and cast ourselves completely on Him. Chuck Colson tells the story of how he had been President Nixon’s “hatchet man”, wielding tremendous power from within the White House inner circle. But when he was arrested and imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal, he was finally broken and humbled to the place where he could admit his need for God. God in His mercy has ways of getting through even our toughest defenses, to help us see how truly needy we are. All things are possible with God.
H. It all comes back Mark 10:28-31
This had been a hard lesson for the disciples to swallow. It took a while for it to sink in. But finally, Peter said, hopefully, Mark 10:28, "We have left everything to follow you!" As though to say, “Does that count? Did we qualify? Did we demonstrate our love and dependence on you enough?”
Whereupon Jesus reassures him, Mark 10:29, "I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel [30] will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields--and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. [31] But many who are first [in this world because of their wealth and power and position] will be last [in the kingdom of God], and [those who are] the last [in the world’s eyes, because of their poverty, or because of their powerlessness, or because of their age as children, will be] first."
So—will you be first in the world, or first with God? Will He be first in your life, or somewhere down the priority list? Will you make sure your life demonstrates your faith, or will you be satisfied with a verbal profession alone? Are you a little child in your relationship with God, or a rich man?