K-048 One Thing You Lack — Art Katz

The Call to Radical Commitment

We love you, Lord. Thank you for being an extraordinary God, for the privilege that is ours to be sons and daughters of the Most High. Call to your service. This is too much for us, Lord. We cannot lay hold of it.

Thank you, Lord, for this life, for this high way. May we enter it tonight, Lord God, with a bang. May there be such a response from your people, such a totality, such a letting go of every restraint, such a coming in to the deep and the authentic place that shall change everything, all of the balance of our days.

My God, may you lift your trump to your lips tonight and give such a blast by the breath of your life that it shall waken the very dead, that it shall stir those who are asleep to great wakefulness. My God, how we want to hear your voice in your urgency for this hour.

Come, my God, speak, Lord, speak, for your servants are hearing. Thank you, Lord. We want to be changed, radicalized. Come and give us that word, Lord, that call. We'll thank you and praise you. Have your precious way.

To you be all praise and glory, honor and acknowledgement, now and forever. Amen. Bless the Lord. Testing, one, two, three, four, five, six. Good. My text tonight is marked the tenth chapter. It's an episode that is described in three gospels, familiar to us all, which we think is not appropriate to us all.

The Rich Young Ruler and the One Thing Lacking

The story or the account of the rich young ruler from verse 17 of Mark 10. And as he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him and began asking him, good teacher, what shall 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, I've kept all these things from my youth up. And looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, one thing you lack. Go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven and come follow me.

But at these words, his face fell and he went away grieved, for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus, looking around, said to his disciples, how hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God.

And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, children, how hard 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 young man, for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were even more astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Looking upon them, Jesus said, with men it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. Peter began to say to him, behold, 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 mothers or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundred times as much more in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions and in the world to come, eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last first. Amen. I think it's altogether significant that this Jewish man, who is evidently religious and ethical, outstanding in the quality of his life, who has kept the commandments from his youth up, doesn't just come in a kind of passive or casual way to Jesus, it says that he ran, that he knelt.

It's quite respectful, almost spiritual, and yet that's exactly the point, that you can have all these things going for you and yet miss it. The entry to the kingdom is the entry to life. A lot of us are in a much lesser place because we have not understood the totality, the radical demand, the utterness of the whole commitment to God that constitutes entry into the kingdom and also entry into life.

There are more of us in this room tonight and certainly in Christendom who have sadly and mournfully turned away than we ourselves realize, and yet we're physically here. And even complimenting ourselves about the quality of our commitment and our discipleship.

I'll tell you, I really need a Holy Ghost assist tonight. If God be not with me, if God does not make these words penetrating, this will be a colossal flop. And I'm not concerned for that in terms of reputation sake or anything like that.

I'm concerned for your sake. Because if this flops, then you are condemned the longer to remain in a condition that is something less than kingdom condition. And this is a frustration and something with which I have lived for years that continues to mount in my spirit and for which I am choked and spluttering and I cannot find words or expression.

I know it in my spirit, my heart knows it. The totality, the depth of God's call. And I know in the same breath how many of us have missed it and have not understood it. Because the world has not schooled us or prepared us for such an understanding.

And in all of this frustration, nothing compounds it more than our frequent use of the word commitment. It's ironic that though we speak it, though we use it, we don't understand it. We're partial, we're inadequate, we don't know what the totality is of God's requirement for kingdom entry.

And rightly did Jesus say, with man it is impossible. I want you to know that this call is so searing, so total, so other, so beyond any capacity that we have in ourselves in terms of discipline or commitment or idealism or dedication or consecration that with man it is impossible.

If you have a religious walk, by whatever name you call it or describe it, New Testament, charismatic, that you have made possible by virtue of your determination, your ability, your devotion, you are not in the kingdom.

I want to tell you that the kingdom is the kingdom of heaven. And heaven is the place of eternity and eternal life. It's altogether other, it's supernatural, it's beyond us. And many of us are therefore living beneath the kingdom reality.

We're in the temporal world, albeit we're religious, we're dedicated, we have handsome vocabularies, we give generously and we do all these things. We have not yet entered into life. If we knew what the cost is, we would turn away.

They were astonished at this saying. Who then can be saved? One thing you lack. There's an expression that we have in the Jewish lexicon. That's a shot in the kishkas, that's in the solar plexus, that's right in the gut.

Did you get that? One thing you lack. Pow! You may have many things going for you. You may give the appearance of and even in your own thought, think yourself dedicated. But one thing you lack. I think last night as I showed the slides and saw again the faces of these precious East German saints, or the ones in Egypt living in that clamor and noise, who will soon be experiencing hot persecution, to see the quality of their life, the intensity of their being for God, and then to be brought back again into the American milieu and religious environment, the contrast is quite sharp.

We just don't know what totality means. This one thing you lack is totality. This one thing you lack is the centrality of God in everything. Somehow he's there in our vocabulary, but he's not there smack dab at the very heart and center of all our being.

There's a centrality of God that is the kingdom call, and a totality of God, and a finality in God, that comprises that one thing from which many of us have mournfully and sadly turned away, though we are yet physically present.

This one thing you lack is the key to kingdom entry. I looked up in the dictionary today, totality, centrality, and finality. Totality is the quality or state of being that is total. It's not just a momentary thing that you flirt with on occasion.

It's a condition of being, a state of being, a permanence, a quality that is total, whole, full, entire, utter, without any qualification. Where do we ever see that? Where do we ever glimpse it? I'll tell you that it's embarrassing if we have to go outside of biblical or scriptural models and find it in the world.

But can I read to you something that I hope will prick our hearts? I'm quoting from none other than Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight champion of the world. If the Lord wants to ever give me a little bonus, a little privilege, let me be used to bring that man to God.

He has such a potential. There's something about that guy. Irascible though he is, egotist though he is, there's an integrity and something in that knit and warp and woof of his soul that I'd love to see redeemed for the kingdom of God.

I think one day he's going to come. May it be soon. May you pray for him. May you take him to your heart. This is a man who knows what dedication means. We who have watched his career as a young kid coming up through golden gloves and the great splash that he made and the tremendous talent and brilliant ability that he had, and at the crest of his life, he lay aside his profession because he would not give himself to the Vietnamese War.

He was an objector and therefore he lost his ability to participate in sport. At the prime of his life, he gave that up because he could not give himself to what he thought was wrong. He's a man of scruples and a kind of an integrity that is compelling and very rarely to be found in saints, let alone in men in the world.

And then he came back later on and resumed his career and fought his way up to the top again and then lost it. And then at a time when men surely should have retired, he wanted one more crack because he was the kind of man who could not live the rest of his life in retirement as one who has lost.

He could only retire under one condition as a man who retired as the champion. I think it's for that reason we don't see many great boxes and many great anythings because in this age of affluence and ease, we don't know what that kind of determination is that enables us to pursue and to win a goal.

We're not fitted for hardship. We've been soft and been indulged by the character of our own generation. So it's rare to find such a one as this. I picked up a Sport Illustrated magazine when he was preparing for this final championship fight and he was describing the regimen, the discipline required of him to train for this final fight.

A man at that time, I think already about 36, 37 or 38. He's talking about his miles of jogging and running every day and he writes, I want to stop, but I can't. My chest burns, my throat is dry. I feel like I'm going to faint.

My body begs me to stop, but I make myself run another mile. Two more miles up those dash, dash, dash hills. Pain all the time. I'm in pain. I hurt all over. I hate it, but I'm taking it. I'm making myself suffer.

I have to suffer. I know this is my last fight. It's the last time I'll ever have to do it. Just a few more weeks of pain and suffering to live good all the rest of my life. To always be champion. What then shall we say?

What then shall we do that we shall live good all the rest of our eternity? That we shall not live with some mixed feeling about ourselves. That when we had the opportunity here in this earth, we gave God something less than the totality of all our being because we did not want to stand the pain.

We did not want to endure the suffering and the other consequences that would come with this kind of total commitment in all our being. You know where I wrote this little passage? In a book by Watchmen he called Love Not the World.

In a final chapter called The Powers of the Age to Come, and I want to quote now from him, where he says that we have had only a limited seeing. We talk about witnessing and that kind of thing, but there is something required of us which is much more.

That the church has a definite responsibility before God to register the victory of Christ in the devil's territory. If there is to be a testimony to the principalities and powers of the impact of Christ's sovereignty through his cross is to be registered in the spiritual realm, it can only be as the judicial foothold in our hearts of the pretender in the race is met and by that same cross removed and repudiated.

For God's object is still that man should have dominion. Our work for him does not stop with proclaiming a gospel that was designed merely to undo the effect of the fall, marvelous as was that undoing.

God wants us also to take us back further to Genesis 1 itself. He wants us in Christ to regain the moral dominion over his foe and thus effectively to restore the earth to him. This is surely why, as Paul tells us, the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.

The gospel of salvation is necessary and vital in order to meet man's need, but if as God's servants we are only laboring for others, we are missing God's first aim in creation, which was to supply not merely man's need, but his own.

From Self-Centered Religion to the Centrality of God

I think it's altogether significant that this young man, religious and ethical and moral, who ran and knelt to him that his first question centered yet in himself, what must I do that I might obtain eternal life?

If your religious life still has as its center an I, if you're still looking for a gratification, not sensual, not carnal, but spiritual, or that pertains to things of your life or even your eternity, you have not yet come to the place of utterness and totality in God, where a profound substitution has got to take place, where your first question and your central question and your abiding question is not what pertains to your I, but what pertains to him.

Not what I must do or what I must obtain, but what must you have? What pertains to your glory? What are your needs? What are you waiting for in the consummation of the ages? So long as there's still an I that is the hub of our life, however spiritual, we've not yet come to the totality, to the centrality, to the finality that marks real kingdom entry.

Thus, if today we are going to meet God's need, we must go a step further and deal with Satan himself. We must steal back from him his power, evict him from his territory, spoil him of his goods and set free his captives for God.

The question is not merely of what account are we in the winning of souls, rather is it of what account are we in the realm of principalities and powers? And for this, watchman, he says, there is a price to pay.

All this pain, all this suffering, one more mile. It is often possible to move men when it is quite impossible to move Satan. The plain fact is that it costs much more to deal with Satan than to win souls.

It demands an utterness of spirit God would. Say what? If I could but give birth to one such phrase as that, I'm ready to retire. I will have counted my life in God as fulfilled. To be the author of one such phrase as that, an utterness toward God, an utterness of spirit God would.

Have you come to that utterness? I'll tell you what, when I looked in the dictionaries today, I felt like flinging them out the window. They are grossly and totally inadequate because they are written by men in the world.

And how shall we expect that they shall divine words like total, central, final, or utter? There's an utterness that can only be known in spirit that is beyond anything that is partial. What must I do?

In another account of this in Matthew, there's even a further little clue. When Jesus said, you need to keep the commandments, you know what this young ruler said? Which ones? Matthew 19, 18. Which ones?

Reminds me so much of the kids that came up to my high school desk every year at the beginning of the new semester. Mr. Katz, what's the minimal amount that we need to do in order to get by? Which ones must I obey that I might inherit eternal life?

What's the minimal amount necessary from me? And you cannot imagine to what degree we have been so long steeped in the spirit of that civilization that we ourselves are more minimal than we realize and we have not come to the totality and that utterness in the spirit God would that constitutes entry into life and into the kingdom and is the true meaning of being saved.

If your eye is still the hub of your life, have you yet come to the glory of the salvation that saves us from I and brings us to follow me? That's being saved. It takes a crack, a snap, a release, a loosing from the powers of this earth that we might enter into the powers of the age to come now.

Who then can be saved? The disciples astonishedly asked hearing these things from Jesus and he didn't say, listen guys, cool it, don't get carried away. I'm not talking about salvation. I'm talking about the issue of the kingdom of God and the issue of eternal life.

But he didn't say that. He accepted their question as being fit and appropriate within the whole context of one subject that salvation is the issue of the kingdom that the issue of the kingdom is the issue of eternal life that it is all one issue and the entry is barred or blocked because one thing do you lack.

Though you run, though you kneel, though you're fastidious and this and that and you give and you do and you believe, one thing do you lack that keeps you from an utterness toward God that is total, final, central that is summed up in this searing request.

Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven and come follow me. Leave your eye and come to me totally, abandonedly and you shall enter into life. Go and sell all.

Say, Art, are you actually literally saying that this is the kingdom requirement? Yes. And yet I know that the Lord is not asking that the moment that we get home we put our houses up collect our goods and give a big garage sale and turn the proceeds over to the poor.

But if we have not in our heart utterly and totally determined that and maybe it's going to require nothing less than the doing of it then we have not entered the kingdom. They were not yet in the realm of that which is eternal.

Maybe we've been too fanciful. Maybe we say, well, in our hearts we've done it when in fact we have not. It's interesting that in a previous trip to Germany speaking at a little Bible school there there was a woman, she must have been between 60 and 70 years of age.

I have never seen a more radiant believer. I almost had to avert my eyes from the brilliance of that face, the light that broke forth in that face. I could not say the same for other of the students. Some of them looked quite surly at me but she beamed and drank up every word that fell from my lips.

I never saw a more appreciative woman. And finally when we came to the last session I kind of just got in contact with her. I said, listen, are you a student here? She said, yes. I almost was floored.

I said, what are you doing with all these young kids? Well, she said, I was a dedicated Christian woman and living in a certain city in Germany I had my own house, a widow and the Lord said to me, go and sell all that you have and give to the poor and come and follow me.

And she said, within 24 hours I had sold my house and every last possession I had to the final picture on the wall. Then the Lord showed me what to do with the proceeds, who the poor were. Then he told me to come to this Bible school and to take these courses and when I began that then he told me what my ministry is to be.

And she said, I have never been more gloriously alive and joyous in God since the moment that I absolutely and totally and literally obeyed him. When you meet saints, don't you sometimes get that impression you just know that they've not come to that place.

You know that there's a withholding. You know that they're partial. They're precious, full of admirable intention, really love the Lord with all sincerity, so far as they know their own hearts. And don't feel that the things that they possess possess them.

Oh yes, if the Lord ever required it, they think they could give it up. But you go out and try shooting your German Shepherd as we have had to do here and see how easily you can give it up. It's a lot tougher than your cars, your house and other things.

Whatever possesses you and keeps you from a totality in God needs to be sold. If God has that, he's got the all. Is there something that is a reserve in your life, a holding back, something of which you're conscious?

It's amazing that it could be a dog. But I'll tell you, that dog was so beautiful, so impressive, so handsome an animal, more pedigreed and blue-blooded than myself. That if I had to make a fearful choice between a saint or that dog, I don't know that the saint would have won.

But there came a time in the history of our little community here when our dogs began to cut up and become a kind of pack and constitute a kind of danger for which there was clearly only one answer. If you could picture the assembly of us going out with pickaxes and shovels and 22 rifles that day in the backwoods by our place there, and the dogs by ropes, you would have seen one of the most melancholy episodes ever to be known in the history of the church.

And I tried desperately to find some alternative to that dog's death. Long-distance phone call and some hope that someone with a large farm could take him or who would need him. No one was there to answer the phone.

No one needed him. There was no avoiding that they knew they were going to their death. It's remarkable how animals have a far more unerring instinct and awareness of the totality of death than we. We talk about having laid our lives down, laid it on the altar, died to ourselves, and we're just kidding.

The only dog that didn't have to be tugged, pulled, or coerced was my handsome animal. He was so explicit. He followed with me in lockstep with his tongue lolling out in quite happy expectation that we were going out for a little walk in the woods and sat right down at my feet as I dug his grave, looking up with eyes of complete love and admiration and trust while down my face was cascading a waterfall of tears more effulgent than any for which I have ever shed since.

That's where we live. Listen, we're going to be an apostolic people. We're going to be a kingdom people. There has got to be a death to phoniness. There has got to be a death to gamesmanship. There has got to be a death to the things that are feigned, to the things that are merely suggestive, to the things that are partial, to being merely verbal, to being merely not.

But a brother with whom I had some tension was willing. And there was the moment that could not be postponed. And you guys who are laughing now, your moment is coming before this message is over tonight.

And the gun went off and I just looked for a moment and I saw the flecks of blood and the dog twitch and jerk. And then as quickly as I could I pulled that precious thing into the hole and the thing going into that pit and the dirt coming down and that thing I so dearly loved snapped and broke.

Some cords of soulishness, some attachment, something deep, a love of animals which is maybe in the last analysis a love of self, a self-pitying thing, the kind of affection that we can get from animals that we cannot get from men that is unquestioning and uncritical and always available that we need and to cut the cord on that is to make yourself once and for all wholly dependent for that provision from God and through God in men.

How many of you have been called to that totality? That giving? When this rich young ruler full of religious intention really desiring eternal life full of respect for Jesus he ran, he knelt good master full of compliment and recognition but not a recognition deep enough.

When he heard that he turned sadly away. I have an intuitive hunch that there are great numbers in this room tonight who though you are present have turned away and if you have never before been faced with this issue of the kingdom and actual entry you are being faced tonight in these words in this message which is not one that I have chosen but one which is given woe be unto me if I preach not the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.

I want to say in that same breath that one of the reasons why we have been so long partial so long inconclusive so long drifting aimless is because we have not had this gospel preached in this way. A lesser gospel has been proclaimed the gospel of personal salvation the gospel of the benefits that you will receive if you accept Jesus.

But have we really heard the radical and total demand of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. Who then can be saved? Jesus said hey don't get carried away that's not the question that is the question the issue of the kingdom is the issue of salvation is the issue of eternal life how may I enter into life by going selling giving coming and following all.

If it's not total there is no following him because he is a total god calling to total men totally and at some point tonight I was so moved by God if you had not thought I would have freaked out I was going to sing in Hebrew Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad Hear O Israel the Lord your God is one Lord which precedes the statement and thou shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart all your soul all your mind all your strength.

For the first time in looking over these scriptures this afternoon I was struck by the fact that when Jesus said well do you do you know the commandments that he did not cite this commandment but he began in my opinion in a much lesser place.

Do not murder do not steal do not commit adultery do not bear false witness. He took all of the negative things of the do nots but he did not take the first and the foremost thing thou shalt love. No wonder the guy could say yeah all these things I've done since my youth up but this you have never done because had you done this you would long ago have given your all.

But at these words his face fell. I just want you to imagine tonight that you're not just hearing a message that this isn't a little convocation preaching but the Lord himself speaking to you the same words of the same call of the same challenge spoken two thousand years ago to this rich young ruler.

If right tonight the Lord would push me aside and come up to this microphone and say do you want to enter into eternal life. Do you want entry into the kingdom. Okay. Go and sell all that you have give it to the poor.

You'll have treasure in heaven and come and follow me. How many of you would go and do it. We become so message-ized or sermon-ized as if the scriptures are something for our enjoyment. We're like gourmets.

We like the way this guy preaches or this guy speaks. And wasn't it wonderful to hear. And we take some notes as if the whole thing is given for our enjoyment and have not recognized that it's given to do in us and to call forth in us exactly what it was given when it was spoken to that man and his kingdom will not come except through men and women who will go sell give come and follow with all with the totality with the centrality with the finality that that call implies.

Totality is the quality or state of being total. Where do we know that in this life. Listen. I coasted through schools through universities through the army through relationships. All you need is a little charm a little glib word a little ability a little snow job a little sleight of hand.

And I graduated with honors. But it never required anything in me that was total. And that's why I want to tell you there's a difference between the kingdom of this present world and the kingdom of heaven.

Because the kingdom of heaven is like the king himself absolute total and you can only come on his terms if anything is partial temporary withheld given in part only by very nature of things. There's no way to leave this temporal earth and to come into that eternal place and be joined with him who is a total god and a consuming fire.

We may know about him and have a certain dim appreciation but we do not know him and we're not joined with him and in him because this is the condition for such a union all or nothing at all. Go and sell all that you possess or better that possesses you.

Well it's just a dog. It's just a family antique. It's just a work of art. It's just a hope for the future. It's my family or my ministry. All total is a state and quality of being that is full entire and utter and unqualified without any withholding.

Have you come to that kingdom. Condition both with god and with men. Centrality. The quality or state of being central essential controlling or directing something to the heart of the matter. Finality.

The character or condition of being final at an ultimate point not to be altered or undone. Conclusive the climax of all irrevocable. You cannot take that dog out of the pit. You don't get him back. You don't play with little plastic bullets.

He's dead, dead, dead gone rotting, corrupt in the grave. You're never again to enjoy his beauty. You're never going to have him lolling at your feet. You're never going to look at this panting animal looking you with the eyes of devotion.

You're never going to have him back. It's taken. It's total. It's irrevocable. It cannot be had again. It's fixed. It's final unalterable once and for all. That's the spirit that this athlete had as he took his weary 38-year-old's legs and pumped up those hills in Pennsylvania.

Because he could not contemplate living the balance of his life as a man who did not live as a victor. He could not retire in the condition of one defeated whatever it required. He must know. Victory.

Have you that total determination. Jesus I know and Paul I know. But who? You? The enemy sees right through us. He knows our partiality. He knows our weaknesses. The inconclusive things. The compromised things.

This is the costly thing watchman he says. Evil spirits can see right through the witness of men. They can tell when it is compromised by being half-hearted or insincere in the name of Jesus come out of him.

Turn up the amplifier. Will you? In the name of Jesus. Don't be literal. Tom we think that by turning up the amplifier or raising the crescendo of our voice that somehow it is an increase of authority.

Not at all. Your authority is not to be measured in proportion to your loudness but in proportion to whether you are partial or total in God. I have only to hear a man speak once to know exactly where he is.

Whether I myself am to take him seriously or not. And he can be biblical as invariably almost every messenger of God is have a good word so to speak. But I kind of nod and I'm not penetrated. I'm not pierced.

I don't take the man seriously or his word because I sense the lack of that totality that imparts to his word an authority that is gripping and penetrating. And I want to tell you that that's the way the world hears us when we witness.

They know whether we're playing a little cutesy game or whether we're speaking from such an eternal place of such an authority that compels their attention lest they perish somebody take the 22 out and finish that one.

And that's exactly a beautiful illustration. A distraction from the kingdom. Do I dare say in the name of Jesus shut up and will I be heated has altogether to do with the question whether I've previously pulled the trigger on my own Jesus I know and Paul I know.

But you? Who? Jesus said the prince of this world comes but he has nothing in me. Isn't that an astounding statement? Talk about a man total talk about the centrality of the father in the conviction of Jesus.

Talk about the finality by which everything was given over for the father's purposes. There was no consideration for his eye but only for the father's me. The prince of this world comes but he has no thing in me.

No hanky-panky no footsie no twinkling eye no flirtation no cutting corners no compromise. Total absolute holy given to God and the enemy knows it come to that place you'll have to pull the trigger on some soft squirming thing that wants yet to retain its existence and be spiritual too.

Looking at us these demon spirits are under no illusions as to whom they can safely defy or ignore and conversely they know perfectly well against whom they are powerless. But the price of this kind of witness to the principalities and powers is an utterness of allegiance to God that is unqualified to entertain our own opinions or desires or to prefer our own variant and contrary choices is simply to present the enemy with his advantage.

It is in short to throw the game away. How sports gives us more apt phrases more incisive understanding of the nature of true commitment than we use in our religious vocabulary. A miss is as good as a mile.

You ever hear that statement? How many of us in stickball games in softball games in baseball games have taken lusty swings with the bat that if there had been a solid crack of the ball meeting the wood head on totally unqualifiedly it was bye bye baby.

But instead no matter how lusty the swing because we missed it by an iota we get a dribble a plip plop plop down the foul line or a little pop fly that accounts for nothing. The same swing that constitutes a home run or a pop out is affected.