How To (Not) Follow Jesus

Transcript

Trinity Church, the word of the Lord comes to us this morning from the Gospel according to Mark chapter 10. We’ll be looking at verses 17 through 31. Hear now the word of the Lord speaking to you.

And as he was setting out on his journey a man ran up and knelt before him and 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 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 him, teacher, all these I’ve kept for 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 treasures in heaven.

— Mark 10

(ESV)

And come, follow me. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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. And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is 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. Jesus said, truly I say to you, there is no one who

has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time. Houses, 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. Trinity Church, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, good morning. Let’s pray. Lord, I pray this morning that you would be with us, that you would take this, in many ways, famous passage and that you would pull it out of the Bible and place it directly in our hearts. So, Lord, right now I pray that you would open us to your word and open your word to us. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. Well, if you have been around the church

Age of Walking Away

at all in your life or if you have just been on planet earth for a while, you are probably very familiar with the hymn Amazing Grace. If you’re familiar with the hymn Amazing Grace, you’re probably familiar with that line, a very hopeful line, I once was lost but now I’m found. But these days it seems like we’re living in a time, as W. H. Auden calls it, an age of anxiety, where that hope that is in that line has been lost. It’s almost like we’re living in the reversal of that hymn’s line. I once was found but now I’m lost. Former Christian artist David Bazan, lead singer of Pedro the Lion, after losing his faith, sort of puts this ethos to words when he explains, I never wanted to have a hard heart. Yet somehow he still walked away from Jesus. Now, all of this, our age, everything

that’s playing in on us, pushes a lot of really big questions on us. And probably the biggest one before us this morning is, what do we do with this? What do we do with all of this walking away from Jesus that seems to be defining our age? And as we will see this morning, springs back all the way to the time of Jesus and even before that to the Garden of Eden. Now some of you might be asking, okay, why would anyone walk away from Jesus? But I would just say this, before you jump to any conclusions, we desperately need to face what is happening here. Because we need to understand what many around us are going through. And I would say this as well, we need to know, we need to help, we need to have answers or be able to point people to better answers to their questions.

Questions that are either certainly close to you, or they’re very much on their way. But for others, all of this may be a lot closer than we think. The questions that we’ll be facing this morning may be your questions. You may be asking yourself, why do I feel like this sometimes? Why do I feel like David Bazan? Why do I feel like, as we’ll see this morning, the rich young ruler? The beautiful thing is this morning too, Jesus helps us with all of these questions. Because in Mark chapter 10 verses 17 through 31, he answers the questions very directly. Jesus meets this rich young man, what Luke calls the rich young ruler. He meets him face-on. And even after teaching this rich man, the rich man rejects Jesus. And after he walks away, Jesus stays and he helps his disciples and he helps us with all the fallout. So how does he help us?

Well he gives us what I would call sort of two lessons. The first is through the example of the rich man. He teaches us, he shows us how not to follow Jesus. He shows us how not to follow Jesus. Sort of a negative example. Jesus explains three reasons, or helps us see three reasons why some walk away from Jesus, or while we’re being tempted to. We misinterpret Jesus. We misinterpret ourselves. And we misinterpret our desires. But then Jesus teaches his second lesson, a more constructive lesson. How to actually follow Jesus. How to actually follow Jesus. And here we see Jesus responding to those very own misinterpretations that we had just a few seconds ago with the rich young ruler. And Jesus reinterprets ourselves, or reinterprets us. Jesus then reinterprets Jesus so that we can understand him rightly. And then Jesus reinterprets our desires for us. So

How Not to Follow

let’s jump in and let’s start with that first lesson. How not to follow Jesus. And Jesus begins with our first obstacle. How we misinterpret him. How we misinterpret Jesus. See sometimes when people reject Jesus, they are actually rejecting a caricature of him. And I think to a degree that’s what’s happening with the rich man in our text today. We see it in verses 17 through 18. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him and 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. See from the outset, the rich man misinterprets aspects of Jesus’s identity. I mean what does the rich man call Jesus? He calls him good

teacher. So he does. Let’s be honest, he knows something about Jesus. But Jesus then pushes in on what he doesn’t know. Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. And notice what Jesus doesn’t do. He doesn’t correct him and say, hey listen, listen, don’t call me good because I’m not God. No, he leads him in the tension. So in the silence he seems to be saying, if I am good, then I am God. But as we will see, this doesn’t really change the rich man’s understanding of Jesus. Because we’ll see later in verse 20, what does the rich man call Jesus? Well he calls Jesus teacher again. But he drops the good, more than likely to avoid all this awkwardness that just rose up in this particular setting. So the rich man not only misinterprets Jesus’s identity, but he also misinterprets Jesus’s purpose. Notice what the rich man doesn’t ask

here. He never asked why Jesus is where he is. Why is Jesus in the desert outside the river Jordan? But Mark has already told us. Jesus, as he says at the beginning, had set out on a journey. He is on his way to Jerusalem. And Jesus has told us twice since chapter 8, why he is going there. And he’ll tell us again next week. Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die and to be raised again. He’s going to Jerusalem to save sinners from their sin. And here’s the answer to the rich man’s question, to open the doors to eternal life. But even though the rich man is interested in the way to that eternal life, he is not interested enough to ask Jesus who he is on his own terms and what he has come to do for him. Which is ironically to make a way to find eternal life. So though he stands in

front of this Jesus, the rich man doesn’t really know Jesus. Which is why it will be easier for him to walk away in a few moments. Now let’s be completely honest with ourselves here. We are all the rich man in some sense. We all have a tendency to box Jesus in. We do this to make sure he is who we want him to be and not really who he is. We might let him be our teacher but we will not let him be our king and we certainly won’t let him be our Savior. So if you want, so hear me here, if you want to know what is really keeping you from following Jesus or tempting you away from him, answer this question honestly. What is it that you would like to change about Jesus? Do you wish he wouldn’t care so much about your sex life? Do you wish he was more sermon on

the mouth Jesus versus Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb Jesus? Would you rather he wasn’t so strong on hell and judgment? So your answer to this is going to be your true obstacle to true discipleship. It’s probably what’s keeping you or is pulling you away from following Jesus. But not only do we get Jesus wrong but we also misinterpret ourselves. See another reason we walk away from Jesus is that we think more highly of ourselves than we should. We think we’re more capable. We think we are more in control than we really are. So we see this hint of the rich man’s self-sufficiency right off the bat in his question. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Now can you make people give you their inheritance? Can you earn someone’s inheritance? Well we try and perhaps if you’re a struggling model and you marry a 90 year old oil tycoon

maybe that’s the way you’re thinking you can do it. But this exposes the very problem that I think is at the heart of the rich man’s struggle with Jesus here. It shows us that what we really want is what the person has not the person themselves. That’s why the rich man wants Jesus’s info on eternal life but he doesn’t want Jesus enough to follow him to that eternal life. The second example of the rich man’s misinterpretation of himself is found in his being convinced that he’s capable of keeping the law on his own. Look at verses 19 through 20. Jesus says, you know the command. So he’s talking to the rich man. Rich man you know the commands. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. And what does the rich

man say? Teacher. Notice he’s dropped the good right? Teacher all these I have kept from my youth. See Jesus is doing something masterful here. What he’s doing is he’s using the two sections of the Ten Commandments to bring this man in to recognize his lack of self-sufficiency. Now for a long time people divided the Ten Commandments into two parts based on their two emphases. The first four commandments are what we might call vertically oriented. That means they are teaching us how to relate to God, honor God, worship only God, honor God’s name, honor the Lord’s day. Now the last six are horizontally focused, instructing us on how to relate to other people. Honor your parents, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not lie, do not steal, do not covet and so on and so on. Notice where Jesus begins. He begins at the second part. He begins with the

horizontal. He’s reminding this rich man don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie and so on. And the rich man’s response, how does he respond? Exactly the way Jesus knew he would. He responds out of his own self-sufficiency. He’s basically saying oh yeah Jesus I’ve got this. I kept all these laws since I was young. So where’s my token for eternal life? But Jesus is only halfway through. He’s only halfway through because now he brings the vertical commandments right smack dab into the middle of this rich man’s life. Because Jesus doesn’t just recite the law here. He makes it personal. Look at verse 21. And Jesus looking at him loved him. And that’s a beautiful thing. So this isn’t out of manipulation. This isn’t out of some sort of thing to bait and switch. He loves this man. He wants to see him in eternal life. Looking at him he loved him

and said to him you lack one thing. Go sell all that you have. Give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. And come follow me. So notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say have no other gods before me the one true God. He tells the rich man if you want eternal life get rid of your wealth and follow me. He’s saying let go of your earthly idols, the money that you’ve placed before me and follow me. Notice this. Follow me to eternal treasures. Now just notice this. This again we’re like the rich man. We’re like the rich man and I think in two ways here. First when we don’t know who we are, when we misinterpret ourselves, we can’t know how or why we actually need Jesus. It’s the same as when we think we are perfectly healthy and we have no need of a doctor and yet

there’s a raging infection inside of our body. And if I don’t know or if I don’t think of myself as a sinner or if I think that salvation is just me being a better me and like the rich man I won’t think I need Jesus. But I think there’s another way sort of hidden in all of this that we are also like the rich man. Maybe we do know ourselves but we don’t want to change to follow this Jesus. See if you know that you’re a sinner but you’re still in that quote unquote fun stage of sin, well you don’t want Jesus to take that away from you do you? See either the consequences of pain of sinning haven’t hit the fan yet or they have and you’re just ignoring them. And when this happens what do most people do? They walk away from Jesus saying something’s wrong with him not

because they don’t need Jesus but because they don’t want Jesus. And that’s where Jesus turns next into that idea of want and desire. So not only does do we misinterpret ourselves and not only do we misinterpret Jesus but we misinterpret our desires. Why is the rich man really here? What does he say he wants from Jesus? Well in verse 17 he says that he wants to know how to inherit eternal life. But is that what he really wants? Because we see he struggles so much with Jesus’s answer. He doesn’t like Jesus’s answer. He doesn’t want Jesus’s answer. Notice disparity between how he comes to Jesus and how he leaves Jesus. How does he arrive? How does he arrive? He is running up to Jesus. And let me just say this no one in Jesus’s day and age was running especially rich men. Okay this is almost like Elon Musk running down Hawthorne to run into the

plaid pantry to ask the clerk how do we conquer Mars? It’s that obscene. That’s crazy. But yet he comes with zealousness and he comes with readiness. And how does he depart? How does he depart Jesus? Well Mark tells us in verse 22 the rich man left Jesus disheartened by his saying. He went away sorrowful. Why? Because he had great possessions. So he’s no longer running to Jesus. He’s just going away kind of sloughing off. He’s no longer zealous. He’s now just disheartened and sorrowful. Which is a telltale sign. He doesn’t really want Jesus’s answer. Because he doesn’t want Jesus’s version of eternal life. He wants eternal life. Hear this. He wants eternal life on his own terms. He wants eternal life on his own terms. See the rich man is not disheartened because Jesus didn’t have an answer. He’s disheartened because Jesus didn’t give him the answer he

wanted. So what did the rich man really want? If it’s not Jesus’s answer what is it that he really wanted? Well I think it’s something that is exposed in our hearts consistently. He wants his personal earthly kingdom to be made eternal. He didn’t want to enter Jesus’s eternal kingdom because he didn’t want what Jesus offered him. He didn’t want to let go of his own kingdom. See that’s why the rich man rejects Jesus’s invitation to follow him in verse 21. Because there is this call to exchange his temporal riches for Jesus’s treasures in heaven. See what you see here is a man who doesn’t want to give up his status. He didn’t want to follow anyone. He didn’t want to give up his kingdom and he didn’t want anyone else to be his king. He just wanted a way to make his earthly life into his eternal life. And again we’re all like the rich

man in some way. We are all too short-sighted. See we set our desires on things that won’t last. And whether we like it or not it’s usually our desires that are at the control center of our lives. And that’s problematic because at the base level most people reject Jesus because we don’t want to buy what he’s selling. We don’t like his answers to our questions. And we don’t like his answers to our questions because like the rich man there is, so notice this, there is something we desire more. Something that we think is better than what he has to offer. See people don’t just let go of Jesus. They are always picking something up instead. That’s why the rich man doesn’t just walk away from Jesus. He walks back towards his own possessions. So let’s just ask ourselves this. What desires control you? And what desires are pulling you away from following Jesus?

---

How to Actually Follow

I mean are you willing to allow Jesus in to tell you better answers? We could put it this way. Are you willing to let Jesus reinterpret you? Because that is what he’s going to do in the second lesson. So what he does in the first lesson is he diagnoses the problem. In our second lesson he gives us the prognosis how to actually follow him. And that’s the second. That’s the second lesson. Verses 23 through 31. Jesus helps us. Helps us, his baffled disciples, deal with the fallout of the rich man’s rejection of him. Jesus is turning the tables. He’s reinterpreting for us what the rich man misinterprets. So that we walk towards Jesus and not away from him. In simple terms, Jesus shows us in this second lesson how to actually follow Jesus. So to begin, Jesus reinterprets ourselves for us. He reinterprets ourselves for us. He pushes

in on our identity. See his disciples are at a loss. This is the only person we meet in the Gospel of Mark who outright rejects Jesus. And they have no idea what to do with this. They are left asking themselves, if this guy can’t be saved, then who can? Or to put it more specifically, if having status and wealth can’t save us, then what actually can save us? Now Jesus begins to give us an answer in verses 23 through 26. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom

of God. And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Now notice what’s happening here. The disciples are still a product of their culture. Having wealth in their society meant that you were divinely blessed. But Jesus’ teaching ministry is all about reinterpreting. It’s often about overturning the cultural assumptions that his followers have because he’s pushing them from one kingdom into another. So Jesus corrects them. Being wealthy doesn’t mean you’re close to heaven. In fact, it’s more than the opposite. That’s why Jesus gives us that famous hyperbole. He says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Now Jesus is saying this, and I think there’s no like play on words here. I think this is very, very literal. He’s saying to us that it’s almost impossible. He’s here to

shock us. His point, the point of this whole visual, is that it’s really, really, really challenging to be rich and to inherit eternal life. Now still, notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say it’s impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. He just says it’s overwhelmingly difficult. Not because money in and of itself is evil, but because money so often exposes the darkness that already lives in our hearts. See, for the rich young ruler, the money exposed his own pride. It exposed his own misguided autonomy. And for us this morning, it’s probably doing the same. That’s why we’re tempted to fudge the numbers on our tax return, or why we’re tempted to think that new car actually means that we’ve made it in this world. Now, this morning this pushes us to ask, if it’s not in wealth and status, then where does Jesus want us to place our identity? And I think we find it in one word.

One word. And that word is children. It’s why Jesus calls his disciples children in verse 24. Now, this word takes us back to the sermon we had last week by Thomas. Takes us back to Mark chapter 10 verses 13 through 16, where Jesus tells us that God’s kingdom belongs solely to those who are childlike. Those who are reliant, who are trusting, who are open to wonder and magic, and who are living out a vibrant yet simple faith day in and day out. Now, notice the distinction. The disciples are children, which is quite the opposite of everything we’ve seen in the rich man, who is more concerned with trying to control the world through his own power and through his own self-sufficiency. That is why the rich man cannot be Jesus’s disciple, because disciples experience the kingdom. They get the kingdom because they are like children. They put their faith fully in Jesus,

and they live out of his sufficiency, not their own. They live out of his gifts and not their own. But to do this, if we’re going to really do this, if we’re going to put our faith in him, Jesus also knows that we need to understand exactly who he is, who he really is. So after correcting us, Jesus steps in to reinterpret Jesus for us. So he’s dealing with our misinterpretations of him. So we’re back to the disciples’ question, then who can be saved? Who can be saved? But Jesus turns the question around with his answer. It’s not about who can be saved. It’s about who can save you. So you see this in verse 27. Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. So who can save the disciples? Who can save us? Jesus is saying

God can. And what he’s already also saying is that he’s already saving us through this Jesus. That’s because with humanity, as we saw with the rich man, salvation is impossible. No matter how empowered we think we are, we will never be self-sufficient enough or rich enough to deal with our deepest problems. We can’t save ourselves because we are the ones who need to be saved. But for us here this morning, myself included, it’s not for a lack of trying. See, we’ve all searched for some form of deliverance somewhere outside of Jesus. See, like the rich man, you’ve probably tried self-justification, trying to make yourself right by doing quote-unquote good things. Or there’s the newest trend. Some of us have become victims. Now, let me hear me. I mean, I think there’s real victims, and we need to help them as much and as best we can. But when we identify solely as victims, we begin to focus

solely on the sin done to us, and we never have to face whether or not we are sinners ourselves. See, the problem with these homemade salvations is that they’re not really sinners ourselves. See, the problem with these homemade salvations is that the sin either done by us or to us, that sin is ultimately never fully dealt with. See, we just end up in the court of cancel culture, cross-examining one another, which of course brings a wonderful and swift judgment, but offers no chance of atonement and no sign of forgiveness.

And then as soon as we cancel someone, maybe you’ve felt this, we can’t help but wonder what happens when the culture comes for us. You see, if salvation is left to us, we will always end up like the rich man, disheartened and sorrowful. In a word, we end up hopeless, because the one who needs to be delivered, that’s you and me, we cannot be our own deliverer. We need a better one, a true one. That’s why we need Jesus to correct our assumptions and misinterpretations of him, and we need him to save us from ourselves. So if we are really looking for forgiveness, if we really want hope, if we really want eternal life, if we really want atonement, someone to make things right, these things that are impossible to find on our own, we have to follow Jesus, the Son of God, who makes the impossible salvation

Reinterpreted Desires

actually possible. Now, Jesus turns his attention from us and from himself, and he reinterprets our desires. He reinterprets our desires. So if you want to follow Jesus, we have to let him reinterpret our desires. See, if we have wrong desires, then we should be asking what are the right ones? And Jesus helps answer that in the last four verses. Peter, as this typical sort of bull in the China shop fashion, begins to say to him, see, we have left everything and followed you. And Jesus says, now he’s saying, listen, if you really want to understand what you’re saying, this is what true discipleship is. He says, truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundred fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with

persecutions and then the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last and the last first. So what is Jesus doing here? Well, Jesus wants them to know what true discipleship means. And at the heart of it, it means exchanging worldly desires for his kingdom desires. See, when we begin to follow Jesus, our vision changes, we begin to see the temporal world through future focused eyes. And when we see what God offers compared to what the world offers, our desires begin to switch allegiances. We become less defined by earthbound materialism and autonomy and more and more characterized by drawing near to Jesus and falling in love with his better eternal treasures. Now, Jesus is clear here. When we transfer allegiances to Jesus, well, that has worldly costs. That’s because when we reject the world and her worthless idols, the world can’t help but take offense. The world and her idols do not like to be forsaken.

So what he’s saying is here, be warned. If you leave behind the obstacles that keep you from following Jesus outright, things that could be good, like houses, family, and lands. If they got in the way of following Jesus at one time, and now you’ve left them behind for the sake of knowing Jesus and his gospel, well, know this, you will experience, as verse 30 tells us, significant persecutions coming from the world. But notice what he pushes it back with. Notice what he says in response. The world’s cost pale in comparison to the benefits of following Jesus into his eternal kingdom. In fact, whatever we give up to follow Jesus, from family to possessions, he says we get back a hundredfold. And we get it back in part right now. In this time, in the form of a down payment, his kingdom is currently breaking into the lives of his disciples

in a very true yet limited way. But what we have a foretaste of now, we will have without limits in God’s eternal kingdom. Now, if we want these, to get these, now and forever promises, we need Jesus to reinterpret our desires. We need to let him turn the way we currently see the world upside down, so that when he does, we can actually see that’s the right way up. See, this is what Jesus means when he says, the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Now, to the world, this makes absolutely no sense. It’s why the rich man walked away. He wanted to be first in his personal kingdom, so he left behind God’s kingdom. But when we follow Jesus, we find that the world’s ways are backwards. He reinterprets our desires to align with his eternal promises.

So to be first in the world means very little when it’s compared to God’s kingdom. And if we want to be first in God’s kingdom, we begin to sense that it’s okay being last in the world. It’s like trading a tent for a mansion. It’s like exchanging fool’s gold for real, pure gold. It boils down to being an absolute no-brainer.

Following the First Who Became Last

And yet we feel attention even here this morning, don’t we? Even though we may know this, we still struggle with our misaligned desires. We still make life about being first in this world, and we always think, oh man, I have forgotten about the world that is to come. But hear this, Jesus doesn’t just leave us there. He offers us a very simple solution, and that simple solution is found in his invitation. How do we have reinterpreted desires? How do we let him realign them?

We follow him. We follow him as he teaches us the proper understanding of ourselves, the proper understanding of who he is, and how we should understand our desires. But as he told the rich man, Jesus is more than a good teacher. He is the good and perfect son of God, which is why Jesus doesn’t just tell us that the first should be last and the last should be first. He actually shows us how. Now remember who Jesus is. Jesus is the ultimate first in quality, in morality, in perfection, in divinity. He is the ultimate first who enters his world to become last for our sake. See, the king of all creation set down his heavenly crown to save those on earth who, like you and me, have rebelled against him.

Jesus never tries to be first in the world. He never tries to accomplish things socially, politically, religiously, to make much of himself, even though it was well within his rights. Instead, Jesus the first, God the son incarnate, became last by dying on a cross to save us, to deliver us from our sins. And Jesus is also the last who becomes first, because he is the one who is buried in the tomb, who becomes the first to be raised from death to life eternally. See, as we have heard throughout Mark, Jesus doesn’t stay on the cross. He won’t remain buried. He will be resurrected. He will make a way out of this world with all its rusted treasures and its broken trinkets into the kingdom of God for all eternity to offer us unlimited joy. See, this is ours. This is ours, not by walking away,

but by walking after him, following this Jesus who is worthy to be followed all the way to eternal life in his perfect eternal kingdom. Let’s pray. Lord, you are good. You are good in the fact that you speak into our world. You speak into our context. You know our hearts better than us. And you have provided answers. Here we see Jesus exposing our misconceptions and providing us with better ones. But most beautifully, you have answered all of this by Jesus taking on flesh, living a perfect life, dying a perfect death, and being raised to newness of life. And Lord, you extend that to us right now, not by settling for a broken down earthly kingdom, but by reaching out, by following you into your better kingdom. And we do that, not in our own power, not in our own self-sufficiency,

but by becoming children who put their faith fully in you. To Christ’s name we pray, amen.