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Do this. Thursday, you can do this. Friday, you can do this.". And then, thank goodness, the week ends here. So, when we come to the Bible, when we come to things of God, we have that running through our head.
I can do this. You've got this. All you need to do is tell me what to do, and I'll do it. What we're going to see in our text is that when it comes to eternal life, you cannot do this. The memes are wrong.
Eternal life. You cannot earn eternal life. If I had to sum what we're going to talk about in one sentence, it would be, you cannot earn eternal life, but Jesus gives it to the helpless. You cannot earn eternal life, but Jesus gives it to the helpless.
We're starting in verse 13. This is the story of the children. Now, this story of the children is tied into the rich young ruler. In all three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're all combined.
They're meant to be read together. So, we're going to start with verse 13, and I'll stop to make comments. Then, children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. So, children are coming to Jesus.
He's laying his hands on them. That's a blessing. The disciples rebuke the people, but Jesus said, let the little children come to me. So, this rebuke from the disciples is ironic. It's ironic for two reasons.
Number one, the disciples are little children. They were called little children back in Matthew 11. They're little children because what was not revealed to the wise, namely the kingdom of God, is revealed to them.
But these little children, the disciples, are rebuking the people for bringing their little children. It's ironic, again, because of the word rebuke. It's a strong word. It's the same word that is used of Jesus to cast out demons or to calm the wind and the waves.
Additionally ironic, because every time the disciples or a crowd rebuke someone in Matthew, they're always wrong. The first time someone besides Jesus used the word rebuke is of Peter when he's rebuking Christ for saying that he's going to die.
Later on, the crowd rebukes two blind men for crying out for mercy. So, the disciples are wrong here in their rebuke, but Jesus says to them, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them.
Then he gives a reason why they should come to him. For to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. Now, what Jesus is doing, he's not saying, I'm tired of working with the adults. Let's just have the kids come.
They're simpler. They're fun. They're cute. Just let them come. I want some playtime. What he's saying is he's using this as a living parable or an example. I'm letting the children come to me, he says, and I want you to see in the children coming to me that these are the type of people who have the kingdom of heaven.
The crux to understanding these first three verses is to understand what does it mean to come to Jesus like a child. If you misunderstand that, you come to Jesus in the wrong way. So if you think children are innocent and you try to come to Jesus as innocent, then you've misunderstood the passage.
We know from Psalm 51 that David himself was born in sin. So the question is, how do you come to Jesus like a child? We know from Mark's account of this, what Jesus is emphasizing is the way in which the children receive the kingdom.
Mark 10 tells us that it's how they receive the kingdom that Jesus is emphasizing. So these first three verses tell us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who receive the kingdom of heaven like children, and that is receive it helplessly.
Think of a child. I put together a bunk bed this week and my kids were helping me, so it took a whole lot longer. Anytime they try to contribute, things started falling apart. I was more concerned about the bed frame falling on them than actually getting together and Jackson standing there with a screwdriver, using it as a hammer, banging on the bed.
They don't add. They're not helpful. But the text itself shows you this. It's not just me in reading that into the text. Look at who is brought to Jesus. First off, it's children. Luke tells us that they're babies.
These aren't people coming of their own accord either. They're brought to him. And Mark tells us that they're young enough that Jesus is holding them in his arms. This is also not the first time that we've heard of God saving his people and talking about them as helpless children.
Think of Ezekiel chapter 16. In Ezekiel chapter 16, Ezekiel is rebuking Israel for turning away, and he gives a sort of history of how God saved Israel. Ezekiel 16, starting in verse 1. Again, the word of the Lord came to me.
Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations and say, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem. Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
And as for your birth on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No, I pitied you to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you.
But you were cast out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born. That's the language of ancient Near Eastern abortion. That's what you would do back in those days. If you didn't want your kid, you'd carry them to term, you'd leave them to die.
And this is the image God gives of Jerusalem. But then the Lord comes when I passed by you again, and I saw you behold. Oh, I skipped first six. And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, that's an important phrase.
We'll see it three times. It's emphasizing the helplessness of the people whom God saves. I saw you wallowing in your blood. I said to you in your blood, live. This is repeated. I said to you in your blood, live.
And I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. So what we're seeing here, if you flip back to Matthew, is that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are helpless, or it is given to those who are helpless.
Now, when I started this, I didn't say the kingdom of heaven is given to the helpless. I said eternal life is given to the helpless. What you'll see throughout this passage is that the kingdom of heaven and eternal life are synonymous.
So Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven here. The rich young man will come to ask, what do I do for eternal life? And then Jesus will say to his disciples, it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
The two are synonymous. You can also see that in the parable of the sheep and the goats. So the first thing we see from the first three verses is that the kingdom of heaven or eternal life is given to the helpless.
Before we move on now to contrast that with the rich young ruler, maybe we have a side application. A lot of commentators, when they're talking about this, emphasize how do you treat children or how do you think of children?
And that's a good application. Another might be, do you have a category of people that you would rebuke, like the disciples did? Is there a group of people who would be coming to Jesus that you would say, no, turn back.
Jesus isn't for you. The disciples thought the children were a waste of Jesus' time. In our congregation, there's so many kids here. Nobody really has that mindset in this church, fortunately. But maybe we have a different type of mindset.
Maybe we're more likely to turn other people away. Have you ever decided not to share the gospel with someone because you've assumed that they aren't the type of person that would come to Christ? Maybe it's like the blue hair, head half shaved, non-binary coworker or somebody like that.
Matthew Henry says, it is well for us that Christ has more love and tenderness in him than the best of his disciples have. If Christ does not break the bruised reed, we should not. So when you have someone coming to Christ, here's an application from this.
Don't turn them away. Don't assume Christ is not for you. The most important application though, how are you coming to Christ? Are you coming to Christ helpless like these children? Or are you coming to Christ like the rich young man?
So turn now to verse 16 and we'll look at the rich young man. And we'll see in this passage, we'll go down to verse 26. We'll see in this passage that not only does God give eternal life to the helpless, but you cannot earn eternal life.
You cannot earn eternal life. Two main reasons. Nope. I'm sorry. Three main reasons why you cannot earn eternal life. Number one, you cannot earn eternal life because the standard is the perfection of God.
God is the standard for eternal life. So look at the text, verse 16 and behold, look, pay attention. A man came up to him saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? Matthew is emphasizing the good deed, the work that the rich young man is trying to do.
If you have a King James version, it's going to say good teacher, what good deed must I do? And you'll see good teacher in Mark and in Luke as well. But the best texts leave out good in Matthew's version.
Matthew's point is he's focusing in on the good deed, the works that the rich young man is trying to do. He said to him, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? Now here's Jesus's answer. Verse 17, Jesus said to him, why do you ask me about what is good?
There is only one who is good. Jesus point here is that the rich young man has his definitions wrong. He he's using good in a very loose sense. We do the same thing in our culture. We think most people are good because typically the only bad people in our culture are 20th century dictators.
We think the 20th century dictators are bad. If you're not a 20th century dictator, you're generally good because we're comparing ourselves with other people. If you put me and Hitler in a room and are only comparing the two of us, I'm pretty good.
But if you put me and God in a room, suddenly you see the depths of my sinful nature. So the rich young man's first problem is that he has the wrong definition of what it means to be good. So reason number one, why you can't earn eternal life, because the standard is God's holiness.
It's God's goodness. I should say that when he's referring to there is only one who is good, we know that that's God because he talks about that in Mark 10 and in Luke 18, the parallel passages, he specifies there is only one who is good, namely God.
But all right, if you want to try it, let's see what happens. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. So here's the law. He's come to the law. You want to be good. You want to try to earn eternal life.
Then all you have to do is keep the commandments. So the rich young man asks in verse 18, which ones? And Jesus says, and now we get a list of laws. You shall not murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
What Jesus is doing is giving what's called the second table of laws. They're the laws that govern how you and I interact with each other. The first table of laws is the laws how we relate to God. He's probably giving these for the very reason that it's easier to judge whether or not you've done it than whether or not you're relating to God correctly.
But for the reason, it doesn't mean that these are the only laws. As long as you don't commit adultery and don't murder, but you commit idolatry, then you get to heaven. He's using a short summary of the law to stand in for the whole.
Now, while we read these laws, one passage in Matthew should be echoing in your mind. If you ever try to read Matthew from cover to cover, what happens is you'll suddenly start thinking of Matthew 5 when you read Matthew 19.
There's at least three reasons for this. Number one, Matthew 19 and Matthew 5 are the only place where divorce comes up in Matthew. That's not in the passage we're talking about. Number two, it's the only time the word perfection is used in Matthew's gospel.
And then number three, the ordering of these commands is the same ordering in Matthew 5. Now, that's not to say Matthew 5 lists all the commands. Both of these lists vary slightly, but they follow the same order.
And that's significant because Luke's gospel doesn't follow that order. And Mark's gospel, both Luke and Mark, leave off that summary, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So what we're going to do is read these commandments in light of Matthew 5.
Matthew 5, if you remember, Jesus is talking about the Pharisees' interpretation of the law. He keeps saying, you have heard it was said, talking about the tradition of the Pharisees, and then he interprets the law correctly.
But I say to you, you see, the Pharisees had this definition of a law that was merely external and didn't get at the heart reasons of the law. So let's read Matthew 19. I'll go down and I'll insert some relevant passages from Matthew 5.
And here's what I want you to put yourself in the place of the rich young man. As you're listening to these, you want to come, you want to earn eternal life. Here's what you have to do. Number one, you shall not murder.
Matthew 5, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Don't commit adultery. But everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
You shall not bear false witness. Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. And then the summary, love your neighbor as yourself. In Matthew 5, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
The two commandments not found in Matthew 5, you shall not steal, but think of the commandment not to covet. It's not even just about taking something that doesn't belong to you, but desiring that. And then honor your father and mother.
Have you always respected your parents? This is what the Pharisees failed to do when they said you don't have to financially support your parents as long as you dedicate that money to God. So if you're going down that checklist, how do we do?
Five out of 50 maybe? No. The law is hitting again and again and again. It's striking at your conscience and that's the purpose of the law and that's what is supposed to be happening to the rich young man.
But the rich young man doesn't understand this. The young man says to him, verse 20, all these I have kept. What do I still lack? So first we had saw that it's God's perfection that is the standard. Now we're starting to see you cannot earn salvation because you cannot keep the commands.
All these I have kept though. He thinks he's kept them. What do I still lack? And here's Jesus' response. Jesus said to him, verse 21, if you would be perfect, there's that standard again, perfection.
Jesus hasn't turned a corner and said, all right, now I'm going to test your faith. He hasn't just stopped talking about law. He's still talking about the standard of God, that standard being perfection.
So here's what Jesus says. You want to earn salvation? All right, be perfect. Here's what you have to do. Go, sell what you possess, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me.
So there's three interpretations of that. You can see go and selling everything as the primary command. You can see following Jesus as the primary command, or you can see both of them as roughly equal.
But it really doesn't matter how you want to interpret that. The point is, here's perfection. Here's what you have to do. It's worth asking then, is Jesus just adding a commandment? The rich young man misinterpreted the laws that Jesus gave him.
So Jesus gave him a different law, not found anywhere else in scripture. It's like the fine print of your forms you have to sign or something like that. No, what Jesus is doing is he's still getting at the heart of the law.
Jesus summarizes the law in Matthew 22 by saying, love of God, love of neighbor. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
In giving this command to the rich young man, what Jesus is doing is he's showing the rich young man, you've not kept any of the law. Go sell your possessions and give to the poor. So sell your possessions.
Do you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? If so, you'll obey this commandment, and you'll sell your possessions. But no, he doesn't, because he loves his wealth more than he loves God.
Do you love your neighbor as yourself? You'll give your possessions to the poor. Jesus is testing him, showing him that you've created wealth as an idol. And the rich young man goes away sorrowful. Verse 22, when the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
That word sorrowful, the same word used when the disciples find out that one of them will betray him at the Last Supper, that he's devastated because he finds out, he realizes, I cannot earn eternal life.
That's the purpose of the law. That's what the law is supposed to show you. The law acts as a mirror. This is what theologians call the first use of the law. It shows who you are in relation to God and shows you that you cannot keep it.
Do you remember in Pilgrim's Progress when Faithful and Pilgrim are getting together, and Faithful tells Pilgrim about the path he's been on? He says he was in sin for a while with the first Adam, and then he started walking on the right path, but he was chased by this man, this man called Moses.
He said, so soon as the man overtook me, he was but a word and a blow, for down he knocked me and laid me for dead. But when I was little come to myself again, I asked him wherefore he served me so. He said, because of my secret inclining to Adam the first, and with that he struck me another deadly blow on the breast and beat me down backwards.
So I lay at his foot as dead as before. So when I came to myself again, I cried for mercy, but he said, I know not how to show mercy, and with that knocked me down again. He had doubtless made an end of me, but that one came by and bit him for bear.
And Christian then identifies who that man was that beat him. He says, that man that overtook you was Moses. He spareth none, neither knoweth he how to show mercy to those who transgress the law. This is what Jesus is doing here.
He's showing the rich young man, if you would earn eternal life, you need to keep the law and you need to keep the law perfectly. So first we've seen in this section that you cannot earn salvation because God is the standard of perfection.
Second, you cannot earn salvation or you cannot earn eternal life because you cannot keep the commands. And finally, you cannot earn eternal life because no one can earn eternal life. There might be a temptation for you here to look at this and say, okay, well, the rich young man couldn't do it, but the text does talk a lot about his riches.
So it's probably his wealth that's keeping him there. So the poor have it. That's not the point. The point is that no one, it's as if once the rich man, young man walks away sorrowful, Jesus turns to his disciples and his explanation to his disciples is designed to cast as broad in that as possible to show that it's not just this one instance of someone coming to try to earn eternal life, but no one can.
Look at verse 23. And Jesus said to his disciples, truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Now you're like, Tim, you just said it wasn't possible. And now you're saying it's just difficult.
Don't put too much weight to that word. It's only used here and in the other two accounts. It's used nowhere else. If you try to say, well, maybe there's a loophole, maybe it's just hard. Look at what the next verse says, because the next verse is designed to explain that.
Again, I tell you, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. There might be two things you could do here. You could say, well, the word for camel in the Greek is very similar to the word for cable.
So there might be a scribal error and they transitioned one of those letters and they really meant it's easier. It's hard to get a cable through the eye of a needle. The other thing you can do here is say, well, the word for needle could refer to a tiny gate in Jerusalem.
And so it's really hard to get through that. But maybe if the camel does like an army crawl thing, he can do it. It's just difficult. But neither of those interpretations are right. First, if you look at textual variance, the better texts speak of the actual camel and not the word for cable.
Also, when you're trying to figure out which is which, a good rule is whichever is harder to harmonize or whichever is more confusing is probably correct, because a scribe is more likely to correct something to make it easier to understand than to correct it and go the wrong way.
So we're not talking about here. What we're talking about is when they're copying the Bible and we have several different types of manuscripts, several different copies, and we're comparing them to see which is the most accurate, which are the originals.
And we can say with confidence that in the original, it referred to an actual camel. Here's the point. The camel is the biggest animal in the Palestine area that was common. So you have the biggest animal.
The has one of the smallest holes in the area. Try putting that through that. It just doesn't work. I had to take a sewing class. It's one of the benefits of being homeschooled. You get enrolled in a sewing class.
And I remember when I was trying to thread that needle, that would be like, I would be so careful. I finally get the thread through. And what would I do? I would pull the thread as far as possible and then bring it back so that if I slipped or something, I still had a string on the other side.
And I never had to re-thread that needle because if you had to, you'd be licking your fingers and licking the thread and it would take forever. Try that with a camel. It just doesn't work. That's his point.
It's impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. All right. You've shown it's impossible, but you've only shown it's impossible for the rich. What about that adjective? Maybe that adjective is talking about rich people.
That would make sense. Look at the disciples' response to Jesus. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished. That word for greatly, same word used for the terror they felt when Jesus was transformed before their very eyes and he spoke with Moses and Elijah.
And that word for astonished literally means to be struck out of one's senses. It's like they got hit on the back of the head and they don't know what's going on. This totally flabbergasted them. I think that's the accurate translation.
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished. And here's their question. Who then can be saved? You're saying that a rich man can't come into the kingdom of heaven. Well, then who can? And that's the point.
Who then can be saved? See, in the disciples' time, the disciples weren't carrying around Karl Marx in their back pocket or something like that. They didn't have this idea of the evil rich man who came to steal all of their stuff or stuff like that.
Really, if you were rich, you were rich because you were blessed by God. Think of Abraham, who's able to take on a bunch of kings to save Lot because of all his wealth. Think of Job. Think of the wealthy people in the Old Testament.
They had wealth because they were blessed by God. Who is most likely to be able to earn the kingdom of heaven? It's someone who's blessed by God. The rich would be most likely because they were blessed by God.
That's what the disciples are thinking, and they're trying to figure out who then can enter the kingdom of heaven or who then can be saved. And Jesus doesn't correct them. He doesn't say, no, you misunderstood.
Money is a hindrance. Now, money can be a hindrance. That's true. The more money you have, the harder it is to see your need for things. If you're not constantly living day to day, paycheck to paycheck, you might not be aware of your actual spiritual need.
If you're not aware of your physical needs, sometimes your spiritual need is clouded. But that's not the point here. The point here is that if the rich can't be saved, no one can be saved. At least no one can earn salvation.
And that's why Jesus looks at them and says, with man, this is impossible. Impossible. There's no room for a maybe in that. It's the same word used to describe whether or not God would lie in Hebrews.
It's impossible for God to lie. It's impossible for man to be saved on his own. But with God, all things are possible. So what Jesus is saying here, you cannot earn salvation, but with God, all things are possible.
And that should remind us about the children who just were used an example of those who entered the kingdom. How are you coming to Christ? Are you coming like the rich young man with all these things in your hands, these good works so that you can earn eternal life?
Or are you coming like a tiny helpless baby crying out, save me, Lord. There's more to this story. Unfortunately, if we keep going, we have to end at verse 30, which is basically interrupting Jesus' mid-explanation.
So what we're going to do next time is we're going to start at verse 27 and go all the way down to verse 16 of chapter 20, because those go together. But let me say this, because I know when some of you hear this, you're starting to think, okay, you're saying that nothing I can do earns eternal life.
None of my works count. Therefore, you're saying, all I have to do is come to Christ empty. All I have to do is believe in Christ. Therefore, I can live however I want. That is not what I'm saying. But sometimes we misinterpret this idea that just because nothing we do saves us, therefore, we can live however we want.
Think of John Frith. If you don't know who John Frith is, he's an early or second century reformer. He's in jail. He's in jail in England because he's a reformer, and Bloody Mary's on the throne, and she doesn't really like those types of people.
So he's stuck in jail, and he's writing on justification, and he has to sneak his papers. I don't know where he was hiding them, but he was writing, and as soon as his guard came, he'd hide them again, take up his pen again.
He keeps stressing the fact that just because your works are not related to your justification doesn't mean works aren't unimportant. Especially, that was the argument at the Reformation by the Roman Catholics.
If you tell me that I don't have to do anything to be saved, that my works don't play any role in my standing before God, then I'm going to live however I want. And the Catholic Church says, well, then how are we going to convince people to live holy lives unless we scare them into living right?
John Frith just gives five quick reasons why you should obey the law. First, God commands them. Second, they help your neighbor. They tame your flesh. They're to the glory of God, and they're a testimony of the working of the Spirit within us.
There's plenty of reasons why we keep the law, but one of those reasons can never be in order to merit your salvation or in order to earn eternal life, because as we've just seen, the standard is perfection, and none of us can keep the law.
John Frith, I think he must have been frustrated, which would make sense since he was in jail, but he's like, it's almost as if you're saying that the shining sun doesn't matter unless it relates to my justification.
Just take good works away from justification. We do works out of gratitude. We do works, as Ephesians 4 says, because we are new, so we take on the new Adam. We put off, sorry, we take the new man, we put off the old man.
We have to be who we are, but we don't earn our salvation by doing good things. Let me end with this. The Heidelberg asks, how do you come to know your misery? The answer, the law of God tells me. Question, can you live up to all this perfectly?
No. I am inclined by nature to hate God and my neighbor. That's what the law does. It shows you your sin, but there was a rich man who did lay everything aside. Though he was in the form of God, Philippians says he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The point is when Jesus comes, he doesn't come to minimize the law so that now all you have to do is an easier version of the Ten Commandments in order to be saved. He comes to perfectly obey the Ten Commandments and then apply his work to yours or his work to you.
He asks you to come and receive that as a humble, helpless child. Let me ask you, how do you come to God? Cling to Christ, not your works. Do you come, foul I too, the fountain fly, wash me, Savior, or I die?
Or do you come saying, okay, I think I got most of this off. Am I good enough? Do you come saying, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to your cross I cling? Or do you come saying, well, this is what I've got.
Is it good enough? No, you come to Christ as a humble child, as a helpless child, a child who can do nothing in order to earn their salvation. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your love for us. Thank you that we don't have to obey perfectly in order to enter eternal life because who among us can say like the rich young man said, all these I have kept.
I pray that tonight that we would be comforted by this, that we would rest knowing that you have perfectly obeyed the law of God and that you have saved us in Christ's name. Amen.