SNBS - The Book of Matthew part 17

So, I haven't done one of these in a while, so we're gonna try it today and see how it goes.

Who knows, I might go back to doing these live ones on Thursdays from now on.

We'll call this Sunday Night Bible Study, even though it's on Thursday. Online, we're on Chapter 19.

In person, we're on Chapter 24. Hey everybody, this is Josiah from Wynton Baptist Church. Pastor Josiah, doing

Sunday Night Bible Studies. Chapter 18 was supposed to be uploaded weeks ago before I went to Puerto Rico.

I'm not sure why it wasn't. I'll have to figure that out. But, I've got to catch up online, because in person we're in Chapter 24.

Online, we're only in Chapter 19. So, I've got to catch up somehow.

So, maybe doing these live on Thursdays will help. That's what

I'm going to try to do anyway. I wonder if I can screen share and then turn it right back off.

What do y 'all think? Think it's possible? I think it's possible. Now that I have two monitors.

I wonder if I can. I don't want to create a poll. I don't want to do any of that.

And maybe it won't be possible, but I might give it a try. Oh, hey Jennifer. Who's that? Hey Amanda.

Let's see. I might not be able to start screen share.

Check on your camera. Let me do a minute ago. I might not be able to do it today.

Unless I turn it off and try again. How can I screen share?

That's what I really want to do. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Because I'm sure right now y 'all can only see my face. You can't see my screen, which is what I really want. I might just turn it off and then try again.

If I can't figure it out right here, I just won't worry about it. And we'll just move on.

Camera. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Yeah, I'm not seeing it. Oh well. Oh well.

Well, I tried. It let me do a screen share option before I went live.

As if I could only choose one. So it looks like I can't do it.

Unless I... It won't even let me click it. The only way I could do that is if I started over and just did the whole thing.

From screen share, which is not what I wanted. I just wanted to be able to go back and forth. Alright, well, enough of that.

I'm not worried about it. We'll do it from here then. Alright guys, look.

Let's get to work. We're in Matthew 19. We have work to do. So, we've done the marriage and divorce one a bunch of times, so I'm not worried about that one.

So let's do Matthew 19. And let's do 16 through 26, the rich young ruler.

Now let's read and let's listen. Alright, it says... And behold, a man came up to him, saying,

Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, Why do you ask me about what's good?

There's only one who's good. If you would enter eternal life, keep the commandments.

Let's just knock out those two verses here. So here we are in Matthew 19.

And this is the last area of Jesus' ministry before his final entry into Jerusalem.

So we're only a couple weeks before the crucifixion. And this rich young ruler...

And you have to read the parallel accounts to know all these details about this guy.

But he's a rich young ruler. Maybe a ruler in the synagogue. It doesn't exactly say, but it says he said,

Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? Now a few things to note here.

He comes up and calls Jesus Teacher, not Lord. We're already starting off on the wrong foot. I mentioned this to Brother Jeff the other day.

We put far too much of an emphasis on Jesus as Savior as opposed to Jesus as Lord.

The book of Acts, which is a collection, if you want to think of it this way, of the doings and the findings and the teachings and the preachings of the early church, the first generation after Jesus leaves, the apostles, calls

Jesus Savior. The whole book, 28 chapters, calls Jesus our Savior two times.

But calls him Lord 94 times, I think it is. What's the emphasis? Lord or Savior?

Well, the emphasis is Lord. I hope and pray that we share that same emphasis.

But this rich young ruler comes up to him and calls him Teacher, which if he was a ruler in the synagogue, and you're not looking at my screen, but yeah, did escalate,

Teacher. He could have been called the same thing, or maybe even Rabbi. And the word good can be applied to both teacher and deed.

So it could translate good teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?

And I love Jesus' answer here. He answers with a question. It helps me know that I'm doing something right, because I often do this when counseling.

Like I might say, someone said, I read my Bible three times. And to get them to think about why they're reading the

Bible, I'll say, why did you read your Bible? Why do you even believe in God? I want them to critically think, so they'll be able to give a defense.

When Jesus is doing that here, he says, why do you call me good? There's only one who is good.

So Jesus is testing why he believes what he says he believes. Why are you calling me good? There are some silly people who take this to mean

Jesus was saying he shouldn't be called good. Well, no. He's just asking a question of the guy, why are you calling me good?

Jesus, of course, before he can get to grace, has to show this guy law.

Has to show this guy that there's sin. Has to show this rich young ruler that there's a need for a

Savior. Remember, no one has ever been saved who didn't first recognize their need for a Savior.

So Jesus asked him, if you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.

Now, of course, if you want to enter eternal life, you have to keep all the commandments. And that's the problem. And the young guy said to him, verse 18, which ones?

And Jesus said, you shall not. Now watch. Jesus just picked six at random. Somebody in the comments tell me, how many laws are in the

Torah? From Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and some of the numbers.

How many laws are there? Not ten. Ten commandments are just the first ten, and then there's summary. How many laws were there?

Someone give me a guess. How many laws in the Torah? The guy said, which ones?

Which ones do I have to keep for eternal life? And Jesus said, verse 18, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Jennifer is right. 613 is the right answer. 613 laws. Jesus picked six.

He picks, you shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness.

Honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself. So five of them he stole from the Decalogue, from the Ten Commandments.

The last one he took from Leviticus 19. Remember that in another place in Matthew, Jesus says on two laws,

Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19, that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.

On those two laws hang all the law and the prophets. Just those two.

And Jesus picks these six. And the young guy says this, verse 20.

And the young man said to him, all of these I have kept. I think it's

Luke's, he even adds, all these I've kept since my youth. In other words, I've kept them perfectly.

Yeah, right, okay. So then

Jesus did something here. By the way, have you ever met someone like this?

They can never point out to you any area. I'm going to write exactly, I'm going to say exactly what I wrote down. What's up,

Janine? They can never point out to you any specific area where they're failing.

And they'll just use the standard generic, well, nobody's perfect. But they can never tell anyone at all any specific area where they're not obeying

God properly. That pride in thinking you have nowhere to obey more is a dangerous place to be.

Now what Jesus does next is something that I could never do. He reads the heart of men.

And he knows what they love more than God. What Jesus tells the rich young ruler next is something he never, ever, ever tells anybody else, but only this guy.

He says what in verse 21? If you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give it to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

Jesus has never told anyone to go and sell all that they possess and give it to the poor. Why did he tell this guy to do that?

What is salvation? Well, it's saving from sin, forgiveness, yada, yada, yada.

But here's what it really is. Salvation is bowing the knee of your heart in total submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Whatever idols, whatever things you have above God, it is taking those off the throne and bowing the knee of your heart, bowing down before a sovereign

God. What we place, what sin we place, what idols we place above God is different for every person.

When God tested Abraham, he didn't test him with selling all his possessions. What did he say?

Take your son, your only son Isaac, who you love, and sacrifice him to me. With the rich young ruler, he didn't test him in that way.

He said, go and sell all you have. Now why would Jesus tell him that? Well, evidently,

Jesus knows something we don't in that that is what this guy, as we're about to see, cherished more than anything.

This rich young ruler cherished more dearly and loved and obeyed. So I'll read what

I wrote. Jesus asked him this here because he knew there was still one thing the rich man loved more, cherished more dearly, and obeyed more closely than Jesus, and that was riches.

Jesus tells this man to give up the idol he loved more than Jesus. The treasure of heaven should be worth more than anything else.

The reason Jesus tells this guy that and no one else is because he knew that was the idol, that was the thing that he loved more.

So I ask you, what do you love more than Jesus? And here's how you test that.

Forget about how you feel. If someone else was looking at your life, what would they say you love the most?

And is Jesus in the category of things they would say you love most? We all know what

God does with idols. He destroys them. Now, verse 22 tells us basically what we need to know about how much this guy loved his possessions.

When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful.

I think it's Mark says he wept bitterly for he had great possessions.

He wept bitterly. Why? Because he knew what he should do, but he knew he couldn't.

He knew what he had to give up, but he wept bitterly because he did want Jesus, but he didn't want

Jesus more than anything. He wept because he knew he was unwilling to give up the things that he held more dearly than Jesus.

And though he was torn, he chose his riches over Jesus. How do I know? Because he left and went away sorrowful for he had many great possessions.

God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham passed the test. God asked the rich young ruler to sacrifice his riches, and he failed the test.

Verse 23 and 24, Jesus said to his disciples, Truly I tell you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of God.

Why? Because it's so easy to make money in idol, even in our culture especially. Verse 24, again

I tell you, it's easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I've always been told that the eye of the needle was the name of one of the small gates that the camels had to get on their knees and crawl through.

I've never found that. It might be true, I've just never seen that. So I'm thinking of an actual eye of a needle.

Camel, basically the biggest land animal in the area I would imagine. 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.

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished. Probably because they had been taught by their Jewish leaders that money was a sign of wealth and blessings from God.

Still something you hear said today. There's a song that some churches sing, when the praises go up, the blessings come down.

Well sometimes, or sometimes not. God is not obligated to bless us because we praise him.

Also, the fact that we always associate blessings with financial success probably shows where our priority is.

God does bless obedience, but he does it in his timing and when he feels like it.

And since this rich young ruler was wealthy and probably a ruler in the synagogue, the disciples were like, verse 25, then who can be saved?

In other words, if this good church guy isn't a Christian, then who is Jesus? And Jesus looked at them and said.

So he's been talking to them, but now he looks at them and says, With man it's impossible.

What's impossible? Being saved. Who then can be saved? With man it's impossible. With God, all things are possible.

I love Peter's response in verse 27. Peter said in reply, So in other words, we're not like this guy

Jesus. We left everything and followed you. Jesus doesn't rebuke Peter.

Jesus says, But many who are first will be last, and last will be first.

Basically all of chapter 20 is constructed around that sentence. Many who are first will be last, and last will be first.

We'll get more into that next time. Just a couple closing comments.

Remember, why does Jesus tell this guy to go sell all that he has, but he never tells anyone else to do that?

Because that was the idol. That was the thing. Jesus can evangelize differently than I, because he knows the harps people.

That was the thing, the idol, that the rich young ruler loved more than Jesus, obeyed more than Jesus.

The rich young ruler obeyed the inanimate object of money more than he obeyed

Jesus. Jesus said, Come follow me, and the rich young ruler emotionally wanted to.

He cried. He wept bitterly. But at the end of it all, he still chose his riches over Jesus.

May it never be that anyone who watches this can say there's something they love more than Jesus, and they will not give it up for Jesus.

That is what salvation is. It is bowing the knee of your heart to the sovereign Lord Jesus.

And the Bible says when we do that, that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Very good.

Okay. There's just a little tidbit for Matthew 19. We'll get into Matthew 20 next time.

Maybe I'll keep doing it live style, if I can figure out how to share a screen. All right, guys.

I love y 'all very much. Thanks for tuning in just to the little surprise live video.