7. Michael Shultz | Calvinism and the Love of God | Open Air Theology Conference 2024

It's an honor and a privilege to have been invited back again. I thank you, Haps and Jeff and Brayden, for allowing me to, somebody like me, to preach with guys like you.

It's a blessing. If you'd like, I'd invite you to open your Bibles today to the

Gospel of Mark, the New Testament Gospel of Mark. And I will be speaking today from Mark chapter 10, verses 17 through 27.

Mark 10, 17 through 27. I imagine this passage is going to be a familiar one to you, although maybe not the most familiar.

There's certainly a detail in this that you might have passed over before and not taken much recognition of.

I'm going to make great emphasis of it today because I truly believe that it's important. There's no greater authority than the

Scripture. And so my intention is to present a Scripture that I wholeheartedly believe corrects an error that many

Christians, both on the conservative and liberal wings of our spectrum, have missed when it comes to their understanding and their teaching about the love of God.

The cliff that American Christians have long fallen off of when discussing the love of God is we have, for many years, taught that God loves everyone the exact same way.

And that way is by not asking them to change whatsoever. That's how God loves everyone, is the way that most

American Christians have been taught about the love of God for many years. Now, most of us in this room would immediately say that's an error.

But in correcting that error, I believe we have swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, the opposite end of the pendulum. And many of us have, unfortunately, fallen into an error of our own that has yet to be acknowledged.

In seeking to correct the error that the American church has long fallen into, we have, in many ways, become like the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2.

That church, if you're not familiar with it, was fervent for upholding proper doctrine. Christ acknowledged they had good doctrine.

They were adamant for calling out false teachers. Christ commended them for refusing to have false teachers.

They engaged their culture for the cause of Christ. But they neglected love. In many ways, we embody the church at Ephesus because we have become so obsessed with correcting the error of reckless love that we have entirely neglected love.

It's not just that we don't believe that God recklessly loves sinners. Many of us either believe or teach that God doesn't love sinners at all.

Although we have doctrinal fidelity and faithful endurance through cultural debasement and proper apologetics, we neglect love.

And Jesus Christ says of a church like that, I would rather you close. I would rather a church close than to have it operate entirely biblically with entire doctrinal fidelity than to do so while lacking love.

It's not enough. All of our confessions and our street evangelism and our apologetics and our ministries and our seminaries, if we operate them without love, that's not enough.

Jesus Christ would rather have it close. So as we read and preach this passage,

I want to do something that I don't normally do, which is I'm going to take it a little bit out of order. This will be certainly an expository message, but I'm going to focus first of all on verses 17 through 20 and ask a question, which is, who is this man?

This man we're going to be reading about today. Who is he? What kind of person would we consider him to be if we met him?

And then I'm going to skip to verses 23 through 27 and ask the question, who are we? How are we different from him?

And then we'll return to the middle in verses 21 and two, and I'm going to ask the question, who is God? Who's the man?

Who are we? Who is God? And as we answer those questions, I want you to have two things in mind, two questions of your own.

Number one, how does God love? Number two, does God love everyone?

How does God love and does God love everyone? So hopefully you've had time to find your place in Mark 10.

We're going to read verses 17 through 27, and if you're able, I would want to ask you to stand in honor and reverence for the reading of the word of God as we read

Mark 10, verses 17 through 27.

The word of God says, 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 from 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 treasure in heaven, 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? And Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God. You can be seated as we pray. Our God in heaven, you are high and lifted up, and you are so very good, and you are holy.

And the chasm that we have opened up between ourselves and you is so deep and wide that no one could possibly span it, but we know that you and your great love and by your great strength have spanned the chasm.

You sent your Son to be the Savior of the world, and we can never lift our chins in pride because you did it purely out of your good will.

We earned nothing, and your love has provided everything. So we pray today that you would reveal the depth of your love which reached into the dregs for us.

In Jesus' name, amen. To provide a bit of context as to where we are, at this point in Christ's ministry, he's well near the end of his life.

In fact, he is traveling south. He has left Capernaum in the north. He has come into an area called

Perea on the eastern side of the Jordan River, traveling south to Jerusalem for the last time. He will soon come into the city of Jericho where he will heal a blind man named

Bartimaeus in route to what we now call the triumphal entry. We must imagine that Jesus has a lot on his mind.

I thank Brother Kevin for so thoroughly elucidating the undiluted wrath of God that Christ bore on the cross for us.

And we are often prone to make much of the wrath of God that he endured and make little of the physical excruciation that he endured, but it wasn't nothing.

The physical pain that he endured wasn't nothing. Being whipped and lashed and flogged and spat on and having his beard and hair ripped out and wearing a crown of thorns, it wasn't nothing.

Being nailed to a cross to hang midair for several hours while being ridiculed wasn't nothing.

We know that the greater torment came from Christ enduring the undiluted wrath of God on our behalf, but the physical torment wasn't nothing.

He was just as much a man as he was God. How could it not be on his mind as he walked to Jerusalem for the last time?

He must have pondered not only the physical and the spiritual excruciation that he would soon endure, but as he's walking along and here's

Judas humming a happy little song right beside him and he knows good and well, it's you that will betray me.

He walks along and certainly Peter's first in line and he knows it's Peter who will deny him three times.

He walks along and all the rest of his merry little band of disciples are just chipper as they walk to the

Passover in Jerusalem and he knows all of you will abandon me in my most solemn and needful hour.

What must have been on our Savior's mind as he walked to Jerusalem for the last time? Not only this going on inwardly, but we must recognize that we have just concluded in chapter 10 a rather lengthy discussion of divorce, which we all know are always just so fun.

And then in verses 13 through 16, he has to reprimand his disciples for not yet understanding how to even handle children.

They've been with him for three years and they don't know how to handle kids. A thousand days!

These who will in Ephesians 2 .20 be called the foundation upon which the church is built don't know how to handle kids.

A thousand days of listening to him preach. A thousand days of waking up and hearing the morning prayers.

A thousand days of watching him keep the law and perform miracles. A thousand days of hearing him preach and then being called aside to get a private commentary where he explained everything to them.

A thousand days of evening prayers. A thousand days and you don't get it? Where have you been?

What have you been doing? I'd be indignant too. That's what it says in verse 14.

He was indignant with them. What is going on in our Savior's head in this moment?

And it is in that moment, this aggravated, certainly angry moment, that our burdened Savior in verse 17 throws his bag over his shoulder and latches his sandals and sets out to leave.

And a man ran up and knelt before him. Now Mark doesn't tell us much about this man other than what we gather in verse 22, that he was rich, he had great possessions, but this story appears in each of the

Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It's a very important story. We gather more about this man from Matthew and Luke's retelling of the story.

Matthew tells us in Matthew 19 -20 that he was a young man. He uses a Greek word that generally denotes somebody under the age of 40.

He's hardly what we would call middle -aged. He's probably not as old as Jesus. Luke tells us that he was a ruler, using a

Greek word that always asserted some level of authority, whether religious or governmental. I believe the man was a religious leader based on the fact that he thinks that he's kept the law.

So I'm going to operate under that presumption that he's a religious ruler, something like Jairus, if you've read Mark 5, a ruler of the synagogue.

But in either case, he's a man who's advanced in position well beyond his years. Whether a government or a religious official, he's quite young to be in the position that he's in.

And beyond being in the position, he's quite successful at it because he's wealthy. The man has everything that a person could want.

He has money and prestige and youth, and usually you only get two of those at a time. You can get money and prestige, but it's going to take you your whole life to earn it.

Or you can get money and youth, but you're going to have to rob people to get it. It's not going to be prestigious. He's got everything, though.

He has money and prestige and youth, and beyond that, he seems to have a degree of religious humility. He runs up, he kneels at the foot of Jesus, he calls

Jesus a good teacher, a term that was reserved for the most revered and respected rabbis of his age.

He asks Jesus a good question. It's not a dumb question. Jesus has been asked really dumb questions, okay?

You remember this one, the Sadducees come up, and you can see these dunces just going, yeah, okay, we got him now. Yeah, okay, hey

Jesus, we got you one. All right, you ready for this stumper? So there's a woman, right? And she marries this guy. Then he dies.

Then she marries his younger brother. Then he dies. Then she marries his younger brother. Then he dies.

Then she marries his younger brother. Then he dies. Then she marries his younger brother. And you know Jesus is sitting there like, man,

I know there's a question here somewhere. There has to be a question somewhere. She marries his younger brother, and then he dies, and then she dies.

So here's the question. Whose husband will she be at the resurrection? And the disciples must have gone, are you kidding me with this?

That's the question. He's God. And you're asking that? This is the kind of thing that he spent his three years in ministry doing.

But this guy asks a pretty good question. In fact, I would stand 10 toes down and say this is the best question anybody ever asked

Jesus. What's the question? The question is relayed in Mark 10 as well as Luke 18, is what must

I do to inherit eternal life? Now if you're somebody who writes in or highlights in your

Bible, this would be a good place to put some emphasis. The words, what must I do? Because this man isn't asking how do

I get to heaven? That's a different question. He's not asking that. He's asking a different question.

In Matthew 19, 16, Matthew reports it as he had said, what good deed must I do to inherit eternal life?

This young man flat out believes in works -based salvation. There's no getting around it.

He flat out believes he can earn his way to heaven. There must be something I can do to earn

God's favor and enough of it to get me into heaven. What that means is that this man has just identified himself as what we today would call a heretic.

He preaches a false gospel. He's a false teacher. And Jesus responds in a way that does provide us with a perfect template for how to discuss the doctrine of total depravity.

Verse 18, why do you call me good? No one's good except God alone. Now it's not entirely clear what precisely

Jesus is offended by. Some people say that he's trying to teach this man about his own divinity, some sort of a modus ponens type rationality.

If you say that I'm good, but we know the only people who are good are God, and therefore I am God, that might be what he's getting at.

Other commentators believe that he's reprimanding this man for using a title like good to describe somebody he's never met before because that title refers to someone who's very admirable, very respectable.

You can't just apply that to anybody. It's even used to describe God in the Old Testament. So you're either going to lift man way too high, or you're going to bring

God way too low. You can't just go around flippantly using that language. Either way, it's perfectly reasonable.

But before we move on, I want to emphasize here that Jesus, in either case, taught that no person on Earth was a good person.

Nobody. He says no less. No one is good except God alone. He levels the entire human race as being in one category, not good people.

Without exception, he universally categorizes everyone as not good. And this is something that we need to remember because here in a few minutes, the disciples are going to have a panic attack, and it's largely because they understood what that meant, and what it's going to mean as we move forward.

In verse 19, Jesus tells the guy what he would need to do in order to get to heaven on the basis of his own works. You know the commandments.

Something that Mark doesn't tell us that Matthew does, Matthew 19, 17, and 18, Jesus says to enter life, keep the commandments, and the man interrupts

Jesus, and he says, which ones? Which specific ones?

As if he's formulating a grocery list that he's going to go down and check the boxes. I've done that. I've done that. I'm sure now

I'm going to heaven on the basis of my own goodness and works. We must admit, it's kind of odd that Jesus is even engaging in this conversation for one.

You walk up to Jesus and say, Jesus, that's how you get to heaven on the basis of your own works.

Perfectly keep the law. The only way anybody gets into heaven on the basis of their own works is by being perfect forever.

The only way you can enter into the kingdom of God by your own works is by standing perfectly justified before God, having entirely kept his commandments, and the only person to ever do that is

Jesus Christ. Now, we know that we're granted admission through him, as by faith we receive his imputed righteousness, by which we stand justified before God as if we ourselves lived the perfect life that he lived.

But this man, he doesn't think that's the case. In fact, he actually thinks he's got a pretty good shot.

This man is so proud, so self -righteous, he really thinks he's got a good chance at it. I might just be able to do this.

I can earn my own salvation. So Jesus gives them the list. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.

And all of us, just like everyone standing around in that day, of course, understand Jesus has just taken the man to the

Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. But what we probably didn't notice, and what they definitely don't notice here, is that Jesus has done something very cool, very odd, that shows his anthropological understanding that he knows how people work.

First of all, he named them out of order. You might not have noticed that. He starts with number five, he finishes with number six.

Kind of odd. Why did he do that? Then you read the list again, and you'll notice, hey, wait a second.

As a kid, I watched Sesame Street. You guys remember? One of these things just doesn't belong here. One of those isn't in the

Ten Commandments. You didn't notice it, and neither did they. Let's go through the list.

Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. These are in the Decalogue. Do not bear false witness.

That's there. Honor your father and mother. That's there. What's he done?

Do not defraud. That's not in the Decalogue, Jesus. I guarantee you, it wasn't an accident.

It didn't slip his mind. He put that there on purpose. I'm trying to figure this out.

Why did he put that one there, and why did he say them out of order? I start thinking about this, and the best thing I can come up with is that Jesus understood that when you say things out of order, you can slip something in, and people might not notice.

If I asked you, for example, to give me all of the letters in the English alphabet following the letter P, in your head, where'd you start?

L. You started with L, because it doesn't work with the rhythm. We can't go

P, Q, R, S. It doesn't work that way. We go L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S. We can't go there.

It's not the way we learned it. So you want to slip something in on somebody and them not notice?

Mix up the order, and before they realize what's happened, you're way down the road. He goes 6, 7, 8, 9, 5, and then he slips one in that doesn't belong.

So the question then becomes, well, why did he do that? Why did he want people off his trail? Why did he put one in that doesn't belong there?

And I remember the story of the woman at the well. John 4. Jesus comes to the well, give me something to drink.

You don't even have a cup. Why are you talking to me anyway? I'm a Samaritan. You're a Jew. Soon enough, they're talking about mountains.

Is it Gerizim or Sinai? And Jesus is talking to her, and she says, oh, you know, give me this water. And what does he say?

Go get your husband. And she says, well, actually,

I'm not married. And he goes, true. You are not married.

You have been married five times, and you are living with a man that you're not married to right now.

But, no lie, you're not married. Why did he do that?

Jesus made a habit of subtly pointing out the very sin that a person was committing in such a way that it left room for them not to be publicly humiliated and embarrassed.

He wanted them to be convicted without shaming them in the presence of others. To put it in modern vernacular,

Jesus wasn't a jerk. He has every reason to be.

He's not a pushover. He's direct when people are rude with him. But even though this guy is a pompous, self -righteous wretch, and Jesus is already in a plenty bad mood, he's not a jerk.

Some of us should be taking notes. He's not a jerk. I don't care what your favorite

YouTuber told you. Jesus is not a jerk. The reason

Jesus put this command on the list, I believe, is because that man was using his position as a ruler to extort from people and defraud them to make himself wealthier and more powerful.

I believe that. I think that's why he put that there. I think he mixed them up so that other people wouldn't notice that he was pointing directly to the sin that this man committed and telling him, you want to get to heaven on the basis of your own works?

Keep all the commandments, including this one, that you and I both know you don't keep. And he would say the same thing to you and I.

You know what you're doing. You want to get to heaven on the basis of your own works? Just do everything right, including the thing that you're doing wrong.

How does the man respond to Jesus' loving subtlety? Well, teach her all these I've kept from my youth.

No conviction. No conviction at all. It's as if he says to Jesus, well, yeah, of course, be perfect in every way.

I've been doing that since I was a kid. Completely a joke.

The undiluted, shameless pride on this guy. He looks God in the flesh, right in the eyes, and stands ten toes down and says,

I'm perfect. Despite Jesus pointing directly at the sin he commits, no problem with any of that.

What an awful person. Can you imagine if this guy came to your church? Hi, I'm perfect.

I don't lie or steal or commit adultery or murder or wrong other people. I perfectly honor my father and mother.

Ray Comfort couldn't help this guy. He'd be halfway down the way of the master, you know, say or buy or not.

I can't do the impression. By your own admission, you're a lying, thieving, murdering, and then he'd go, wait a second, did you say no?

Did you say you don't do any of those things? You really think you're perfect? If he came in our church, we'd be on Twitter or Facebook in a heartbeat.

There's some wackadoo came in here today telling us he's perfect. When John MacArthur preached this passage, he labeled this guy the blasphemous rich young ruler.

He's terrible. This guy's awful. His doctrine's all wrong. He's a false teacher and a heretic, but that kind of pales in comparison to the fact that he thinks he's perfect.

He's awful. This guy's a monster. That's who he is.

Now I want you to look with me at verses 23 through 27. That's who the man is. Let's look at who we are.

Because with this unthinkably horrible person described, it says in Luke 18 .24, Jesus noticed how the guy reacted to what he just said, and he starts describing this guy to the disciples, but what we should notice is that he doesn't treat this guy as if he's unique.

That guy's not abnormal. No, he starts out in verse 24, excuse me, verse 23, by saying, yeah, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

He's more or less saying, anybody like that guy is going to have a hard time, and the disciples in verse 24, they're amazed that he's just said that, and so it's almost like he's surprised that they're surprised.

You think it's, you can't believe that guy can't get in, so he doubles down.

Verse 25, no, excuse me, 24. I should learn my passage before I stand up to preach. Verse 24, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It's not just for the wealthy guys. It's difficult anyway. Not just for guys like that, but for anybody.

It's difficult. The disciples are struggling to realize something that I believe many of us have failed to realize, which is that that guy represents us, and he doesn't just represent us.

That guy represents everything good about us. He represents the very best of us.

He has reached the pinnacle of human accomplishment. He's financially successful. He has many possessions.

He's culturally successful. He's in a position of prestige and leadership. He's temporally successful. He's accomplished all this in a very short life.

Here he seems to have some degree of ethical and religious and moral success. He's convinced at least most people that he keeps the commandments.

Certainly he's convinced himself he's done everything right, and here he is running to Jesus, kneeling at his feet, desiring to go to heaven.

This guy is the synergist dream of his own free will.

Despite all the world's trinkets and doles, this guy has come to the point where he understands that he has a

God -sized hole in his heart that he simply cannot fill on his own, and so he runs to Jesus of his own free will and asks, how do

I get to heaven? He's done everything a human can do. This is the closest any person has ever come to being saved without God drawing them.

This is it, and at the end of the story, he walks away lost.

That's as close as we've ever gotten because no man can come to me unless my

Father draws him. This is the best we've got, and the disciples have realized that, and in verse 26, it says they're exceedingly astonished.

The Greek term actually might be translated panicked. They don't know what to do now because this is a terrifying realization.

This guy has done everything right. By human standards, he's got money, prestige, time, ethics, morals, religiousness.

He's come to Jesus. He wants to go to heaven. If that guy can't make it, if he can't make it,

Jesus, you're saying it's hard for anybody like him? If he can't make it?

Good grief, who? He's clearly better than some Galilean fisherman.

He's clearly better than poor Michael Schultz sitting down working at Home Depot. This guy is everything. He's the best of us.

If he can't make it, who can possibly be saved? If not him, then who?

And Jesus answers that question in verse 27. Who can possibly be saved? Jesus' response, with man, it's impossible.

Do you see how he's built into this? First it was difficult for the rich.

Then it was difficult for everybody. Then it was so difficult, it's like a camel going through the eye of a needle. Now he just flat out says it.

It's impossible. It's not just hard. It's not just difficult. It's not just that it won't happen.

How possible is it? It's not. It's not possible at all that anybody would be saved by the basis of their own goodness and works.

It's impossible. It is impossible. But not with God.

For all things are possible with God. That when God intervenes, then and only then can and will anyone be saved.

It's impossible with man. If there's anything we have to put in, if there's any work that we have to contribute, if there's anything in us that's required, it's impossible.

It's absolutely impossible. Not a little bit possible. Not highly unlikely. Impossible. Can't happen.

But with God, all things are possible. And I need you to see this and understand this because this man, this rich young ruler, this nameless, faceless man, was you.

He was me. We don't get his name, but his name might as well have been Michael Schultz. He's us.

He knows there's something more to this life than silver and gold. He's trying, it seems, to be an ethical and decent guy in his culture and age.

He recognizes the value of the teachings of Jesus. He's got a bit of a pride problem, yes. He lacks the ability to see his own insufficiencies and failures.

By a biblical standard, yeah, he's an awful person, but so were all of us. This man represents every single one of us in our lost and unregenerate state.

Who are we? We're him. With all of our work and all of our will, with all of our efforts and our money, with all of our success, with all of our intellectual comprehension, it just leaves us walking away from Jesus damned to hell.

That's where it leaves us. It's not enough. The poet writes, though I could live for all to lift them higher, or spend the centuries seeking light within, though I indulge my every dark desire, exhausting every avenue of sin, it's not enough.

It's not enough. I could walk the world forever until my shoes were filled with blood. It's not enough. I could right all wrongs or ravage everything beneath the sun.

It's not enough. Though all the world could bow to me and I could drink my fill of fear and love, it's not enough.

It won't wake my soul. It won't make me whole. It's not enough. It never was. We cannot do it.

Jesus knows this. Jesus taught this. The man's lost. He's trying to get to God on the basis of his own goodness and works.

He's a horrible man, just like us. Now, in all of this, we're very good at talking about how unrighteous we are.

We're very good at talking about how unholy we are, and especially when we talk about the lost and unregenerate, we're very good at talking about the evil of man.

As Brother Claude said, it's up, up, up with God and down, down, down with man. But the unfortunate part is

I believe we forgot that first half. Most of us simply have a doctrine that says down, down, down with man.

And we have forgotten the highness of our God. Because how does

Jesus Christ look at a man like that? What does Jesus feel for a man like that?

What does he express to a man like that? Verse 21, right in the midst, by the way, of this man's gross self -righteousness, he has just looked

God in the flesh right in the eyes and said, I am perfect. And the only perfect man to ever live is standing in front of him and he looks the man right in the eyes and loves him.

We would expect Jesus to be enraged. He has every reason to. He's disappointed in his disciples. He's dealing with the undeniable stress of preparing to be tortured and murdered while enduring the undiluted wrath of God in just a few days.

He has every reason and justification and motivation to go off on this man and hate him.

But in verse 21, Jesus, looking at him, loved him. This is a disaster for most people in the

Calvinist camps understanding of how God loves and who he loves. This is a disaster.

That's not how we expected the story to go. If a Calvinist had written the book of Mark, we wouldn't have put that in, but God wanted it in.

We would expect him to respond to this hypocrite and heretic and false teacher the way he responds to some in Mark 3, 5.

Mark is keen to point out how Jesus responds to people. He says there, he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, but he didn't do that.

It says, Jesus, looking at him, loved him. The Greek term is emblepsos. It's a meaningful look, a fixed gaze, a moment of direct eye contact.

The man looks at Jesus right in the eyes and says, I'm perfect, and Jesus looks him right in the eyes and loves him. Does this man fit into your concept of who and how

God loves? I'll tell you what one of my teachers used to tell me,

Sonny, you better get this right. You better get this right. Jesus loved him.

It doesn't say he felt pity for him. It doesn't say anger. It doesn't say grief. It doesn't say compassion. The Greek word that's used is agapison.

You don't have to be a Greek scholar to know the root of agapison. Agape. It means nothing less than love.

The word that's used describes how Jesus felt about this lost, sinful, unregenerate, likely unelect man.

And it's the exact same Greek word that's used in John 3, 16 to describe how God loved the world. It's the exact same word that's used in John 13, 1 to describe how

Jesus loved his disciples. It's the exact same word that's used in John 15, 9 to describe how the Father loves the

Son. It's the exact same word that's used in Ephesians 5, 25 to describe how Christ loved the church. And before you burn me,

I recognize that there are different kinds of love in God, but what I'm pointing to is the fact that you cannot get around this.

There's no other meaning to the word. He loved him. He loved him.

Does this man fit into who you believe God loves? God loved this sinful, lost, unelect man.

It wasn't a fake love. Romans 12, 9 tells us to let love be genuine. Jesus certainly never loved hypocritically.

He loved him. For anyone who would want to deny that God loves sinners or the unsaved or the unelect, it doesn't get any worse because as the man walks away, in verse 22, it says he was disheartened or sorrowful.

The word that's rendered disheartened comes from a root word that means hateful. He wasn't just sad. He was offended. How dare

Jesus say that to me? If anything, he's hardened. He walks away angry and disappointed in Jesus.

And we have no scriptural indication nor traditional record that would lead us to believe that this man ever came to faith.

He walks away for the last time, lost and damned to hell.

So then, do you understand the gravity of verse 21? Jesus loved him.

He was a thief, and Jesus loved him. He was a liar, and Jesus loved him.

He was a false teacher, and Jesus loved him. He had bad, even heretical doctrine, and Jesus loved him.

He rejected Jesus, and Jesus loved him. He was unsaved, and Jesus loved him.

We have every reason to believe he was not even elect, and Jesus loved him. How does

God love? Jesus loved this man by telling him to give up what he most loved, that element of his identity which meant the most to him, what he had worked his entire life to attain, what he had worked the hardest to accomplish, that which made him feel the most satisfied and safe and comfortable.

Jesus loved him by calling him to give it all up. Jesus loved him by calling him to change who he was.

So when you hear me say that Jesus loves sinners, I'm in absolutely no way saying that sinners are then entitled to maintain or defend what they do and who they are.

That's not how God loves. Jesus loved this man, and in loving him, he told him the truth, and he called him to repent and leave the most important thing in the world to him.

Michael Ramsden is quoted as saying this, Love does not exist in the absence of judgment. True love exists only when someone has passed the correct moral judgment about you and who you are, when they are under no illusions about what you're like and they still love you.

That's true love, and Jesus loved this man. He was under no presuppositions, no illusions about what this man was like, and he loved him.

God loves sinners, and he calls them to repent, but don't forget that first part.

He loves them, which leads us to that second part. Who does God love?

Well, how does God love? God loves by telling people the truth and calling them to repent, so therefore, who does

God love? Everyone. Hear it from a Calvinist.

God loves everyone. Thank you, whoever you are, bold enough to say amen.

The one man in this room to stand alongside Michael Schultz. We'll have our crosses outside together, brother.

They may burn us yet, but we will stand together. Who does God love?

He loves everyone. I'm endlessly amazed that we are so hesitant to say that out loud.

Did an interview with Dr. Foskey here recently. He hates when I call him that, but I call him that anyway. He made the comment, which is popular right now, that the disciples, the apostles, didn't go out telling people that God loved them.

That wasn't their evangelistic method. That might be true, but I made the response they also didn't go out telling everybody that God hated them.

That wasn't their evangelistic method either. Folks, the gospel is offensive enough.

It doesn't need your help. You don't have to be a jerk. I know it's popular right now.

I know you can get a lot of clicks. I know your YouTube channel could grow. I know your podcast would shoot through the stars.

You don't have to be a jerk. You really don't have to. It should concern us that we are very comfortable preaching that God hates sinners, which is true, and yet we are very uncomfortable preaching that God loves sinners, which is also true.

It should concern us that that's not being said. It strikes me that Mark's gospel was written very early after Christ's death, probably within 30 years or so, and this man being a rich, young ruler was likely alive when

Mark's gospel began to circulate, and the situation immediately preceding what just happened to him was where Jesus took a group of children in his arms and blessed them.

Thirty years later, most all of those children were probably alive, and as the gospel of Mark began to circulate, if it ever came into their hands, and they're there, they must have remembered that moment when

Jesus took them in his arms and blessed them, and as they keep reading, they read about this rich, young ruler, and they must have got to what we now call verse 21, that Jesus loved him, and if there was a heart in their chest, and they knew where this man was, they would have run to him with the scroll.

Did you know Jesus loved you? The apostles were not afraid of the idea that an unsaved, unregenerate man would hear that Jesus loved him.

The apostles were not afraid of boldly proclaiming to the lost that Jesus loved them. Ladies and gentlemen, there are multitudes in this world sitting in darkness, and yes, they're pouring their love on that darkness, just like the rich, young ruler did, and just like you and I did, but it is spiritual malpractice for which we should be defrocked if we sit in the ivory towers of salvation and refuse to tell those sitting in darkness of the love that freed us from the darkness they now sit in.

Why did Jesus love the rich, young ruler? It wasn't because he was good. It wasn't because he was saved. It wasn't because he was elect.

Jesus loved this man not because of who he was, but because of who Jesus was. And God loves sinners not because of who the sinners are, but because of who

God is. I believe we are afraid to proclaim God's love for sinners because we're afraid that we will lift sinners up far too high, we'll make them think too highly of themselves, but what we show is that we are not at all afraid of bringing

God down far too low and making them misunderstand how high our

God is. Fear not that others will misunderstand and misconstrue what you say.

Fear rather that God will condemn you for failing to rightly proclaim who he is and what he does. Our poets and hymn writers never feared proclaiming

God as being too loving. They wrote songs like this. Fear not that thy needs shall exceed his provisions.

Our God ever yearns his resources to share lean hard on the arm everlasting availing.

The Father both thee and thy love will upbear. His love has no limits. His grace has no measure.

His power no boundary known unto men. For out of his infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again.

We sang this at my church last week. See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did ever such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown? Were this whole realm of nature mine it is a present far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.

May we never forget nor fail to proclaim what great love the Father has for us and all of those around us.

Lest we forget the very source of salvation. Remember therefore from where you have fallen.

Repent and do the works you did at first. These are the words of Jesus Christ for a church that had forgotten love.

May they know that we are Christians by our love. This is the word of God for the people of God.