Quality of Life

Uh if you have your Bibles turn to Luke chapter 18, Luke 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

Uh we're in a series right now that we're calling There's More to the Story.

And if you've ever read a scripture, you've come across a story or a text or even a word in the Bible, and you're like, What am I supposed to make of that?

Like I sometimes you read something and you're like, is that what is this saying what I think it's saying?

Uh sometimes we don't know what to do with it.

And um, sometimes by learning a little bit more, a little bit more context, will shed light on a story and help us to really get the point that we're supposed to get from it.

Uh throughout this series, what I've tried to do is uh on the my wife and I do a podcast during the week, we'll call it Dialogue, and I've been sharing some different Bible study resources uh because there are so many accessible resources that when you come up on a verse that you're not sure about, uh you don't just have to like brush past it or be confused or draw a bad application or interpretation, you can dig a little bit deeper.

And sometimes digging deeper it becomes very clear, and sometimes it just gives you more to wrestle with.

In fact, that's a a very important thing to know about the Bible.

The Bible is a Jewish document, it's an Eastern document, and so the Eastern style of teaching has a lot of story to it.

Um if you ask a rabbi a question, they most likely won't give you an answer.

They'll give you a story.

And then if you have a question off of that story, they'll tell you another story.

And the the point of the stories is that we do continue to wrestle and dig.

And so sometimes even as you're trying to translate or interpret in those interpretations, it might leave some room for some ambiguity, some wrestling, some questioning, some considering.

And that's not a bad thing, it's actually a really good thing.

But we want to give you tools to be able to do that.

And um, so in this message, I'm going to uh look into Luke 18.

Uh, if you have your Bibles, go there.

I'm gonna share, I'm gonna start reading a story that shows up in the Synoptic Gospels, all three of the Gospels.

So Synoptic think similar or synonym.

You have Matthew, Mark, and Luke that have a lot of similar stories.

They're not necessarily constructed uh identically, um, but they have a lot of stories that uh each of the three of them tell.

And this is one of the stories that all three of them tell.

So I'm gonna follow Luke in Luke 18, uh, but what I'm gonna do is a couple times I'm gonna reach over to Mark and I'm gonna reach over to Matthew and pull in some elements because when you look at them through all three of the storytellers, you get an even better picture of the story.

So we're gonna start in Luke 18, and we'll start reading in verse 18.

It says, Once a religious leader, okay, so so we're gonna start a little character development out of the gate.

This is a religious leader asked Jesus this question Good teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?

Um, Mark, when Mark tells the story in Mark 10, 17, he uh adds a little bit more action to it.

He says in verse 17, as Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Okay, so Luke basically says a guy came up to Jesus and asked a question, and Mark says that this guy ran to Jesus, makes a nosedive at his feet, humbles himself, kneels down, and asks him the question, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Now, if you could ask Jesus one question, like you had Jesus in physical form in front of you, and you had one question that he granted you, what question would you ask?

Probably this one.

This would be a good one to ask.

I mean, it's a phenomenal question.

Like this guy asks the question that we probably would ask if we had the chance.

Jesus, he says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Now, it's important to make sure that we understand what he's talking about when he says eternal life.

Eternal life is a term that would have been frequently used at that time by uh Jewish people.

And the the qu it was basically what it was translated is life unto the age.

Life unto the age.

Eternal life was a very dense concept.

And the the concept really started all the way back in the beginning of the Bible, like in Genesis 1 and 2, where it talks about the Garden of Eden.

So you have this ultimate state of paradise, and within that you have the tree of life.

Remember that?

So the tree of life.

So we know that what happened, you know, sin entered the world, they're expelled from the garden, and life ensues, and you know, all of it led up to now.

But there was a uh there was a belief.

The belief of the Jewish people was there will be an age where essentially the concept of the garden is restored.

Um, paradise is restored.

And then also beyond what you might think of paradise, it's a it's a an age or a time of living that that where there's peace and where there's joy and where there's justice.

So when they're looking for a Messiah and they're looking forward, okay, to eternal life, they're looking at a life unto the age, uh, a perpetual life that not only would come to earth, it would be not just an afterlife, but a life here on earth connected to the divine, eternal life, life as God intended it, a better world.

So there was hope of a better world and a better life lived here on earth, and then perpetually, okay, the question everybody has is what happens when I die?

So this would have been, again, life after death, but also life uh before death, life while we're here in connection to God.

And so that's a summary of what he was asking, but that's kind of what he meant by eternal life.

Good teacher, what must I do to inherit both here while I'm living on earth and in the life to come, in the age to come, how do I have the best possible life that I can have?

Verse 19, why do you call me good?

Jesus asked him.

Only God is truly good.

But to answer your question, you must know the commandments.

And then Jesus jumps into kind of the second half of the Ten Commandments.

He says, You must not commit adultery, you must not murder, you must not steal, you must not lie or testify falsely, you're honor your uh father and mother.

The man replied, I've obeyed all these commandments since I was young.

When Jesus heard his answer, he said, There is still one thing you haven't done.

Okay, let's let's actually skip over to Mark 10, because it at this point in the story, Mark gives us a little more commentary.

Okay, in Mark 10, 20, he says, Teacher, the man replied, I've obeyed all these commands since I was young.

And then Mark gives us something Luke doesn't.

Verse 21.

It says, looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him.

There's still one thing you haven't done.

So what Mark explains is that you know, Jesus is interacting with this guy, and Jesus is like, I like this guy.

It's a good dude, it's a good guy.

Okay, he came running, okay, he's got a sense of urgency.

He humbled himself, he knelt down at Jesus' feet, and he's asking a great question.

What must I do?

What must I do to inherit eternal life, life unto the age, the best life I can have here on earth and uh uh uh afterlife?

He's asking him a wonderful question, and Jesus goes, Well, you keep the law, don't lie, don't cheat, don't do people dirty, honor your father and mother, and he's like, I do, I've been doing that.

And it just says Jesus looked at him and was like, I like this guy.

He felt genuine love for him.

There were people that would ask Jesus questions to trap him.

There were people that asked Jesus questions to try to condemn him, but this wasn't one of those guys, and Jesus knew it.

This is a good dude asking a good question, and Jesus felt genuine love, which means everything he's about to say, the advice he's about to give is all designed, not to confuse the man, but to help the man.

What's coming next is designed to help him.

So he said, You you've heard, uh, I'm sorry, when he Jesus heard this, he said, There's still one thing you haven't done.

Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come follow me.

And when the man heard this, he became very sad, for he was very rich.

Um, all right, a few things going on here.

Um this is the only time in scripture Jesus commands or asks someone to completely divest themselves of all their assets to sell everything.

Um, the closest thing to this is when Jesus calls his disciples and says, put down your nets and follow me.

But he didn't say burn your boats.

He didn't even say sell your nets and give the money away.

He didn't say that.

He just said put them down.

In fact, we know that they, when Jesus was crucified, uh, after that, and Peter had denied Jesus, Peter went back to his fishing business.

He had a fallback.

He still had his boats and his nets.

And so this was something we're gonna follow Jesus and we're gonna set all this aside.

But if this Jesus thing doesn't work out, I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna get back in my boat.

And that's what actually what Peter ended up doing.

This is the only time that Jesus encourages somebody or challenges them to sell everything, give it all away, and follow him.

So there's got to be something going on.

There's got to be more to this story, what's going on here.

Um, to make the story even a little more interesting is uh, you know, we don't know in the in the text, it doesn't say how the man gained his wealth, but what we do know is from Matthew, uh, when Matthew tells the story, Matthew 19, 22, it says, when the young man heard this, he went away sad before he had great wealth.

So Matthew lets us know that the man was young.

All three of the gospel writers tell us that he was wealthy, and Luke tells us that he was a religiously powerful man.

Okay, so someone in that situation, how would they have attained wealth?

Like how would you end up well a young, rich guy at that time?

Uh there are four ways that you could kind of pretty much four ways to get rich at that time.

One to uh was was inheritance.

So you came from wealth.

Your parents were wealthy, your grandparents were wealthy, whatever, they handed you down wealth.

And so that probably a guy this young probably has something to do with inheritance.

The second was land ownership.

Land ownership was a huge deal.

People owning land, land being passed down from generations.

And land ownership at this time was a hot, hot topic because land was changing hands.

With the Roman taxation system, what was happening is people were being taxed so heavily some people could not afford to keep their land that had been in their family for generations.

So there are historical accounts of people who had to essentially sell their land that had been in their family for generations to sell their land to survive, only to be hired back to work hourly.

Imagine that.

This land's been in our family forever.

Our life is here, but we cannot afford it because of the super high taxes.

And so that land often the whole thing was leveraged to be able to get the land into somebody else's hands.

And so this is now you understand some of the venom between your average citizen and your tax collectors, which by the way, one of the ways to become wealthy at that time was to play the game of taxes and to be a tax collector.

So often the tax collectors were working with uh the Roman government, using the teeth of the Roman government to then uh to gain more land to become more wealthy at the expense of people who had had it for generations.

So if you're you're somebody that grew up in that, okay, you know about the Joneses and the Johnsons and the Smiths and these people who used to own land and now they're back working hourly for land that actually should have been theirs the whole time.

This is this is a crisis.

This is this is probably top of mind to people who are in that situation, probably the biggest issue.

And so uh this now, this guy, we don't know if he was somebody who was so urgent to run to Jesus because he's afraid of losing his land, or he might have been the beneficiary of this system.

He might have been somebody who was starting to attain land, okay, from from this way.

But it was inheritance, it was land ownership.

There, there was, if you were in trade and commerce, so in other words, you were entrepreneurial, you found a way to make something and turn one to two and two to four, four to eight, and you get the idea to grow it that way.

But for the most part, somebody like this probably very much high probability had to do with inheritance and land.

And so he's coming to Jesus with this, like completely consumed by eternal life.

Now, what's interesting about this is the guy has a very enviable life.

Okay?

He's young and wealthy and powerful.

And yet, even in that state, like this is kind of the thing people are trying to get.

You know, we're trying to be young, powerful, and wealthy.

It's like the dream.

And he's living the dream, and yet there's something in him that is yet to be fulfilled.

There's something that he's like, I don't have eternal life, I don't have a life connected to God.

There's a void in here, and I have everything everybody wants, and yet he's not just coming to Jesus, he's running to Jesus.

He's diving at Jesus' feet because there is something about consumption when you you buy into the belief that I can consume my way to fulfillment.

I can consume my way to fulfillment.

And doggone it, if we all know better, but we don't know better.

I mean, we know better.

I mean, come on, fill in cliche here.

We all know that it doesn't matter how much you get, you can't buy happiness.

How many case studies do we need of people who hit the pinnacle only to end up in the valley?

Like it's just never enough.

You it's never enough, and we know it.

And we've seen news stories about it, and we've known people, and some of us have even lived it, and yet there's something seductive about success.

There's something seductive about if I could just get a little bit more, like I've gotten this high, but if I could get this high, if I could get a little bit more.

And so this guy is starting to get there.

He's he's he's accumulating wealth, he has an inheritance, he has a high standard of living, but a low quality of life.

And often we think they're one and the same.

If I could get the standard of living, quality of life would follow.

And there's a certain desperation that comes when your standard of living has never been higher and your quality of life has never been lower.

And so he goes and nosedives at Jesus' feet.

Now, what's interesting is if we press pause on that story and we backtrack just a little bit, if you go to just the previous story, look at this in Luke 18, 15.

Okay, so we started in 18.

If we go to Luke 18, 15, right before this story, it says people were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them.

If you have the NLT, it says little children, but it's the Greek word for infants.

So they were bringing infants to Jesus for him to place his hands on them.

When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.

They were the gatekeeper.

Now get these babies away, but Jesus called the children to him and said, Let the little children come to me, do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

Okay, so this is this is literally right before the rich young ruler comes up.

Now, there's more to the story here.

If you look at infant mortality rates, okay, so we we want to talk about hot topics in first century Roman Palestine.

Okay, hot topics was land ownership, was one for those who had land and were in that, they were playing that game.

But another hot topic was infant mortality.

The estimate of infant mortality was that there was a 300 to 400 infant deaths per thousand.

So you're talking 30 to 40 percent chance your baby doesn't live for the first year.

Um, why is that?

Why were babies dying?

Well, babies were dying.

Most of it were things that could would eventually be fixable.

It was things like poor sanitation, it was things like uh not understanding medical care very well, not enough medical advancement.

Um, some of it was poor nutrition, and especially in these impoverished areas, 30 to 40 percent infant mortality rate.

If you compare that to our world, uh in the world we live in, the United States of America current day is 5.6 per thousand.

So you're talking half of a percent of children that are born in the United States of America now don't live for their first year.

So we're dealing with half of a percent.

They were dealing to 30 to 40 percent.

So when you have people bringing their infants to Jesus saying, Will you bless my child?

They're not coming going, will you pray that my child is a Division I athlete?

They're not saying, Will you give my child a good head of hair?

All right, they're they're coming to going, Will Lord, will you bless my child so they don't die this year?

30 to 40 percent chance they're gonna die.

And Jesus' disciples are going, oh no, no, don't bother him with that.

And Jesus goes, bother me with that.

Bring those babies to me.

And just like they were his own children, he's laying his hands on them and he's blessing them.

And he said, unless you accept the kingdom of God like one of these children in this state of vulnerability, in total dependence, you're not really gonna see it like you're supposed to see it.

So now it's starting to get a little bit of a story here.

It's starting to take shape because Jesus is talking to the rich young ruler who's a good dude, doing good work.

Okay, he's ambitious, nothing wrong with that.

He he's doing good things, but he's completely consumed by his business, by his land ownership, by the next hill he's trying to take, by his life.

And Jesus now has two experiences where, like, dude, I understand what you're trying to do with your land, and I understand that you're afraid of losing it, but I just looked into the eyes of mothers and fathers that fall into a percentage that they might lose their baby this year.

And 30 to 40 percent is pretty big, and it's also a lot of this is fixable.

Some of these things can actually be changed if we can make some advancements, if we can distribute resources over here.

Resources don't solve every problem.

The rich young ruler knew that well.

They weren't solving his problem.

There was something still in him that was a void.

But there are some problems resources can solve.

And so Jesus now has this, he's just had this interaction with you know, people who are saying, Would you bless my children?

And then he has this guy over here who's going, How do I have eternal life?

And Jesus is bringing the two things together.

And so what's interesting is you have this guy who it says in the text, Jesus says, Look, uh divest yourself of everything.

Give it to the poor, give it to the 30, 40 percent over here, give it to these people, like help solve this problem over here.

Give, give, give it away, and come follow me, and I'll take you places.

You'll see some things.

You you'll use your your skills and your abilities and your life and your energy for a different purpose.

And you'll see some things I'm trying to show you.

You'll see life differently.

And when he said to let go of, to sell everything, the guy, just the thought of it was so demoralizing.

Just the thought of it that the guy walked away.

If you had one question to ask Jesus, what would you ask him?

Second question, what would you do with the answer?

What would you do with the answer?

Because Jesus gives him an incredible gift.

He loved the guy.

He wanted to help the guy, and he gives him the right answer.

And yet, the guy, the very thought of losing what he had caused him to walk away.

Let's dig a little deeper.

What is Jesus doing here?

Really isn't necessarily about selling everything.

It's really about letting go.

It's about letting go.

This guy had such a white knuckle grip on what he had inherited or what he was accumulating, what he was consuming, on his dreams and his hopes, and in his mind, the idea of eternal life, life unto the age, life connected to God, and the perpetual life and all of that, that was all wrapped into his dream.

And yet what he had was it was actually an obstacle to him.

He was holding it so tightly, his stress about losing it, or his worry, the way it was consuming him.

He was trying to consume his way to fulfillment, but when you do that, it consumes you.

He's holding it so tightly, the thing he has a grip on, he can't see how much it has a grip on him.

And so we're all like the thing that you go, if I lost it, I can't imagine losing it.

I can't imagine life without it.

And what Jesus is saying to him is the thing you can't imagine life without, you need to give away.

You need to let go of.

And the application isn't necessarily to sell everything.

Sometimes it's a responsibility that you will maintain and yet you're able to let go of it emotionally.

It may be a situation that you can't just cut and run away from.

You have to stay in it, you have to carry the responsibility, you have to see this thing through.

But to do it while letting go of it, because this guy, he was so afraid of losing it all that Jesus is saying, lose it all.

Lose it all.

Think about it.

He's just said, unless you accept the kingdom of God like this helpless infant, that's 30 to 40% chance they're not gonna make it.

Unless you can accept the kingdom with that sort of trust and dependence.

And so the rabbi, the good rabbi, is offering the guy who thinks he's anything but an infant.

I'm young, my body's strong, my influence is up, and my money's up.

And I've got all of this, and yet what he didn't have was a state of dependence.

And Jesus is saying, You're gonna you need to let go of it.

This thing that you're gripping has a grip on you.

This thing that you're consuming is consuming you.

And for all of us in this room, we have things that have us running to Jesus and diving at his feet, and often it's the thing that we're hoping for, some kind of certainty and assurance that the thing we're holding on to we're gonna be able to keep.

And yet, what the good teacher gives you today is that the answer might be in the opposite direction.

Today, the thing you're so afraid to lose, you need to let go of.

If you keep reading, you go through Luke chapter 18, we get to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 18 · chapter mention Luke 19 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 19, uh, when you read this story, it's only in Luke.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

And when we read this story based on, there's more to the story, based on the context, it really comes alive.

In Luke 19, 1, it says Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town, and there was a man there named Zacchaeus.

He was a chief tax collector in the region.

Chief tax collector, one of the four ways you get rich at that time was tax collecting.

The fact that he's a chief tax collector means he's way up the food chain, and it means he's filthy rich, and it means he's probably older.

And he had become very rich.

And he tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd, so he ran ahead and he climbed a sycamore fig tree beside the road.

And as Jesus was passing by, and when Jesus came by, he looked at Zacchaeus and called him by name.

Zacchaeus, he said, Quick, come down.

I must be a guest in your home today.

Zacchaeus quickly climbed down, took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy.

Great excitement and joy.

But the people were displeased.

He's gone to the guest of a notorious sinner, they grumble.

By the way, do you notice that Zacchaeus, who's the older rich man and the rich young ruler, both get very excited at Jesus' presence.

Both of them are eager to follow him or to hear what he has to say.

It says, Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and he said, I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord.

And if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much.

And Jesus responded, Salvation has come to this home today.

The word for salvation, there means rescue or safety.

Rescue has come to this house.

Security has come to this house.

Safety has come to this house today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.

For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.

Now, with our remaining time, I want you to just step back and look at these stories.

Jesus says, These children matter.

These families matter.

He lays his hands on the children who may or may not, you know, they're in a situation where they're 30 to 40 percent infant mortality.

And he he won't allow them to be pushed to the side.

He says, unless you accept the kingdom of God with this kind of dependence.

The rich young ruler who's a really good dude, trying to do good things, but he might be a little too young for the lesson.

He might just be a little too young for the lesson because he's still buying into the possibility of consuming his way to fulfillment.

He still thinks if I can just get one more, if I can get a little bit more, if I can own a little bit more land, if I can just get if I can get one more, a little bit bigger, if if I can I'm almost there, I'm almost there.

He's still thinking that.

So much to the point that when Jesus just asked him to imagine losing his stuff, he went away sad, walked away.

And you go all the way through to this guy, Zacchaeus, who frankly was a probably a pretty unscrupulous dude.

He'd probably done some bad things, he'd cheated a bunch of people out of a lot of stuff.

He was somebody who was despised.

He was somebody that just at the very interaction that Jesus has with him, the people are like, look, what is he doing with that guy?

And yet that guy was at a moment in his life that he had consumed so much.

He had consumed people, he had consumed stuff, he had acquired the things he set out for, and yet he was an older man in a season of life that he realized this path I'm on is not giving me what I'm looking for.

Eternal life isn't going to happen this way.

And so look what he does.

He essentially starts prescribing the same behaviors without Jesus even having to say a word.

He goes, you know what, I've seen the light.

I'm not going to continue to cheat people.

In fact, I'm selling half of what I have, I'm giving it, and then everybody else, what I've got left over, I'm going to pay people back four times as much.

I'm going to take care with interest.

Like all of a sudden, this guy was at the right time in his life to be able to see that standard of living and quality of life often have nothing to do with each other.

That Jesus is inviting him into an eternal life, a life connected to God.

And often that answer is not one that we want to hear.

It causes us to have to let go of something that's had a hold on us.

So it's interesting, the guy who probably was like a better guy just wasn't in a place to see it.

And the guy who had done, uh had a whole bunch of skeletons in his closet was at a moment of wisdom where he goes, I see it now.

And we find ourselves trying to figure out what we're gonna do with the lesson.

What would you ask Jesus if you had one question to ask?

And what would you do with his answer?

What are you gonna do with it?

What am I gonna do with it?

Today I want to take a moment, I want to pray with you because often days like today, the idea of what you need to let go of, it may vary.

It may vary.

It may be it has something to do with uh uh story from the past, it may be something you've continued to hang on to, hold on to, like bitterness or unforgiveness.

It might be something uh that you're you you want to succeed so bad.

It may be around your career, it may be around your business, it may be something around your family.

You have some kind of dream, something maybe you inherited or you've worked really hard for and you have it.

And the reality is it has a grip on you and it's affecting your quality of life.

Maybe that thing has improved your standard of living, and maybe it's not like divest yourself of it.

Maybe you're supposed to keep leading it, maybe you're supposed to keep carrying it, but to do it in a way that you're able to let go of it.

And what happens when we do that is we start to be able to take what we're afraid of and what we're worried about and what we're stressed about and have an internal change where I go, you know what, I've been holding that so tight, I've been so afraid of losing it, I couldn't imagine life without it.

And today I'm going to let go of it and I'm gonna put it in God's hands.

I'm gonna trust God with it, and I'm gonna continue maybe to lead or to carry a responsibility, but to do so with an open hand and a sense of freedom, and in so doing, connect uh to a life unto the age, to an eternal life, to a life connected to God now and a perpetual life.

So today, let me, I want to take a moment to pray with you, but I want you to think about right now what is something that you've been holding on to that's been stressing you out that it's time to let go and to lay at Jesus' feet.

Lord, we come to you in the matchless name of Jesus.

Lord, I know that a lesson like this, Lord, especially as we connect, uh a sincere, rich young ruler who has great ideas and great ambitions and maybe doing wonderful work, and yet, Lord, oftentimes uh what's happening inside internally, there's a void that's trying to be filled in the wrong way.

And even good people often have their point of view uh warped.

And yet, Lord, we're inspired by Zacchaeus, who had no doubt done some bad things throughout his life, and yet in this moment of his life intersecting with Jesus, he was able to see something he had never been able to see.

So, Lord, I pray that no matter how old each person is, no matter where we're at in life, that we would not give into the seduction of consuming our way to fulfillment.

Lord, that you would give us a vision of eternal life, a life connected to you here on earth and a life connected to you beyond this life.

I pray in Jesus' name you would help us to see, Lord, things that you want us to see and make the changes that we need to make both internally and externally.

We praise you, we love you, we thank you in Jesus' name.