God's Invitation to Voyage to the Deep

We invite you to turn to our scripture reading for this morning.

It's found in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

We'll be looking at verses 17 through 22, a passage known as the rich young man.

If you're using a pew Bible in front of you, you'll find that on page 846.

Mark chapter 10, beginning in verse 17.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

And as Jesus was setting out on his journey, a man ran up to him and knelt down before him and asked, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments.

Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud.

Honor your father and mother.

And he said to Jesus, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

And come follow me.

Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Here ends the reading of God's word.

Well, a couple of years ago in National Geographic, there was a story about deep sea exploration.

There we read that for years, for years he had dreamed of diving to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, more than a mile deeper than the height of Mount Everest.

But to make it happen, explorer and filmmaker James Cameron had to be willing to face great challenges.

As I read on in that article, it became really clear that the task of designing, building, testing, and eventually sitting in a submersible vehicle while it descended to a depth of seven miles to the ocean floor is not for the faint of heart.

Nor would it be a quick and easy task.

This kind of deep sea diving would take much resolve.

It would involve a lot of risk, a lot of loss, and a lot of fear.

Well, in March of 2002, with his own life on the line, James Cameron heroically and successfully completed his voyage to the depth, to the acclaim of the world.

Well, in our text for today and for the next two weeks, we are going to see a voyage of a very different kind.

A voyage to which God is calling each of us.

And like Cameron's descent, it's a voyage of striking depth.

And it will require us to have deep resolve and take risks that we never imagined, to endure cost and to face unnerving fear.

It won't be easily entered or quickly mastered.

But unlike Cameron's descent, the payoff, the payoff, will outlast any earthly fame or trophy.

Well, as we come this morning to a passage that is very familiar to all of us who are churchgoers or if you've been raised in the church, you'll know this passage as the often called the rich young ruler.

But I'd like to approach this passage by kind of in a little different angle today.

I'd like to look at what's going on behind the scenes of this passage that really drives a lot of what we read on the surface.

And I'd like to do it by looking at two questions.

The first question is what is the deep place to which God is inviting us to voyage?

What's the deep place that God's inviting you and me to voyage?

He invited the man in our passage, and we'll see that.

And he still speaks and invites us today.

The second question is going to be, why is it so hard for us to move off the ship's deck?

Well, let's begin with the first question.

What is this deep place to which God is calling us to voyage?

The first thing I think you'll see as you begin to look at this passage and hear it is that this deep place is not easily seen.

In fact, this young man who was seeking out Jesus, he had missed it his entire life.

He just didn't see it.

But Jesus was intent on showing him this place at least three times in this encounter.

He wants this man to take this voyage.

He wants you to take it as well.

He does this in an unusual way.

Jesus invites this man using a mirror.

In fact, three times in this passage, we're going to see Jesus break out the mirror.

And a mirror is something that shows you something of yourself.

But this is no ordinary mirror.

This is a mirror that looks beyond the outside and focuses on what's on the inside.

I'd just like us to spend a few moments and look at how this event unfolds in Mark's account.

The scene opens in a really dramatic fashion.

There's something about the opening of this that is just unusual.

There's a kind of last-minute, urgent feel about how this whole thing just kind of unfolds immediately here.

And it leaves us wondering what's really going on here.

Jesus is about to leave.

In fact, as he was setting out, out of the crowd somewhere, out of a house, out of the bushes, comes this man running up to him and falling down in front of him on his knees.

I couldn't help but think of the many times that I've left our house in a car.

And I have kids, and if you've had children, young children especially, older kids don't do this, but the young kids, how many times it's happened as I was pulling out into the street and getting ready to put in to drive and go forward.

The garage door busts open, and out comes one of my kids in their pajama bottoms, bare feet, with a panicked look on their face.

Taddy! Wait, I want to come with you.

And it just has that kind of feel to it, this last minute urgency.

What's going on here is it's a good question.

I wonder, was this man's world being rocked by some new pain that God had brought in his life to get his attention?

Was his world being rocked maybe by something he heard Jesus say?

Jesus had been going around saying things that were designed to just break down the barriers of religion, of which this man was a very religious guy.

Or maybe all of this was a kind of persona of humility.

Maybe this man just enjoyed being thought of as being pious in other people's eyes.

And that what he's doing here is driven by twisted motives.

We don't really know.

Whatever's going on, though, he raises an incredibly revealing question about where he is in his heart.

He asked Jesus, what must I do to be saved?

What must I do to be saved?

I don't know how that question strikes you.

I think how it strikes you will say a lot about maybe how you see with your own heart.

I wonder if that question just sounds outrageous to you.

Really?

What must I do to be saved?

Well, it actually reveals a great deal about this man besides his bad theology.

And Jesus is going to show it to him.

Jesus is going to break out the mirror.

And he does it through his responses.

Let's look at the first response that Jesus gives here.

Why do you call me good?

Good, teacher?

Why do you call me good?

Now, you've got to understand, this guy didn't come out to Jesus believing that he is God's Son in the flesh.

That he's really facing his creator here.

Jesus has been going around, even his own disciples weren't really clear on who exactly he was entirely.

They had a growing awareness of this.

But to the masses, Jesus is a prophet of some kind, a man of God, and he's powerful.

This guy has a lot of wealth, we're told.

Maybe this is a kind of meeting of the power brokers.

One good man to another.

What do I have to do to be saved?

And Jesus just asked him, Good.

Why are you even thinking in that category of good?

Where does that come from?

Are you a good man?

Do you see yourself as a good man?

Samir.

Do you see the mirror?

The mirror's foggy because it's penetrating, it's going down under the surface.

Do you see yourself as a good man?

You know, you didn't get that by my word, Jesus might have said.

My word has always spoken to the condition of the human heart, the depth of its depravity.

In one place, the psalmist wrote, The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside.

Together, they have become corrupt.

There is no one who does good, not even one.

A verse that is well known and taken up into the New Testament as the great theme of how we are all corrupt and broken to the very depths of our soul.

And there is no one who does good.

Well, Jesus moves right in with a second response to this man.

You know the commandments.

You know the Ten Commandments?

He's going to pick the place that could encapsule and summarize the law.

If there was such a place, it would be the Ten Commandments.

You know the law that God had given.

Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't defraud, honor your father and mother.

I wonder as you look at this, if you see there's a striking selection of verses here.

Jesus leaves out the most important ones.

And he adds an additional one.

Very interesting.

Do not defraud.

That's not a part of the Ten Commandments, unless you could think of it as being maybe the meaning of it sandwiched in another one of not stealing.

I think this is another mirror of Jesus that he's pulling out.

Maybe this is an indication of why, of how this man, this rich man, got some of his wealth.

At this point, the man answers Jesus.

I've kept all these from my youth.

Wow.

Wow.

It's the mirror.

Two mirrors now, right there.

Oblivious.

I'm good.

I've kept them all from my youth.

To this man, keeping the commandments was something external and outward.

To this man, his religious life was managing sin in the sight of others.

That's what his religion was.

But God had always made it clear that he is interested in the heart.

And in scriptures, the heart is the seat of the real person.

It's the core of who you really are.

It's the real you deep down.

The real us.

At one point, God had made this so strikingly clear when he was choosing a king for Israel.

He told Samuel, he says, don't look on the appearance or the height of this particular guy you have in mind, because I've rejected him.

The Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

That's where all the action is.

All the action is in the deep.

It's seven miles down on the floor of the Mariana Trench in your soul.

That's where all the action is.

The outside is like the facade of a building.

That's all it is.

I love the next part of the response.

It's actually kind of twofold.

Before Jesus actually speaks his third response, he does something amazing.

He does something that sets the tone of what's really happening in this whole passage.

This passage is not about rebuke, although there is a subtle rebuke here.

This passage is about invitation.

The Lord looked at him.

I love for you to just close your eyes a moment and try to imagine what that look would be from Jesus of love.

He loved this man in his ignorance.

He loved this man in his wickedness.

He loved this man, even though this man would probably think if God knew what was really in me, he would want nothing to do with me.

Jesus is inviting this man to something.

And it says he loved him.

Loved him.

Well, then he uses a little different tactic.

I think the invitation part comes out really clearly here because he doesn't just keep coming through the front door.

Now he moves to the back.

You've kept the commandments, have you?

Go sell everything.

And you'll have treasures in heaven and come follow me.

Of course, Jesus isn't giving him some kind of formula outward for him to go do.

Do you see what he's doing?

This is maybe the biggest mirror of all.

Now the mirror is focusing in on this man's idolatry.

He's an idolater.

He's broken the very first commandment.

Thou shalt have no other gods before thee.

If this man had known his heart, he would know it's an idle factory, day in and day out.

His whole life has been nothing but idolatry.

And yeah, he's done some things on the outside and he's maneuvered and but he is lost.

And he needs a savior.

And the savior is there, inviting him to come with him, to come with him.

But he's got to be willing to go with him.

He's a man who's unwilling to accept the truth about what lived in him.

This mirror is a powerful mirror.

And it's a mirror that shines on each one of us.

I think the question is, can we see it?

Can we follow Jesus into the depth of our heart where God is inviting us to voyage?

Now I want to ask a question that's very practical.

Why is it so hard for us to move off the deck?

You know, when James Cameron did his land-breaking journey to the depth, his vessel was sitting on the deck of a ship for weeks.

They had to wait for everything to be just right.

They waited and they waited and they waited.

They were anxious.

And actually, at the last possible day, they were able to get off the deck and begin the journey.

We were kind of like that.

This man is like that.

There's something about us that does not want to go into our heart.

Some of that is just culture.

Some of that is because of Western European culture.

Other cultures have done a far better job of making people aware that actually we have something going on deep within our core that's very hard for us to get at, and that is the most important thing about us.

And that we get windows into what's going on down there all the time.

We get windows through our emotions, through the anger that we feel, through the jealousy that we feel, through the vengeance that we feel, through all kinds of things that happen.

We get windows into what's really going on down there.

But our culture, even our Christian culture, has ignored that largely.

Even though we'll have an occasional sermon on it, or maybe multiple sermons that mention it.

There's something about the practical moving into our heart that is so incredibly difficult for us to do.

But the scriptures tell us that the Lord, the Spirit of God, plums the depths of our heart, and He is able to reveal it to us.

The saddest moment in the record of this event is the last line.

Really?

I think if we read this, just kind of read it in a way that it soaks into us, you could just cry on the last line.

Because this man goes away despondent.

He goes away sad.

He goes away unwilling to get into the voyage craft and close the hatch.

Unwilling to go down to the deep with God.

Unwilling to believe that the Lord already knew what was in there.

In fact, he's been showing it to him.

And yet he looked at him and didn't condemn him on the spot, but invited him to go down with him.

I wonder if you're there today.

I wonder if you're that man or woman or young person who you've got just a glimpse, but enough of a glimpse to terrify you that I know what's going on down there and I'm not going to face it.

It doesn't have to be that way.

The same Lord who loved this man loves you.

It is inviting you today to open the hatch.

Put your life on the line.

Take the risk.

Be willing to be unnerved by the fear and to get in that hatch.

I want to talk to the Christians among us.

And we're just going to kind of begin this this morning.

We're going to continue this next week.

Because we know that to even be a Christian, there has to be a willingness to some degree to go down a little bit.

You have to be willing to enter that journey and look at your own heart before the Lord.

It's called repentance.

And to own something of what we see in our heart and to cling to the work of Christ as our only righteousness.

That is what it means to be a Christian.

That's how our journey begins.

And then we're told something wonderful.

In fact, the Old Testament always, always foretold and looked forward to what God had always planned.

He's going to give us a new heart.

A new heart.

And that begins at conversion.

But don't let any of us think for a moment that that new heart comes to us as a finished work.

In one sense, the new heart, it's the Holy Spirit living in us.

There's something alive in us, God's own presence at the core of our being.

He's changed something about who we are.

It's a mystery.

But we're to think of that more as a sapling than a full-grown tree.

It's something that has to be grown and pursued.

And this journey into the heart as a Christian is perhaps the scariest journey of all.

Because the first journey was tough as much as it was.

But it was it was quick.

It was over.

It was done, maybe, right?

But this journey goes on and it will take years.

And it's more difficult than you ever imagined.

It's kind of like I recently had a 50-year checkup.

And I had to have a you know, a scope, a colonoscopy.

And they give you this drink to drink.

And I'd heard all you old timers talk about this drink, how hard it is.

And come on, all in.

So I started in, I had my gallon jug, and I got I got three glasses down, and I thought, what a bunch of winers.

This is gonna be a piece of cake.

Man, by the time I got to the fifth glass, the sixth glass, this thing was like Elisa's jar of oil.

It just never ran out, just kept being there at three-quarters full.

Couldn't get this thing down.

That's how this journey of the heart is.

It starts off easy, sort of, but it gets difficult because it's gonna take years.

And you're gonna be invited by God's mirror all the time.

See, Jesus is still using his mirrors.

You want to know when you see the mirror of God?

You see it every time you have a conflict of any moment of all.

The next time you feel anger rise up inside of you.

The next time you feel self-justification rise up inside of you.

Open yourself up to the Lord and say, Lord, what are you showing me in this mirror?

What where am I?

What's really going on down here?

Because there's an invitation to come into that deep place and begin to see what's really going on down there.

We're gonna have a lot more to say about that next week.

I want to close by just saying, be willing to go where God leads you into the depths of your heart.

You might feel like, in fact, you will feel like at some point or another.

God, you know, this journey goes seven miles down.

So at 500 feet, you might be feeling fine.

But God is going to keep herding you.

He's gonna herd you into your deepest fears.

He's gonna herd you into places where your inner, the inner corruption of our hearts is going to be seen by you and by others.

And he's not doing it to humiliate you.

He already knows it's there.

He's doing it to give us life.

Life.

The reward is so much richer than the trophy that Cameron received or the acclaim that the explorer received.

Make it your life goal to ask the Lord to take you on this journey of the heart.

All of Scripture is focused that everything stands or falls in the heart.

I'd like to invite the choir to come.

They're gonna sing a song for us.

And I would like to ask you to just close your eyes and to make this song your own prayer.

Your own prayer before the Lord.