BEHIND THE BOOK Connecting to the Bible (Observation) LUKE 18:18-30 (READ VARIOUS TRANSLATIONS) MAY 17 TH, 2017 Goal: To see God s radical generosity and change the way we view every blessing He has bestowed. Introduction: In Jesus time, wealth was viewed as a sign of God s favor. The richer you were, the more God had blessed you. As a result, wealth was often synonymous with holiness. Jesus flipped that thinking saying, the richer you are, the harder it is to get into the kingdom. Wealth, according to Jesus, can make you self-sufficient and deny your need of salvation. But Jesus is not just addressing wealth. He s also talking about anything that can become our functional savior anything that functions in the place of Jesus to save us. Jesus call to follow him in chapter 14 is not just for salvation but a demand to stop trusting anything else for our security and self-worth. It is seeing how much more important he is than anything else. This outward looking life requires the divine intervention, the work of the Holy Spirit. The world is so present within us that we don t even know it s there. We don t see ourselves operating out of a worldview contrary to the Scripture because it s the only worldview we know. But it is impossible for a person to be saved without this fundamental change of mind and heart. But with God, Jesus reminds us, all things are possible. In the end, Jesus assures you that, if you follow him, your faith is not misplaced. No one surrenders anything in this life that is not repaid with immeasurable wealth. The bookend references to eternal life (18, 30) reveal salvation to be the theme of this passage. The point is salvation. The problem is wealth. The CG lesson centers on salvation. Sunday s sermon is all about wealth. As demonstrated in Luke 14, Jesus never allowed people to superficially interact with him without the investment of heart, soul, mind and body (Deut 6:5). Salvation is more than acknowledging facts about God, Jesus or the Bible. As this passage demonstrates, it is the 1
complete surrender of our all. The man in this passage demonstrates that he loves himself more than God. Amazingly, it appears at first glance that Jesus turned away the perfect seeker; he was asking the right question. He had come to the right source for the answer. But instead of finding terms acceptable to him, Jesus introduced terms to him that he found utterly unacceptable. And the amazing part of the story is that as good a prospect as he appeared to be, in reality he was a superficial self-centered false seeker, who left Jesus rejecting the way to eternal life. And he kneed to know that. There are two sides to every story: First: The Human Side 18-19 a) Unlike the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14, this man recognized he did not have eternal life. His external religious achievements made him a ruler of the people but he knew it wasn t heartfelt. b) Good good = agathos = good in essence. Jesus was something this ruler was not. He recognized something in Jesus that he, himself was lacking. Eternal life is not an extension of life. A sinner s life extended is not salvation. Everyone is going to live eternally somewhere. Eternal life is a quality of life, not a duration of life. c) Teacher He also acknowledged Jesus possessed something he didn t have. d) Do - His thinking however, is legalistic. Just as he had succeeded in other areas of life, he assumed salvation could also be attained. John 6:28-29 - Then they said to him, What must we do, to be doing the works of God? 29 Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. e) Good Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Jesus is challenging the man to either change his definition of God or change his definition of Jesus. (The modern irreligious world and the religious world needs to do this also) This ruler knew all he knew and did all he could do. But he could not save himself. 2
Second: The Divine Side 20-23 Jesus began the conversation in the ruler s world, using thinking and terms the ruler understood. He began where the ruler was. V 20 - You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother. This list comes from the 2 nd half of the Ten Commandments, #s 7, 6, 8, 9 & 5. v 21 - The ruler confesses that he has kept all of these commandments. But, if the ruler had kept all the commandments since his youth, and depended on obedience to the law to save him, why did he not already know he had eternal life? The ruler is in the same condition Paul was in before his salvation Philippians 3:4-6 - though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Our hope, as we read the conversation, is that the young man will come to the same conclusion as Paul Philippians 3:7-9 - But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith Legalism can never save. Nor can it provide the assurance of salvation. V 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, One thing you still lack Jesus is about to answer the young man s single question about inheriting eternal life but first, the young man needs to acknowledge his sinfulness. Jesus statement one thing you still lack precedes James statement that James 2:10 - For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. The one point the young man had not and will not keep is the first commandment Exodus 20:3 You shall have no other gods before me. 3
Even as we watch the conversation take place, our hearts hope that what transpired in Paul will also take place in the ruler Romans 7:7-11 - What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet. 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. Far from giving him life, the law killed the apostle Paul, i.e., it proved he was dead in sins. The law doesn t save but proves our guilt. This is the point the Lord will make with this ruler: The law was never intended to save because it cannot save. The law was given to prove you are a sinner and cannot save yourself. You are an infidel, if you trust in your own righteousness. You have, in the sight of God, neither part nor lot in this matter. You are spiritually dead while you pretend to live.until you are endued with faith in Christ s imputed righteousness, your body is the living coffin of a dead soul. A Christian is a believer not in himself, but in Christ. - Augustus Toplady The Ten Commandments: a) Reveal God s character b) Prick our conscience c) Prove our condemnation d) Point us to Christ Galatians 3:24-26 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. Christ is trying to prove to the ruler that he is dead in sin and cannot keep any commandments that would bring him life. Vs 22-23 - When Jesus heard this, he said to him, One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. No matter how much of the law we keep, we will never keep it all. We can never be perfect or perfectly righteous in God s sight and perfection is God s demand. Jesus gave him a command to abandon all of his earthly priorities and divest hiself of everything that mattered to him (JM). 4
But the rich ruler did not value Christ above his personal and family wealth. Third: Jesus Commentary 24-30 V 24a - Seeing the rich young ruler s sadness, Jesus turned to his disciples and said V 24b - How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! This teaching is opposite of the Jewish position in Jesus day. Wealth was synonymous with God s blessings. The rich were thought to have an inside track to heaven. V 25 - For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. This was originally a Persian proverb about an elephant. The Jews took the axiom and substituted a camel which is the largest animal in Palestine. V 26 Those who heard it said, Then who can be saved? Those who heard Jesus statement were alarmed. An apocryphal book, the Tobit, said It is better to give alms than to lay up gold: for alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin. (Tobit 12:8-9). If a rich man could not buy his way into heaven, what hope existed for the impoverished? V 27 - But he said, What is impossible with man is possible with God. It is impossible for us to save ourselves. No amount of good works will ever be sufficient to merit God s righteousness. In addition, God looks on the heart. This means the motive for our good works is also important. Sinners must not only repent of doing the wrong thing but of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. In effect, our attitudes and actions betray our sinfulness. Isaiah 64:6 - We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. V 29 - And Peter said, See, we have left our homes and followed you. At this point, the disciples, whose mentality is Jewish and still being renewed (Romans 12:2) question their own eternal life. The word homes doesn t occur in the Greek text. Peter said, We have left meaning, everything. Matthew 19:27 - Then Peter said in reply, See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have? 5
Vs 29-30 - And he said to them, Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life. Jesus promised the disciples that, unlike the rich young ruler, they had acted sanely in trading everything for God s kingdom. Matthew adds another dimension to Jesus statement Matthew 19:28 - Jesus said to them, Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The noun "regeneration" (palingenesia) occurs only twice in the Bible. In Matt. 19:28 it denotes the eschatological "restoration of all things. This echo of Jewish usage points to the larger scheme of cosmic renewal within which that of individuals finds its place. In Titus 3:5 the word refers to the renewing of the individual. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, God is making new world people. Our newness is the model for all creation. One day, made wholly new, our re-creation serves as the standard and calendar for all of creation. Romans 8:19 - For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Regeneration, or new birth, is an inner re-creating of fallen human nature by the gracious sovereign action of the Holy Spirit (John 3:5-8). The Bible conceives salvation as the redemptive renewal of man on the basis of a restored relationship with God in Christ, and presents it as involving "a radical and complete transformation wrought in the soul (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23) by God the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5; Eph. 4:24), by virtue of which we become 'new men' (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10), no longer conformed to this world (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9), but in knowledge and holiness of the truth created after the image of God (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; Rom. 12:2)" Regeneration is the "birth" by which this work of new creation is begun, as sanctification is the "growth" whereby it continues (I Pet. 2:2; II Pet. 3:18). Regeneration in Christ changes the disposition from lawless, Godless self-seeking (Rom. 3:9-18; 8:7) which dominates man in Adam into one of trust and love, of repentance for past rebelliousness and unbelief, and loving compliance with God's law henceforth. It enlightens the blinded mind to discern spiritual realities (I Cor. 2:14-15; II Cor. 4:6; Col. 3:10), and liberates and energizes the enslaved will for free obedience to God (Rom. 6:14, 17-22; Phil. 2:13). 6
"Niceness"-wholesome, integrated personality-is an excellent thing. We must try by every medical, educational, economic, and political means in our power, to produce a world where as many people as possible grow up "nice"; just as we must try to produce a world where all have plenty to eat. But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might even be more difficult to save. For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders-no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings-may even give it an awkward appearance. Niceness or New Men in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Small Group Interaction: 1 How would you define salvation: a) knowledge, b) application or c) both. We can t apply what we don t know but don t (really) know it if we aren t applying it. 2 How is eternal life not simply the extension of life but a change in life? Read 2 Corinthians 5:17. 3 What is different about your life now, than before you were a Christian? 4 Why did Jesus ask the rich young ruler why he called him good? He wanted him to either acknowledge Jesus as God or change his terminology. If Jesus isn t God, he isn t good. 5 Why did Jesus use the law to respond to the rich young ruler? He wanted to prove the rich young ruler wasn t what he thought he was, using his own basis for righteousness. 6 How do we know the rich young ruler doubted his own righteousness, even though he said he had kept all the commandments? He still asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. 7 If the law can t save us, why did God give us the law? 8 Why did the rich young ruler become sad at Jesus command to sell everything? He knew that, if that is what it took to inherit eternal life, he could not do it and would not have eternal life. He would not put God above his wealth, thus violating the first commandment. Even on the rich young ruler s own terms, Jesus proved the rich young ruler would not be saved. 7
9 Why is it hard for wealthy people to enter heaven? The more we have, the more we are apt to trust in what we have. If we have gained so much, we think heaven is within our grasp to gain. 10 What does our regeneration say about the regeneration of the whole world? God has regenerated us and will regenerate the word. The fulfilment of His promise to us is proof of his fidelity to the cosmos. Jesus is the model, the Firstfruits of a new-world resurrection. We have and will follow him. In the same way, all creation will be regenerated, i.e., made new. Addendum The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God. And the present state of things is this. The two kinds of life are now not only different (they would always have been that) but actually opposed. The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that. Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your toys could come to life? Well suppose you could really have brought them to life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt. He thinks you are killing him. He will do everything he can to prevent you He will not be made into a man if he can help it. What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know. But what God did about us was this. The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself was born into the world as an actual man - a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular colour, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a foetus inside a Woman s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab. The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all men were intended to be. And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, killed, He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn - poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed-killed every day in a sense - the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point. For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier - real tin, just like the rest - had come fully and splendidly alive. 8
What, then, is the difference which He has made to the whole human mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless spiritual life, has been done for us. Humanity is already saved in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that salvation. But the really tough work-the bit we could not have done for ourselves -has been done for us. We have not got to try to climb up into spiritual life by our own efforts: -it has already come down into the human race. If we will only lay ourselves open to the one Man in whom it was fully present, and who, in spite of being God, is also a real man, He will do it in us and for us. Remember what I said about good infection. One of our own race has this new life. if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis ----------------------------------- Behind the Book is only one aspect of Heritage s teaching ministry which seeks to employ our church s mission statement: Connecting to God, Growing with Others and Impacting the world. On Wednesday evenings we connect to Sunday morning s Bible passage and discover what it says through in-depth Bible study. Sunday morning in corporate worship (9:30am) we grow from the passage by learning what it means for our daily living. In Community Groups (10:45am) we practically apply the text, being impacted by it and learning to impact the world with it. CGI provides a balanced approach to life and Bible study; an upward look (Connect), an inward look (Grow) and an outward look (Impact) ensuring that our mission fulfils our vision to be a God-centered, Great Commission congregation. It s a well-known and beneficial way to approach the Bible Connect/Observation, Grow/Interpretation, Impact/Application. 9