What About Us?

I'd encourage you to turn in your Bible to the Gospel of Luke.

We will continue studying the passage we began to study last week in chapter 18.

I'll read verses 18 through 30.

And then we'll dive into the text.

And if you don't have a Bible with you this morning, if you look right in front of you, there should be one located there in that little shelf there in the pew.

And encourage you to take that Bible and turn to page 877.

And I hope and trust that you have a Bible of your own.

But if you don't, if you don't have a copy of God's Word for yourself, we would like to give you that Bible that you're using right now from the pew.

Give it to you to take home, to keep as your own, to write in, to study.

So please, at the close of this service, just take it with you and write your name in it, consider it your own as our gift to you.

Luke chapter 18, beginning in verse 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

And a ruler asked him, 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 commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother.

And he said, All these I have kept for my youth.

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.

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

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.

Those who heard it said, Then who can be saved?

But he said, What is impossible with men is possible with God.

And Peter said, See, we have left our homes and followed you.

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, who will not receive many times more in this life, and in the age to come, eternal life.

This is God's word.

There are times in life when even the strongest Christians wonder whether it's really worth it to follow Jesus.

Notes pastor and author Philip Riken.

He continues, maybe life is better with Jesus, but it doesn't always seem that way.

Is it worth it to follow Jesus when doing the right thing makes you unpopular at school?

Or when people who do not have the same moral scruples are getting ahead of you in business?

Is it worth it to follow Jesus when serving God takes you away from your family, or when you have to say no to a romantic relationship that is hindering your growth and godliness?

Is it worth it to follow Jesus when sinners seem to have all the fun?

And when and when what God wants from you is not the same thing that you want for you?

This is the question posed by every heart obedience.

Is Jesus worth it or not?

This was the problem with the rich young ruler.

We looked at this last week.

He said he wanted eternal life.

He came to Jesus sincere.

The other gospel tells us he he ran to Jesus, he knelt before him, and he says, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

He was sincere.

He wanted to know the answer to this question.

What was most important in his life?

What took first place?

It wasn't his relationship with God, it wasn't receiving eternal life.

When he was forced to consider and forced to choose, he chose what mattered most.

He had everything in life: money, power, influence, pleasure.

Why did he come to Jesus?

Even though he had everything that the world offered, there was something that he lacked.

There was something that was missing.

There was a hole in his heart that couldn't be filled with stuff as hard as he tried.

The disciples, when they heard this interchange between the rich young ruler and Jesus, they struggled with what Jesus said.

You see, the disciples believed that the rich had their wealth because God had blessed them.

It was assumed that if you were rich, it was because you were closer to God and God had blessed you with financial gain.

And so they thought, well, if the rich, who we think are closer to God, can't get to heaven, who can?

Who can be saved then?

Well, Jesus addressed that, and we'll look over it for a few moments this morning, and not as much as we did last week in further depth, but to remind us of what Jesus said here and then to build on it in this last section with what Peter responds.

But we saw the impossibility, first of all, the impossibility of earning heaven by our good works.

The rich are not privileged before God.

God is no respecter of persons.

God doesn't look at our background or our pedigrees or our family history.

He doesn't look at our popularity.

He doesn't look at the things that the world sees and counts as important.

Jesus said here in chapter 18, verse 24, if you look at the text, he says, Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, that this man, this rich man, had become sad, said how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

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.

Everyone had assumed that this man had a leg up on everyone else in regards to the kingdom of God.

That he was rich.

God had blessed him.

He was close to God, God's favor was upon him.

But Jesus gives this outrageous analogy to show the impossibility of getting to heaven by being good.

By your good works.

This man in his own eyes, in the eyes of the community, he thought he had fulfilled everything that God had required.

And when he was challenged, he realized that there was going to be a cost.

Jesus gives this outrageous analogy.

And we mentioned last week that some try to lessen this analogy of what Jesus says here.

He says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

And some have said that there is this gate in Jerusalem called the needle's eye.

And that a camel, it was made for a man that would have to stoop low, and as the tradition goes, that this camel would have to unload all of his burdens and crawl through this gate on his knees, and that it was very difficult to do.

And we had mentioned as well that others say, well, no, that's not really what is here, but the word here for camel in the Greek is very similar to the Aramaic word for a rope.

And so what Jesus was really saying, it was like trying to thread a needle with uh with a cable, with a large rope that you would use to tie your boat down with.

But both of these explanations are incorrect.

And first of all, they're incorrect because there's no historic evidence for either of those.

These have been often repeated, have been written down.

In fact, one of the commentaries even said, it's often been said, and then went in and gave the explanation for this gate.

But more than that, it misses the point of what Jesus is trying to say.

We're trying to explain away what Jesus is saying here.

Jesus isn't saying it's difficult for them to be saved.

He's saying it's impossible in and of ourselves to be saved apart from the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

It is impossible for men to save themselves.

And that's what Jesus reminds us here.

It's impossible for us to earn our salvation by good works.

And the disciples understood it because they asked the very logical question: who then can be saved?

The disciples got it.

They understood.

They understood what Jesus was saying here.

The Bible tells us that everyone falls short of glorifying God the way we ought to.

That we can't earn our way to heaven by religion and good works.

No amount of self-effort, no amount of moral reformation is going to put us in a place that we are acceptable to a perfectly pure, holy God.

We can't do it.

No amount of good works cancels the debt of our sin and wipes the slate clean.

We can't go back and undo our history.

On our own, we fall short.

With people, it is impossible.

With man, it's impossible.

But Jesus says, with God, all things are possible.

That's why we need the cross.

That's the message of the gospel that apart from Jesus Christ, apart from his provision, his death on the cross as payment for our sins, to pay the penalty for all of our sins, it's impossible for us to have eternal life.

Well, Peter here hears this and he's trying to process this.

We don't know everything that's going on in Peter's heart, but but he hears this and he begins to try to put it into place, thinking to himself, well, I've left my family, I've left my livelihood, I've left my home.

And so he asks this question.

He makes this statement.

See, we have left our homes and followed you.

And Jesus answers this and reframes the statement that Peter gives.

But there's a second point here that we're looking at.

And what are the blessings of coming to faith in Christ?

Why commit being faithful?

Why sacrifice our lives if that doesn't save us?

And this is what Jesus has said.

It's not by our good works, it's not by what we've done.

It's impossible for us to earn eternal life.

And yet there is this call in our lives.

What benefits do we have?

And so, secondly, here we see the promise of grace rewards by our faithful life.

The promise of grace rewards by our faithful life.

Jesus here answers Peter's statement.

And he says that there is great reward.

He says, both in this life and the life to come.

One of the things that we need to recognize as we wrestle through this is even if heaven, if our relationship with God was the only blessing of accepting Christ and living out the Christian life, that that would be enough.

Everything else that God gives us is icing on the cake.

And let me explain what it what I mean by that.

When I was living in California, um, when I was living in California, I was robbed.

I went to the gym.

I used to work out at this at this gym, 24-hour fitness, and uh one day I went to the gym and uh worked out for about an hour.

I came back afterward and I went to my locker and my lock was gone, and the entire contents of my locker were empty.

And at the time I used to take off my my wedding band and I would put it in the box.

I carried the box with me.

I didn't want it to get scuffed up working out, so I would put it in the box and leave it in my locker.

And so when I came back to that locker, and as I realized, as it set in what had happened, I realized everything in that locker, including my wedding ring, was gone.

I had lost my wedding band.

I had lost the symbol of my marriage that Jen had given to me.

The expression of her love that she presented to me on my wedding day was gone.

And it hurt.

I was upset, I was sad.

I prayed for the guy who stole my stuff.

I prayed that he would come to Christ.

I prayed it would be through prison fellowship.

But but I was upset.

But but here was the thing.

I lost this precious gift that Jen had given me.

It was an expression of her love.

But I didn't lose her.

I didn't lose her.

I still had, I lost the representation, I lost the expression of her love.

But I still possessed what was vital and central and important.

I still had her love.

Everything that we have, everything that we're given in our lives is an expression of God's love to us as his children.

But if we lose it, if we if if if if those things are stripped away from us, we need to recognize that they are expressions of God's love, but they not they are not identical to it.

And we still have what is most important.

We have our Savior.

And so even if we don't possess any of the other blessings of the Christian life, we have Jesus, and that's enough.

But God is gracious, God is good, He He loves to lavish His love on us as His children.

Let me take that analogy and put it in a different way to make a different point.

A slightly different point, but thinking about a wedding ring.

And thinking about our Christian life, there's a lot of analogies the Bible uses between marriage and the Christian life.

So think about it this way.

When I got engaged to Jen, I bought an engagement ring.

And and as most guys do, you take every cent that you have and you invest it in this ring, and you give it to your you give it to your fiance.

Okay, I'm getting somebody in trouble there.

Okay.

In theory, no.

You give uh see here's the thing.

When I bought that ring and I gave it to Jen, it never entered my mind what I was giving up.

It never entered my mind, well, how much money did I pay, and how much was this cost, and how many hours of wages, and how many, none of that entered my mind.

It did not enter my mind what I was giving up.

What entered my mind is what was I getting?

The beauty of the relationship with my wife that I was going to enter into.

And you see, uh, in some ways, this is what Jesus is reminding us of as well.

When when we come to Christ, we come to Christ, and it isn't a matter of thinking, well, what is it that I'm giving up and how much is it going to cost?

The reality of it is, is when you see the beauty of the gospel and the offer of forgiveness that our sins are wiped away, that we have a relationship with the living God that starts now and lasts forever.

It isn't a matter of what we're giving up, it's a matter of what do we gain, and we gain God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

It never entered my mind what I was losing, I wasn't losing anything.

I was gaining everything.

But God promises blessing.

And this is amazing.

Because everything we do, God is pleased by our lives, but everything that we do that's pleasing to him is by his grace.

And so even as we live out our Christian lives, relying on his grace, resting in his promise of the provision of the Holy Spirit, and trusting him, everything we do is by his grace, and yet he is pleased to bless us.

Even though we become more in debt to him because he gives us the very grace that we need in order to honor him.

And yet God promises to honor our faithfulness and bless us.

And we see this here in this passage in Luke of what Jesus says here.

And it's helpful sometimes to compare uh the different gospel accounts to give a fuller expression of what Jesus, the entire dialogue of what Jesus said.

So I just want us to read this section in the other gospels.

Turn in Matthew 19.

We won't camp there, but just to see this section and what Jesus says and how the gospel writers writing from different perspectives share different aspects of the conversation.

In Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

Beginning in verse 27.

Matthew 19, 27.

Uh Peter says in reply, we'll see this, the parallels and some additional information that Matthew gives.

Peter says in reply, see, we have left everything and followed you.

What then will we have?

Jesus says to them, Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you will have, you will have followed me, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

And everyone who has left houses and brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers or children or lands for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last first.

Now turn to Mark's gospel, Mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

And we'll see a little different flavor of what uh Mark's writing.

Uh look at verse 26 through 31.

And it says, And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, With man it's impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.

Peter began to say to him, See, we have left everything and followed you.

And Jesus says, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers or children or lands for my name's sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last first.

And I share that because I want us to get the full context of what Jesus is saying here.

Um Luke doesn't share as much of the details as the other gospel writers do and in the synoptic gospels.

And so I wanted us to get a full flavor of what Jesus is saying here.

Jesus is telling them of the blessings of grace that He uh that God gives.

Talking, first of all, particularly to the disciples.

We saw this in Matthew 19, 28, that he says, in the New World, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

And the apostles fill a special role in God's kingdom, and this is a promise particularly to them.

And Jesus says, when this happens, he's very specific.

In the future, he says, uh, the ESV says, in the new world, literally at the restoration or the regeneration of all things, uh, when Christ is seated on the throne, the apostles will sit in a position of authority.

And then there's a promise to everyone.

We see this in all of the gospel accounts, and because Jesus doesn't just say the rest of this to them, he says it to the to all of his disciples, including us.

The promise to all of his faithful followers.

We see this again in uh turning back to Luke's gospel.

Uh he says that uh that you will receive many times more in this time, uh, in this life of house and wife and brothers and parents and children.

And in general, uh there is a general reality here that uh we never really give up anything in relationship uh to God.

In this life, uh God blesses us, and the life to come we'll be blessed beyond comprehension.

No eye has seen or ear heard what God has in store and planned for those who love Him.

We can't even imagine.

God gives more than we can even imagine.

And I have some good news for you.

Heaven is not a perpetual church service.

Can somebody say amen?

Could you imagine if for all of eternity this was it?

I'm not saying this is bad.

But but but but sometimes we think, well, why would I want to go to heaven?

Yeah, I mean, uh I'd sitting in church for forever.

In a perpetual church service.

You know, we have a very low, very uh obscure understanding of what heaven is going to be like.

Heaven is going to eternity, the eternal state's gonna blow our minds.

Uh in the new heavens and the new earth, if you turn to Revelation 21 and 22, don't do it now, but I encourage you to read it.

Uh, the descriptions there uh are a description of life in all of its fullness that we only have, we see the fallen reality of creation now.

But but in the new heavens and the new earth, uh it is going to be better than anything we experience now, but it's going to be a physical reality.

It is a new heavens and a new earth joined together for all of eternity.

We have glorified bodies living in a place, having relationships with one another, will work and play and have relationships, enjoy all the goodness of God many times more than we do now.

The Bible says we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face, we will dwell in the conscience presence of God for all of eternity.

With all of the redeemed saints of all times, glorifying God.

That is our destiny.

And we ought to long for it and look forward to it.

All of the joys and the goodness magnified without any of the negatives of the sin, sickness, sadness, and death.

The eternal life that we have goes beyond our ability to comprehend.

In fact, we will spend all of eternity looking at the manifold facets of the beauty, of the glory of God, and continue to be in awe and wonder of his brilliance and his greatness.

And that's the hope that we have.

That is eternal life.

But Jesus says, even now, God blesses us.

Even now in this life, God in his grace blesses us.

Someone once asked David Livingston, the uh the missionary of previous generations, thinking of the trials he had endured, the sorrows he had borne, how he had lost his wife and ruined his health in Africa, said to him, What sacrifices have you made?

Livingston answered, Sacrifices?

I never made a sacrifice in my life.

And he could say that because he wasn't looking at what he lost.

He was looking at who God is and what God had done.

And granted, there are times that God calls us to suffer.

In fact, in Mark's gospel, you notice that Mark includes that statement of Jesus there that we will have suffering in this life.

And there are times that the blessings of God are postponed, and sometimes even to the point that they're postponed to heaven.

But I believe that God delights in blessing his children abundantly, so that we might honor him most fully.

God isn't indebted to us.

He isn't indebted to us, but he is pleased to work in our lives.

And notice particularly here what Jesus says.

He says, for those who, for the sake of the kingdom of God, he says in Luke, for the gospel.

This is a general promise, yes, but it's it is particularly for those who follow Christ and because of the call of Christ, they give things up in this life.

But we're reminded that you can't outgive God.

But as I was reflecting on this passage, and I want to camp here for a moment very practically, because the particular blessing that Jesus points out here, notice what he says, he he points out here, uh primarily people.

They're primarily people.

And this is a sidebar.

Uh yeah, this isn't the main thrust of the text, but I want to camp out here in our last few minutes to think about what Jesus says here and some of the implications of it.

Because what Jesus tells us here is that what God gives us primarily is the church, is the people of God.

And so I want us to think about some of the implications of this is what is our attitude towards the church?

What is our attitude towards God's people?

How do we view God's people?

Do we see them as a blessing?

This is what Jesus says.

We're blessed with uh with people.

And so the question that I wrestle with is do I love the church?

Do I do I we can love the church in theory?

We can love the church and say, you know, we love the church, but do we love the people who are sitting around us?

Do we love God's people?

Do we see the people who are in our lives as a blessing, as a special gift by God, by his grace, to encourage and strengthen us so that we can walk with him and fulfill all that he called us to do and to glorify him.

Now, the church, and let me just very briefly, the church isn't a building.

The church is the people of God, it's God's assembly.

The church is all the people of God who have come to faith and been forgiven of their sins through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And that's the universal church of everybody who has come to faith in Christ.

Uh, the in the invisible church of all believers.

But we also have the visible church.

And the visible church is the expression of the church that gathers together to worship God.

So this local church is an expression of the visible church.

And it's a mixed multitude.

I know every Sunday when we gather together that there are some unbelievers who gather with us.

Uh and so the visible church is the church that gathers together that we can see and touch and have relationships with.

And the local expression of God's people in the local church.

So, what's your attitude towards God's people?

What's your attitude towards the church?

We live in a very individualistic society.

Western culture is very individualistic, and oftentimes that that translates into our faith.

Uh that we think it's it's Jesus and me.

Uh, and and you know, it's the two of us, and everything else might be nice, but it's really just Jesus and me.

And we don't see that when Christ saved us, he placed us into a family, he placed us into the body, he placed us into the church so that we have relationships with one another.

And in our Christian life, we need other people.

That God has placed within us, uh, within our lives, the the other people, other believers, because we need one another.

And I think sometimes we have a loose association with the church, that uh we we gather for an hour or two and we go home, but but for the rest of the week uh there's very little interaction.

But do we see the the church as a blessing?

And and honestly, I know that if we had time, that many people here could could say that it's hard to imagine the church as a blessing.

I've talked to so many people over the years that have that have been hurt by the church.

Uh they they've they've been hurt, uh, they've been hurt by division in the church, they've been hurt by being taken advantage of, they've been hurt by uh oppression or legalism or control, they've been hurt by feeling neglected and forgotten.

And and maybe God needs to show you a different side of his people that you can learn to trust again.

But the church is an expression of God's blessing to us.

The Bible says in James 5.16, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

God brings healing in our lives as we interact with one another, when we share our hurts and our stories and our pain and our sin.

And God mediates his grace through others into our lives, through the church, through his people.

Hebrews 3.13 says, exhort one another daily, as such as is called today, so that no one's hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Sin will trip us up if we're not involved in one another's lives and we don't let others into our lives.

We need others to exhort us and we need to exhort them.

Colossians 3.16 says, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.

We need to be taught by one another.

We need to be challenged by one another.

Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 says, stir one another up to love and good works.

We need to stir each other up, and we need to be stirred up by one another.

This is what God's family does.

John 13, 34 says, love one another.

Colossians 3, 12 and 13 says, bear with one another.

And if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other.

Even the conflicts that we have within our relationships are instruments that God uses to shape us as we learn to love people who are different from us, as we're challenged by one another, as we learn to forgive each other from the heart and to be forgiven by one another for the sins that we commit.

The church, God's people, is a blessing from God.

Of course, Jesus is the source of our satisfaction both in this life and in eternity.

But we should see that those gathered around us week after week are one of God's greatest blessings in our lives.

And that God uses one another.

The one another passage, God uses each other in our lives and us in theirs.

And that's a gift from God.

And that's a blessing from God.

God is gracious to bless us.

But the primary, one of the primary blessings he has is the people around you.

And I don't know that we always see this.

But I want to encourage us.

Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

God provides for us through his people.

And I want to encourage you not to be a shallow uh member of God's people, to get deeply involved.

If you haven't been up until now, find ways to build relationships.

Find ways to get involved because God's people are the instrument so often of His grace in our lives.

I want to close us in prayer now and just challenge us to see the blessings that God gives and that God Himself is the chief end for our lives.

Let's pray.

Father God, as we're gathered here this morning, as we're thinking about this passage, as we think about the blessings that we have by your grace.

First of all, Lord, I pray that we realize that you are our joy and our satisfaction in this life and in the life to come.

And Father, help us to realize that you are a gracious God.

That the difficult choices that we make in following you, the hard choices, but you you bless us beyond what we can imagine.

And one of your chief blessings in this life is your people that come in and fill in the gaps, that minister to our needs, that encourage us and challenge us.

And so, Father, I pray for us that that in this individualistic culture that we won't that we won't miss the blessing of your people.

And Lord, for those who have been hurt by people in the church, that we will find healing and forgiveness.

And that that we'll renew our relationships with one another, not pull back and be withdrawn.

And so, Father, work in our hearts and help us to realize uh your goodness each day that we follow you.

We pray in Christ's name.

Amen.