Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
Morning, everybody. I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here. We're going all the way through the Book of Mark and we are actually in part 11 for those of you who are scoring at home. We started this series right at the beginning of the new year. So after Advent, the Christmas season, we jumped into a gospel, as we've done for the last several years, to get a deep dive into one of the gospels. For those of us who may be don't always spend a lot of time diving in deep into a section of scripture. We like to go real, real slow all the way through a gospel, all the way up through the Easter season. It gives us a greater understanding of the context of Jesus's ministry. It gives us a greater understanding of scripture on the whole, as opposed to just grabbing individual pieces, or I call it bumper sticker, scripture reading. You know, I like this one, I like this one, I like this one. We'll kind of slap those on my life and call it good. But instead it pulls us all the way through the narrative so that we can greater understand what Jesus was after during his time in ministry. And Jesus presents what I would say is a difficult lesson in today's passage of scripture. The late, great pastor Tim Keller talks about these tough pieces of scripture, tough sayings, hard sayings of Jesus. And he describes them as far as how we're to consume them. He says it's like consuming hard candy. It's not like chocolate where you throw it in your mouth and it kind of melts. You chew on it and you swallow it and it's gone. Instead, it's like hard candy. We're meant to sit with it and hold it for a while in order to understand its sweetness, to understand what's at the center of this thing. If we bite on it immediately, we break our teeth, or if we swallow it immediately, we don't digest it properly. But instead, we're meant to sit with this. So I would encourage you, as we go through the narrative today, to sit with it and wrestle with it. Even beyond my teaching or this service, I would encourage you to stop and to wrestle with this text, as I believe that you'll find something in that wrestling. So we're going to walk through two small sections of scripture here in Mark, chapter 10 and starting in verse 13. And the first one is this. It says one day some parents brought their children to Jesus so that he could touch and bless them. But the Disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. And when Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, let the children come to me. Don't stop them. For the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.
Tag that phrase. The kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children, says I tell you the truth. Anyone who doesn't receive the kingdom of God like a child, like these children, will never enter it. And then he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on their heads, and he blessed them. That's the end of part one. And then going on into the second section, it says this. As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running to him, knelt down and asked, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus asked, Only God is truly good. It's interesting that this. That this person, this man that comes to see Jesus uses a phrase good teacher. But he used this phrase good in a context that is really reserved for Caesar, the ruler at the time. It's this goodness in this deified way, this ultimate goodness as a descriptor. And he uses this with Jesus as if to kind of tip his cap to say, I wonder or I've heard that you may be the Messiah that was promised. It says in verse 19. But to answer your question, you know the commandments. You must not murder, you must not commit adultery, you must not steal, you must not testify falsely, you must not cheat anyone. Honor your father and mother and teacher. The man replied, I have obeyed all of these commandments since I was young. And looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. The there is still one thing you haven't done, he told him. Go and sell all of your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. And at this, the man's face fell and he went away. And he went away sad, or he went away grieving, many of your translations would say, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. And this amazed them. But Jesus said again, dear children, it's very hard for those that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God. In fact, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were astounded. Then who in the world can be saved? They asked. And Jesus looked at them intently and said, humanly speaking, it's impossible, but not with God.
Everything is possible with God.
So the tough bit that I was describing at the beginning of this message exists inside the phrase of it's more. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And having spent virtually my entire life in church, I've heard this camel through the eye of a needle metaphor described or try to pull apart in so many different ways. There's one group I remember when I was growing up that described the needle as some of the gates that would surround the city that were a little bit small and tight. And to get a camel in through these gates, you would kind of need the camel to, like, suck it in, right? At the right time, right? Kind of like some of us getting our pants on this morning after a good, healthy Saturday of eating. Us professional eaters, you got to get the camels, got to kind of suck it in. And then really, if you work hard on this, you can kind of get the camel through this. There's another group of people that believe that there's this word that means thread in Aramaic that sounds a lot like camel, and it's actually a mistranslation. It's actually talking about a thread through the eye of a needle and how it can be difficult to get it through. But with enough time and purpose and process, you can get the needle threaded. But really, what Jesus is saying, none of that really matters. What Jesus is saying is. He's saying something like, what we would say today is like, when pigs fly or a snowball's chance in hell has a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. What he's saying, he's saying this is impossible. A rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Which is a huge, massive, crazy, ridiculous, sweeping statement that is so interesting and should be so challenging to all of us today.
And it's so challenging that the disciples actually have a difficult moment of processing. It says this amazed the disciples that Jesus would say this. Why does it amaze them? Well, who is this guy that's come and approach them? We know through reading other gospels, this same story is in there, that he's actually a rich young ruler. And if I read rich young ruler, I'm gonna put handsome in there as well. I gotta believe he's handsome. Incredibly dashing and handsome. There are not many rich, young, ugly rulers out there. There are some, but I gotta believe he's. He's got everything going together for him, essentially. Is what this. What the. The descriptors are meant to have, you understand? And at this time, and I would say even in the time today, there was this idea that the only way for you to get rich, like this guy, you would have actually had to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, crush people along the way in order to obtain such riches. And so there would be this comfort in this idea of, well, no rich people can enter into the kingdom of God because they only get there by disobeying the commandments. But this man comes to Jesus and he says, I've obeyed all the commands that you just said. Ever since I was a child, I have lived a virtuous life that I haven't gained my riches and my fortune by crushing other people. Instead, I have done it as many people can do, of course, even today, by being a visionary, by being an innovator, by deferring my pleasure that I could have now in order for something greater on the other side, I've actually done this the right and proper way.
And so the disciples would have been listening to this conversation, going, well, this guy's great.
He's rich, he's young, he's handsome, and he's virtuous. He's done everything the right way.
And Jesus pushes on one more thing, and he asks him to give all of that up in order to go ahead and follow after him. And at that point, he is sad. And so the response from the disciples is not, thank God the rich can't enter into the kingdom of heaven. Oh, the rich people, they are so snobby and awful, and they create parties that they don't invite us to. And no way. We're fishermen, and we're people that have all left behind any amount of money that we had in order to follow after this. Rabbi, we have nothing. And so this entire lesson doesn't pertain to us. Thank God we're on the good side and he's on the bad side. That's not their reaction. I've done some premarital counseling for people over the course of my time in ministry. And one question that comes up every so often is, ben, when you and your wife got married, did you combine your bank accounts to share your resources? And my thought was always, yeah, it was pretty easy to combine and share. Zero.
We had nothing. You know, we got married at the age of 22, which is. That's something difficult. Speaking of impossible, snowball's chance in hell, somehow we made it through. But I was like, yeah, this whole conversation, a lot of people, a lot of People have. They get married at a later stage. They actually have some resources. They have something that they would give up in order to combine bank accounts or resources together. And I listen to those conversations and I go, I have no idea what you're talking about, because that was not our experience by any means. The disciples don't do that. They don't say, well, this doesn't pertain to us. They are actually grieved or amazed in.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Their own way that Jesus, this man, is incredible and he can't belong.
He's not inheriting the kingdom of heaven. And why is that?
[00:09:26] Speaker A: It's a little bit scary to some people that are trying to do their best in order to follow after Jesus. But Jesus pushes on this because of his riches. Now, this. This story isn't meant to illustrate again that every single rich person is the worst thing in the world and they're always doing it wrong. But it is meant to illustrate for all of us that money can very easily distort faith.
It's got a long history and tradition. Money and the power that comes along with money can distort very, very easily faith.
There's this guy named Andrew Walls who is a professor at Princeton University in the early 2000s that was doing a study on trying to understand why the centers of Christianity, the center of the Christian faith, has been on a pilgrimage. It's been moving its entire existence when many other ancient faiths have simply had their center, and it remains the center.
When you talk about Islam and when you talk about Buddhism, the center of those, geographically the center places of those is still same as it was when the faith first began. But Christianity starts in Jerusalem and then eventually it migrates over into the Mediterranean area in Alexandria and Rome, and then it goes up into northern Europe and Germany to the barbarians in northern Europe, they would say, then it goes over into the Americas. And so somebody asked this Andrew Walls, why?
Why does Christianity move while none of the other ones do?
And his assumption through his education and his study was that Christianity always takes root with people that are broken and hurting and poor and exist on the margins. And in all of these other places, you will see that Christianity takes root and it gains momentum, and then all of a sudden, it becomes institutionalized. And when it becomes institutionalized, in many cases, that faith begins to be a gathering faith, not just of people, but. But it's a gathering and a holder and an acquisition faith based on holding all of the resources. When, of course, the faith was never meant to be that. That at the center of the Christian faith is the cross. And the cross is the center because it signifies this sacrificial, suffering servant that Jesus was, that came, as the scripture says. And we'll talk about in a little.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Bit to people that need a doctor, that are in need of a hospital. They need. They understand that their need is great and that they are broken and hurting, not those that fear. They are made whole in and of themselves. And so the center of Christianity moves where the people know that they don't have it altogether, where they are broken, where they are subject to real pain. That's where the center of Christianity goes. Because the people that experience those things.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Understand Jesus at a different level, and they begin to hold and profess their faith in a way that's actually connected to the cross and isn't just connected to our churches. So the history of the church, even.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: The migration to the center of the.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Church, speaks to this fact. And of course, we see today that in many impoverished countries, in many poor places, in many places where there's actual real persecution against Christianity, the numbers of people in these faiths, in these places is growing. And over the next couple hundred years, the center of Christianity will probably move and migrate into those places that would tell us here today that are we a people that despite our geography, are we a people that are willing to understand that we are simply incomplete without the way of Jesus?
That we are a people, even with our wealth and riches and every resource, that we have a people that still find ourselves looking for something better and more on the other side of this faith.
And we see this distortion in this story, as it says again, that the rich young ruler went away sad or went away grieving. And another place that you find this word grief is in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is praying before his death. And he's actually so stressed, he's so consumed by this thought of his own death and physical pain. But a separation that he feels through death, a separation from the Father that he becomes so grieved that his very identity, what he has centered his entire life around, is about to be removed from him in this process of death. Jesus is feeling this pain, this grief. And the same grief is assigned to this rich young ruler who is now faced with the opportunity to let go of the thing that he has centered his entire life around. His status, his resource, his safety, everything is consumed in. In his riches to the point where even while looking at Jesus in the face, he refuses to follow him because he has many, many riches.
So I ask you today, for those of you who Maybe are a little overtly consumed with your wealth and your riches.
What would happen if Jesus came and asked you to be more generous or to give away what you had? In that moment, we discover what our lives are truly centered around.
Are we centered around this purpose that Jesus is giving us? And we then use our resources in order to accomplish his will and become the people in discipleship and formation that he's calling us to be? Or are we a people that will walk away grieving and sad and holding close the thing that we have centered our life around? It doesn't just happen with money. It happens with unforgiveness. It happens with holding a grudge. Some of you have been holding a grudge for decades, and you won't let it go because actually your identity and your personality is now based around this grudge that you're holding. What you hate has become a lot more of the headline of who you are as opposed to who and what you love.
Then if we were to remove the grudge, then it would remove the story that you've been telling yourself about how hurt you've been, and it would prevent you from continuing to go forward with Jesus. I believe that all these things eventually become idols. If we center them in our lives, they become the more important thing and God and Jesus is then relegated to a boss, to a moral compass, to an idea, to a little bit of encouragement and inspiration that we get on a Sunday. And instead of him becoming our savior, we hold onto our idols. That's what Jesus is asking this rich young ruler. He's saying, look, I understand that you've done it. You've been virtuous, you've done all these things.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: You know the teachings, and now you seek more knowledge. But I want you to go beyond.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Addressing me as someone that can provide you knowledge as you head into this next area of your life. And it said, I want to become your savior. I want you to become everything that you want to follow after and everything that you want to be, because you are now with me. Jesus wants to encourage us to remove the idol from the middle of our lives and instead become a people that are willing to walk and follow after Him.
I love that Jesus includes that. He looked at him and loved him.
Such an interesting phrase.
Little League baseball is about to start again. I'm coaching again, defending the Diamondbacks championship from last year. I know you're very interested, which means nothing for you, means some stories that I will throw out from this platform again, that, again, you probably won't care about. But nonetheless, we as coaches had to go through the little league draft. So they evaluate all the kids that are playing. It's really weird to evaluate 10 year old baseball players.
And then they put them in order and then, you know, you pick for those of, you know, fantasy football kind of style. All right. It's a snake draft for the nerds out there. And.
And one of the kids that was toward the top of the list is a kid that I wanted to have back again from last year. He's a good ball player, really sweet kid. But I have become really attached. His name's Barrett. I have become attached to this kid. I love him so much now. Why? Because he's the greatest player out there. That's not necessarily true, but I love him because he's so different from my son in a lot of ways. My son is a good athlete. He's very intense, ultra competitive. But he has this thing that's way healthier than his dad is that when the game is over, he's like, okay, cool, where's the pizza?
And I was not that way.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: I was like, oh, we lost.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: My life is over until the next one. And Barrett's got this same disease that I do. And Barrett will be up there pitching, and he'll throw the first pitch and the ump will go ball, and Barrett will go.
And I'm like, whoa, Barrett. And the next pitch throws a strike.
I'm like, oh, man, we gotta stop riding the wave.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: He'll strike out and he'll cry and he'll get a triple and I'll be over there.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: He's made me cry as a third base coach because he has this look.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: On his face like, oh, my gosh, I did it.
And me and him are both like, yeah, when we lose, we're gonna lose all of our friends and we're never gonna get another opportunity. When we win, we can soar on the wings of eagles. We're the greatest in the world. God, I love Barrett so much.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: I see myself in him. I see little league Ben, and possibly adult Ben in him.
And Jesus is doing this with the rich young ruler in this passage.
Jesus, we know based on this that we call the theology of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit existing together in community for all of eternity. Most Bible scholars will even tell you what we see in scripture falls flat in comparison in an effort to describe what this relationship is like between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But it's this eternal communion imperfection between the three, and the Son being Jesus left that communion in order to come and to love and to care for and to show us the way. Then what Jesus is doing is he's looking at this rich young ruler is he's saying, I see you in me.
I know what it's like to give up everything in order for something greater and better, a deeper relationship. I know what it's like, and I know that it's better on the other side of that sacrifice.
It's not Christian masochism. Jesus isn't asking for masochism. He's not asking for you to do something, just to do it. He's saying, there's something better on the.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Other side of following me.
And I believe that's a challenge for the church today. I know that there's a lot of things that we can engage in that.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Aren'T inherently sinful in this world.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: I would say most things aren't inherently.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Sinful in this world.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: But God is asking us to give up some things, not just to be masochists, not in order to just have a pound of flesh that Jesus can say, finally, they actually put some skin in the game. But Jesus is coming to us, and he is saying, look, there's something better for you in this faith. When you follow after me and you stop just staying inside the city gates of your churches and your riches and you come out into the dirty world and you begin to care for and to love the people that I care about, you will then understand me, and you will find something that's not less than, that's not just sacrificial. You'll find something that's better than you ever could have possibly imagined.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: You'll find the thing that you've been looking for all this time.
Sometimes I'll listen to podcasts or interviews with celebrities, you know, and so many celebrities are just so handsome and they're so beautiful, and they're becoming more, quote, unquote, relatable. And so I'll look at them, I'll.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: See them on the screen.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: I'll be like, that person is the most handsome. How do they get their 5 o'clock shadow? Just so I don't understand how they do it. And they're, like, really raw and real and relatable. And they'll be like, yeah, I did all these things. I've accomplished every goal that I want to. I'm incredibly rich. I'm married to the person I want to be married to. I'm putting a lot of money back in my body and my health and fitness, and I feel better than I've ever felt. And still I find myself being really insecure and depressed. And a lot of people in the comments are like, wow, that makes them so relatable and real. And for me, I'm listening to the interview and I'm going, no.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: I want to know that we can get to the place that you are and everything is finally good.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: This stinks.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: I want to know that we can achieve our way to the top. And then even if there's just a few of us in this world that feel great at any age, knowing that we are sitting on a huge pile of money and we look fantastic, finally we've achieved everything that we want to. I want to know that that feels good. And they're like, it feels bad still. I'm like, ah, no.
But the rich young ruler is doing this.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: He has all the resources, he's got.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: The virtue, he's well known in the community. And yet he comes out to this rabbi to ask this question, why? Because he knows he sticks, still hasn't.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: Found what he's looking for.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: He still hasn't found it.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: And he wants something from this rabbi, a little bit of a saying, a little bit of note, a nugget, a practice for him to do. And Jesus says, I see in you not that your riches are bad and what make you wretched, but I see that you worship them. And I insist that whatever is in the center of your life, you lay down and you go ahead and follow me. If you want to experience this, if you want to find what you've been looking for, this is the next step for you to take.
Jesus is giving the same opportunity for those of us in here today. Maybe it is finances for you. I want to ask you, do you stress about finances? Are you wealthier than you've ever been? And you're more stressed about your money than you've ever been, you might be worshiping your finances.
Have you reached a higher status than you've ever reached before? And you simply find yourself wanting to reach that next rung all the time, the next group of friends, friends, the next people, the next section of status. If you're consumed with this and you're anxious about it, if you find yourself having friends that you don't even like because of some kind of a lifestyle that they give you, I want to encourage you. You're probably worshiping your status.
All these idols that we build up, that we have a desire to worship ultimately don't lead to anywhere except for another door, another door, another door, another ladder to go ahead and open and climb and find this emptiness on the other side. But Jesus offers a better alternative, and that is following after him.
But we won't see it unless we understand how we're to approach this life. In Mark, chapter two. This is where we started this series, of course, all those weeks ago, shares this story. It says, then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. And as he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting, sitting next to his tax collector's booth. Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him.
So Levi got up and followed him. And later Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. There were many people of this kind were among Jesus's followers.
And when the teachers of religion, religious law, saw who were law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked the disciples, why does he eat with sin? And Jesus heard this. He told them, healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do.
I have come to call not those who think that they are righteous, but those who know that they are sinners.
Wealth and riches, faster than just about anything else in this life, will teach us that we can be gods unto ourselves.
We've done it. We have the power, we have the control. And now we have achieved everything that we would want in this life. And Jesus would say the opposite. It's those who know that they're broken and hurting that need intervention.
Which is why, of course, Jesus himself is saying it's impossible for the rich to enter into the kingdom of God. But with me, nothing is impossible. He's saying, only with my influence, only with my intervening, only with me coming in and bringing a change and you following after that is the only way.
I think Jesus is encouraging us to be a people that don't find ourselves at the end of our lives, understanding finally then and only then, that we've wasted so much on the silliness life I've spent.
I didn't share this at the other services, so there's no service after you. So congratulations, you get a long sermon.
I've spent a lot of my life, and maybe this sounds funnier, but it was very real to me. I've spent a lot of my life really thinking about, like, my appearance and weight and whatever, and I've gone up and down a lot and I want to be healthy, I want to do all the things. I think it's fantastic and wonderful again Eating competition guy over here.
And I'm not done with participating in health, obviously, but I am done with the idea that I'm going to someday get to the end of my life, and I'm going to look back and go, wow, I spent a whole lot of time thinking about how I looked. What a waste to me.
I just don't want to think about that. I don't want to.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: I can look at pictures. Have you guys ever done this?
[00:26:32] Speaker A: I look at pictures and I go.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Man, I look great. And I go.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: I remember feeling awful about how I looked then.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: What a stupid time of my life where I have this distortion and misunderstanding about how I don't want to be that way. I want to be in the room. I want to love people. I want to love myself. I want to love Jesus. I want to be generous. I want to give myself away.
And this rich young ruler, I've got to believe comes to the end of his life and goes, well, I still have a pile of money. That's great.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Still feeling the emptiness. We're chasing so many things that don't have eternal and real value. We're chasing so many things.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: We're consumed with so many thoughts that don't mean anything in the grand scheme. They don't leave a real mark on our lives. You dying with a pile of money means nothing. Your generosity into the world that helps the poor and the hurting and the broken, the people that feel like outsiders and that are marginalized, those who are unwell, those who feel like there's no opportunity to come back and experience a life that's full of purpose and grace and mercy, our care and love, and pour into those places where our resources are being used to lift up humanity. These are the things that will stand the test of time and will change.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: The world around us.
But a people that are so consumed with these little, tiny, weird, weird, interesting details and frailties of our own life, we will simply be consumed and die within the walls of them. But Jesus offers something greater. Amen.
There's this great quote, and this is a great starting place for many of us today. Maybe you're listening to me and you're going, look, I just don't care.
I'm. I'm a few things removed from actually wanting to follow after Jesus. And I find myself in that position so many times if I just don't have the energy to even start.
Lindsay sent me this great quote from St. Teresa of Avila, says, oh, God, I don't love you.
I don't even want to love you.
But I want to want to love you.
Maybe you find yourself in that place and that's a great starting place today where you are so far from leaving behind everything that you idolize and center in your life.
But you are on this precipice. Maybe it's a few phrases removed. I just want to want to love you. Let's start there today. I want to want to give everything that I have to you I want to want to follow.
