The Rich Young Ruler in All of Us 

¹⁸ A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. ²⁰ You know the commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” ²¹ And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” ²² When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” ²³ But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. ²⁴ And Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵ For 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.” ²⁶ They who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” ²⁷ But He said, “The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.” 

Luke 18:18-27 (see also Mark 10:17-31)

Question: If you died and went to a place where everything you ever wanted was given to you, but Jesus was not there, would you want to stay? What if your wife was there? or your kids? Other special relationships, your mom, your grandfather, a life long friend? What if you can be the ideal version of yourself there, in your appearance, your skills, your credentials, your fame, your lifestyle, your like-ability?

In Matthew 6, Jesus speak to us about devotion and warns us that we cannot serve two masters.  To serve two masters is to have a divided heart (James 4:8), and you will eventually come to despise one while loving the other.  Having just told us how to pray with reverence to God, asking for daily bread, forgiving our debtors, and daily deliverance from temptation (Matthew 6:9-13), Jesus now furthers His call for devotion by telling us that we cannot serve God and wealth (Matthew 6:19-24).  To better understand Jesus’ teaching here and our desired attitude towards money, we can look at the story of the Rich Young ruler.  When we examine the passage in Luke 18, the rich man calls Jesus, “good teacher” while asking what he must do to inherit eternal life, but Jesus responds to him by stating that no one is good except for God.  It is noteworthy that the young man uses the term “inherit” and we find the same word in both accounts (Mark 10:17 and Luke 1818), which we can deduce that he considered himself a child of promise under the Abrahamic covenant.  Jesus knew the mans heart and where this conversation was about to go, so Jesus set the tone for the conversation at the outset.  As the conversation unfolds, we can see that the rich man has made a practice of keeping score of his good deeds, so his question may have been seeking validation, or perhaps to make sure that he has checked all the boxes of the law.

Jesus proceeds to list many of the ten commandments, to which the rich man affirms his compliance with law keeping.  It is no accident that Jesus lists out many of the 10 commandments, then says, “one thing you still lack; sell all your possessions and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow Me.”  Jesus was calling attention to the remaining commandments which point directly to the ultimate commandment to love God with all your heart, soul minds and strength (Matthew 22:37; Deuteronomy 6:5).  You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not worship idols, and you shall not covet.  It is reasonable to assume that the rich young ruler knew these commandments, and he probably felt like he did keep them, but Jesus shines a light on the idol and false god of wealth by asking him to surrender all his possessions and follow.  The young man went away sad because he had great wealth, and now was faced the reality that he did have a divided heart, but no one had ever challenged him to sacrifice to that extent.  As this man knew the law, it is likely he also knew of Abraham and the call to sacrifice Isaac, very possibly a strong source of encouragement in seeing how God tests our faithfulness, but in a matter of moments, the theoretical became real and personal, as Jesus asked him to walk away from the life he knew for a life of discipleship.  To this point in his life, he has served God on his own terms, within his desired boundaries, and was satisfied in his devotion to keeping the law, but Christ called him to swim away from the shallow waters of a safe shore and follow Jesus into the deep.  That is also our call today, for every follower of Christ.  As we take inventory of our lives, what are the things that we do not hold loosely?  What are the things that we cannot imagine living without?

What is the Isaac in our life that we treasure in unmeasurable ways that God may ask us to lay on the altar?  I recall an account of a family that lost a child to a rare blood disease, a devastating loss.  As these parents watched helplessly as their child would succumb to a slow death, and there is nothing that you could do but hope and pray.  There were no words, just quiet presence as these two parents sat silently in the pain.  Not unlike the account at the end of Job chapter 2, in which the scripture says that the friends of Job sat silently with him for seven days, no one saying a word because he was in great pain.  As tragic as that was, and as deep as the pain pierced the souls of the family, the astonishing response provoked a further silence, but this time of admiration.  The father of the young girl was able to summon the strength to say these words, “Father God, thank you that her pain has ended and today she is in your presence, no doubt singing as she loved to do.  And Lord, though our loss has left a hole in our lives, we are thankful for the twelve years that we got to love her and have her for our own.  Father God, you know our pain as you watched Your Son die, so we ask for the strength to carry on, and a steady hope to carry us daily until the day we will be reunited with our daughter.  We don’t understand, but we trust. Amen!”  Though this was not a voluntary surrender of someone deeply loved, it demonstrates a response of surrender, to trust God in a time when it would have been understandable, in our human thinking, to be mad at God, make selfish, reckless decisions, and quit.  But God, being rich in mercy, sustains our faith to withstand any storm, and it is that light in the darkness that carries us through where riches and every other created thing will fail us.

The Christian life is a faith journey of surrender, but what does it mean to surrender?  I believe that much more than giving up stuff, it is the surrender of our hearts to God.  Proverbs 4:23 instructs us to guard our hearts with all diligence.  I use to think that this verse was solely about love, but now I see that it is about a love that fuels worship.  God is seeking true worshippers who will worship in Spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).  When we think about faith, our worship reflects where we have placed our faith; so when the rich young ruler was unwilling to surrender his wealth, he revealed that his faith and dependence was on money and not on God.  Scripture says that misplaced faith is a curse that turns our hearts away from the Lord (Jeremiah 17:5).  Where we place our faith is critical because it is also where we place our trust, our hope, and where we seek to be blessed, so our trust is not only to be in the Lord (Jeremiah 17:7a).  We are never to place our faith in our trust-fund, but rather we are to entrust this and all we have to the Lord who is our trust (Jeremiah 17:7b).  It is our call to love God first, to not allow idols to take up residence in our hearts, and to do this with all diligence because the heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9).  Simply put, our faith, hope, love and trust must never be placed in what has been placed in our hands, but rather placed in the One who has made all things!

¹⁵ Then He said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” ¹⁶ And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. ¹⁷ And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ ¹⁸ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ ²⁰ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ ²¹ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” Luke 12:15-21

Just to be clear, this is not a call to a vow of poverty, nor is it a condemnation of being wealthy, but rather it is a heart check.  Money is not evil, but our unchecked attitude towards it can be if we do not keep it in proper perspective.  This goes for everything in our lives, not just wealth.  You might carry deep affection for the company you built to the point that it becomes an idol.  You might feel that you need to be married or have children to be complete, an attitude that is also idolatrous.  As I observe trends in American culture in regards to children, I must admit on more than one occasion the term child-worship has come to mind.  Perhaps it is your home, your place of solace.  This was true for me as my first home was custom built and constructed exactly as we wanted it, and I was incredible proud of it.  It was my palace and my sanctuary, something that I could point to that gave me value and esteem in the eyes of others.  I was protective of it and thought we would never move from there, but now it has been over ten years since I have been there.  When we lived there, I could not see my attitude towards it, nor could I see my attitude towards the company we built, or the lifestyle that we portrayed.  Only in the distance of time could I look back and have a proper perspective.  A view not of the life that God gave us, but rather a view of my heart and the person that I became.  Blessings not held with an attitude of thanksgiving can easily become idols through a prideful heart.  It is where a person will naturally end up if we forget that the Earth belongs to the Lord along with everything in it (Psalm 24:1).  Our pride can easily grow like a cancer when we forget that it is God who has given us the ability to create wealth (Deuteronomy 8:11-19):

¹¹ “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; ¹² otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, ¹³ and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, ¹⁴ then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. ¹⁶ In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. ¹⁷ Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. ¹⁹ It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish. – Deuteronomy 8:11-19

This valuable account of the Rich Young Ruler is quite important for us today in America where we are brought up to live lives of comparison, stake our value on our productivity, and can be guilty of keeping up with the Jones’.  As a consumer culture, building bigger barns is not only a practice, it is often the goal, even in our Christian culture.  We tend to live in a bubble that blinds us to our wealth from a global perspective.  While there is an ongoing political debate about the 1% getting richer, the middle class dissipating and poverty increasing, we must be aware that there are more than a few billion people in the world who see us all as the 1% because we own shoes, and a bed, and indoor plumbing, and have access to clean water.  More importantly, we have freedom to worship, access to an unlimited supply of bibles, access to education, healthcare, and every kind of food imaginable.  To be a U.S. citizen is an incredible blessing because our country provides instant wealth to all citizens, so we must be cautious to hold that with an attitude of thanksgiving and humility.  Let us be mindful of the blessings we take for granted, hold all things loosely and continually give thanks to God.  Like many of us, the rich young ruler had the right information, but information is not the end game, it is the beginning of our formation.  The rich young ruler was doing the rights things for the wrong reasons.  How often have we made decisions because of potential consequences or personal gain rather than because it honors God?  It might seem like a subtle thing, a nit-picky thing, a pragmatic thing, but what does it expose if Jesus were to tell us, “you still lack one thing?”