Sell It All and Follow Me

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So this afternoon we're resuming our study in the Gospel according to Mark, and we're now turning our attention to what is probably one of the more hotly debated passages in the

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Gospel of Mark, and certainly one of the more contested passages in all of the Gospel accounts.

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In fact, if you were to set a lineup of learned men in front of this stage to give their opinion on this, if we had maybe men like R .C.

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Sproul and John MacArthur, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Matthew Henry, all of those men, and you were to ask them, what does this passage mean?

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I've looked at almost all or a lot of what those men have had to say on this particular passage, and I will tell you, you're going to get as many answers as you have men at the front of the stage.

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It's a challenging text, but as I mentioned at the onset, I think it's a great opportunity for us to learn how to do careful and biblical exegesis.

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As the preacher this afternoon, I have my work cut out for me. There are verses here that men like Calvin, with his colossal intellect and his refined theological acumen, on one page of his commentaries on Mark 10, he says these words, he says,

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I do not understand this, and I don't claim to be a John Calvin or a

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Matthew Henry, but I'm going to try to help us understand this, and thankfully

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I'm not alone. All of you are not off the hook either, because we are all compelled to be

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Bereans, and to hear the word, to read the word, to hear the word preached, to study the word, and to bring that into the light of the whole counsel of God.

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It's important that not only I be on my toes today, but that you be on your toes today as a listener.

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In many respects, I consider days like this to be exciting, to be students of God's word, to roll up our sleeves and do the challenging and yet thrilling work.

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And I really do mean the thrilling work of biblical exegesis, that is to rightly interpret the text of Scripture.

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And I would suggest that by the end of today, as hopefully we get through this text, not only will you leave with the ability to interpret this text accurately, but I think that the conclusions that we are going to draw from this text are not of little importance.

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As a matter of fact, I would suggest that to have a right understanding of this particular passage that is before us will grant us great assurance in our faith in Christ, assurance of our standing before God, and also save us from considerable difficulty.

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Now you know that the job of a preacher at the introduction of a sermon is always to try to capture the listener's attention.

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And I'm not just saying it'll spare you from great difficulty so that it piques your interest. I really do mean that a right understanding of this text will save you from considerable difficulty.

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And I'll use my own experience as a personal illustration. In the very early years, when

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I first became a Christian, I went to a Christian conference in downtown Edmonton that maybe some of you have heard of it before.

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It's not around anymore, but it was called the Breakforth Conference. And the Breakforth Conference was really, to go to that conference you would capture the whole spectrum of early 2000s

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Christianity, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so on any given Saturday at the

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Breakforth Conference, you could go and learn apologetics from Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell, some reputable names in apologetics.

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You could remember catching Francis Chan on a Friday evening, earnestly pleading with the group to follow what

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I would classify as a bit of a social gospel, but explaining why he was leaving his church and what he was doing.

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You could hear one of the children of Billy Graham preaching the gospel and giving an altar call.

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I even sat in one seminar where William Paul Young, the author of the book

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The Shack, explained his theology. Not a book that I would recommend or counsel anyone to read here, unless you're in for some good fiction or some bad fiction.

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But on one particular Sunday, or Saturday, excuse me, I sat in a breakout session by a man named

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Shane Claiborne. And this man, if you know anything about him, is an

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American who lives in the eastern United States. And he's a tall, lanky man, had dreadlocks and baggy, ill -fitting clothing.

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And the title of that session that he spoke on was entitled Another Way of Doing Life.

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And in that particular session, this man described what

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I would call, again, to use another social gospel term, a poverty gospel Christianity, where he said

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Christianity consists not in Christ and of his divine accomplishments, but Christianity consists of following Christ's example as an impoverished nomad and to live and to die among the poor.

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And his version of Christianity, if I can call it that, consisted of rejecting modern -day

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Babylon. And modern -day Babylon, in his terms, was the free market economy and capitalism.

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It was selling all your possessions. It was living among the poor. And just this week,

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I went back and I managed to track down that particular message and listen to it over again, over a decade later, and thought to myself, what a shallow appeal to emotion, with no bearing in Scripture.

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But for a young, idealistic, and immature Christian at that time, with absolutely no moorings in a healthy local church,

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I was captivated by Shane Claiborne's version of Christianity, this poverty gospel.

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And I had no one to steer me aright. And so in the weeks and months that followed, my wife will remember this book.

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I hunted down the Irresistible Revolution and read it. And in it, I learned how we should sell everything, based on the text that we just heard read this morning, that I should do away with my house and my cars and everything, save an extra set of clothing.

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And my wife and I should go move and live in among the poor. And interestingly enough,

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Tim Challies, at that exact same time, I wasn't familiar with his ministry, but he wrote a review on that book.

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And he said, much of Shane Claiborne's critique against the North American church is accurate and even necessary.

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It's a positive, at least, example of him being able to pick out the difficulties of the church.

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But he said, there was much truth to the initial observations, but his solutions were altogether naive and unbiblical.

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And so relying largely upon this text, I took then, I was without children at that time, but took my wife,

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Nicole, into a season of probably headaches and hassles for her. Every time she would come home from work, it was a going theme, she would arrive home from work, and I would have sold my favorite guitar in order to give the money to the poor.

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And then she would come home another day, and I will have sold her favorite guitar, my 12 -string that she loved to hear me play, and my recording equipment.

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For those of you who know how much I like bicycles, I sold my favorite bicycle. Anything that was good, anything that I enjoyed, must go.

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And where I ended up was this, that under the crushing burden of this command that I must sell everything to follow

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Christ, every possession that I had, to have a house, to have a car, to have more than one set of clothes, became a reminder that I was still not following Christ fully.

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And because I wasn't following Christ fully, I had every reason to lack assurance. Am I really a Christian if I won't sell that one last item, that I won't quit my job, or whatever the case might have been?

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Now, I praise God that He brought me through all of that, that He, by His Word and His Church, He steered me out of this relatively brief phase in my life.

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But it begs the question, if we look at worldviews like that, that to be a

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Christian is to sell everything, and to live amongst the poor with Mother Teresa, as Shane Claiborne did.

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It begs the question, is that what Christ intended in this encounter with the rich young ruler, in the

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Gospel of Mark, or in the parallel accounts in Matthew, in Luke? Is it wholly unchristian to keep your possessions?

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Is it wholly unchristian to make money, to own or buy a house, to own a car, to save for retirement?

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If we want to be true Christians, must we sell it all to follow

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Jesus Christ? As we study the text that is before us,

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I would suggest that the answer is made abundantly clear when we rightly interpret the text.

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Here, Christ lays out, lays down the foundation for what it means to fully follow

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Him. But it's not what Shane Claiborne taught. It's not what he still teaches today, in fact. It's not what many hold to in what is becoming a ballooning social

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Gospel movement in the world. The prerequisite to following Christ is not selling your possessions.

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I would suggest it's getting the Law and the Gospel right. It's recognizing our overwhelming need for the righteousness that Christ offers.

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And it's selling all of your own self -righteousness. It's parting ways with your own self -sufficiency.

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It's giving away your worldly allegiances and laying hold of the free gift of God's grace in Christ Jesus, our

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Lord. Now, there are many, as I said, if I stack up the men in front, there are many perspectives on this.

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But what I hope to show you is that this is the biblical perspective. And so, with that, no further ado, we'll hop right into the text.

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So, if you're not already there, in Mark chapter 10, in verse 17, I'm going to read verses 17 through 22 one more time.

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And he was setting out on his journey. A man ran up and knelt before him and asked, "'Good teacher, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'

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And he said to him, "'Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.'

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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.

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And come, follow me.'" Now, if after reading this first passage, your first urge is to go and sell everything you have,

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I'm just going to put you on pause for a second. Just wait a second. If you're going to sell one thing, you'll see that I have some headings in our bulletin for today.

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If you're going to sell one thing, first of all, I think to rightly understand this text is this, sell all of your self -righteousness.

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As a matter of fact, it's worthless. You can't sell it. Burn it. Ditch it. Put it away. Abandon it.

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Give up all hope of ever earning eternal life through your working and through your law keeping.

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I think that's exactly what Christ is getting at here. And I'll show you, I'll explain why that is here in a second.

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So here in verse 17, just to reorient ourselves in the passage,

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Christ, as we remember, has just come into the region of Judea. He's now in the southern part of Israel, and he's approached by this man who kneels before him.

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Now, Mark doesn't tell us a great deal about this man, but if we look at the parallel accounts, we can actually piece together a fairly decent picture of what this man or who this man was.

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In the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, in chapter 19 and verse 20, we're told that this was a young man, somewhere probably early in his career, early in his family life.

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Luke 18, 18 tells us that he was a ruler among the Jews. Even if we look at our own passage in Mark chapter 10 and verse 22, it tells us that he was a wealthy man who owned many possessions.

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And so, for this reason, when you often hear about this man, spoken of by Bible scholars and people throughout the ages, he's referred to as the rich young ruler.

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He was a man of great wealth, of great power, of great prestige. But despite this elevated socioeconomic status, this rich young ruler saw

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Christ, and upon seeing him, he comes to Christ. He kneels down before him. No doubt this would have been an unusual gesture for a man of his stature and position.

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But it was for a very important reason. After all, this young man wanted to know the way to eternal life.

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And can there really be any more important question? Children, if you'll hear me out for just a moment, there is no more important question than how can we have eternal life?

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How can we be saved? He's answering the right question. But is he answering it, or is he prepared to receive the response?

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So this man falls down before Christ. And even more, he addresses Christ as good teacher.

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Now, this is where John Calvin would admit he does not know why Christ responds the way he responds.

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Now, this particular statement, that this man would call Christ a good teacher, doesn't strike us as odd, particularly today, just in our modern reading, because we overuse, even as I was praying, we overuse adjectives like good and awesome in the

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English language. Everything is awesome. Everything is good. But if you were to, again, transport yourself back to first century

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Israel, and to be among the people in Israel, you're wearing your sandals and walking in the streets of Jerusalem, what you would find is this, that the rabbis and the teachers and the religious leaders loved their honorific titles.

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They loved the greetings that they received in the marketplace and in the town square.

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Christ is going to deal with them in Mark chapter 12 and verse 38 on that particular topic.

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But one thing that the Jews were very, very careful of, whether you were a teacher or one of the run -of -the -mill

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Jews in the streets, was this, that it was nearly unheard of to refer to any teacher or rabbi as a good teacher.

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And the reason for this was simple. The Jews understood that God alone was good, that God alone was righteous and holy and morally perfect.

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And so to ascribe the attribute of goodness to any man was running the risk of committing blasphemy against God.

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And so no one ever called anyone good teacher, except maybe on the rarest of occasions.

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But here this man comes to Christ, kneels down, humbly, zealously, and says, good teacher, what must

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I do to inherit eternal life? Christ acknowledges already the difficulty with this title that he has given him.

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If we look into verse 18, he doesn't deny the man's claim. He doesn't correct him.

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He simply asks the question, why? Why do you call me good? After all, no one is good except God alone.

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And here Christ acknowledges, I would submit, that there might be valid reason for this man to call him good teacher.

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He doesn't turn him away. He doesn't say, you know, we're not to call people good. He asks the question, why?

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Could it be that this man understands or understood that Christ was in fact God in human flesh?

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I think as we watch the interaction unravel, we begin to gather that unfortunately it is not the case.

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I don't think this man knew that Christ was God in human flesh, but I think instead he failed to understand the basic principle that no one is good except God alone.

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He had a deficient view of what it meant to be good. Despite what he may think, rabbis are not good.

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Religious leaders and great teachers are not good. Not even he is good.

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But he doesn't understand this fact. And we see this, I think, in the ensuing interaction with Christ as Christ deals with this man.

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Now, if you were to approach this man today, or sorry, excuse me, approached by this man, some of us do, we go to White Avenue to share the gospel or we're having a conversation membership class, you're speaking to one of your colleagues at work.

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Imagine that for a moment. At work and one of your colleagues comes to you and says, what must

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I do to be saved? You would think it was the day to buy a lottery ticket.

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How often do people approach you with that particular posture? What must I do to be saved?

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And let me ask you, how would you respond in that particular situation? Would you immediately go to Christ and the response?

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Would you immediately say, well, you need to repent and believe? As we were speaking about one man who has a low view,

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I think, of conversion and regeneration, who's in Internet land somewhere else. Would you say, repeat this prayer after me, congratulations, you're a

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Christian, carry on? Or would you begin at the beginning? Would you take the man through who

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God is in all of his holiness and splendor? Who are you in light of who

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God is? Who is Christ and what did he do on your behalf? How must you respond in light of all of this?

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In this instance, what I would suggest to you is this. The reason why many people get this passage wrong is because they read this interaction as gospel, that Christ is giving the man gospel, that he is saying to him, in order to be right with me, you need to sell all your possessions and give to the poor.

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When in fact, what Christ is doing to this man is he is giving him the law.

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He is starting at the beginning. He's already told him that no one is good except God alone.

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And now what he's going to do is he's going to get to the point where he's going to, as we sometimes talk about a helpful formula for sharing the gospel,

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God, man, Christ response. He's given man God. No one is good except for God alone.

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And now he's going to give him man. And what is the best measuring tool to measure a man but the law?

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And so what Christ does, we'll see, is immediately, he says no one is good but God alone. And then he begins to go into God's moral law.

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Now we don't know why Christ does this, but he skips the first four commandments and immediately goes to all the commandments concerning our horizontal relationship.

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So he skips the commandments concerning God and he goes to man -to -man commandments. And he asks questions about not murdering or putting those statements not to murder, to not steal, to not bear false witness, to honor father and mother.

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Now if we were to go to White Avenue today and take this same approach and ask people, well, have you committed murder?

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Have you stolen? Have you committed thefts? You're going to find, I think, I would venture to guess, many righteous people on White Avenue.

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That's just the way it seems to work. And such is the same in this case in verse 20.

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The man declares that he has kept, he says, every commandment since his youth.

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Mark uses the Greek word neotes. It means that age between childhood and adulthood.

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Maybe someone around Noah's age. You're not quite a baby, you're not quite a man, but you're on your way,

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I trust. You're there, buddy. You're going there. And as far as this man is concerned, he is good.

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He is morally blameless before God. He's lacking nothing. This view of his own inherent goodness would have also been reinforced by the rabbis of that particular day.

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They taught that, in the words of one scholar, a person possessed the ability, without exception, to fulfill all of God's commandments.

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Another writes, this was so firmly rooted in the rabbis' teaching that, in all seriousness, they spoke of people who had kept the entire

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Torah from Aleph to Tiberias, from A to Zed, from beginning to end.

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So this man looks at Christ and he says, I have kept the whole law. Now, again, if you were in Christ's position, how would you respond to that man?

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Would you say, well, it looks like you have. Then you do have eternal life. Or would you push a little bit deeper still?

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Now, we're told here that Christ looked intently at the man, that he loved him.

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For those of you who are familiar with the four types of love, this is agape love that Christ has for this man.

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It's the highest form of sincere love for another. And with this love for this man, here

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Christ applies the words of Proverbs 27, I would suggest, verses 5 and 6.

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Proverbs 27, 5 and 6, it says, Better is open rebuke than hidden love.

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Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Christ looks at this man and he will not allow him to persist in his self -righteousness, in his self -righteous assessment of himself.

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And so he drills deeper. And if you've had any experience sharing the gospel with someone,

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I'm sure you've run into someone like this, who when you speak to them about the nature of God and the nature of man, they will say, well,

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I have never sinned. I mean, I'm not perfect, but I'm certainly not worthy of going to hell.

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And recently, a few of the men know who were out with us on a Thursday evening, we ran into one young lady and I said, would you say that you are a morally good person, inherently good?

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She was raised in a cult and with all kinds of other influences in her life.

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And she said, yes, I believe I am good. And so what I used was something that probably many people who are familiar with Ray Comfort does, where I know sometimes it can seem trivial, but just to drill in a little bit deeper.

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Well, have you ever told a lie? Well, yeah, I have, I've told a lie. Okay. Have you ever looked at a man or a woman with lust in your heart?

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Well, yes, I guess I have. Have you ever used the Lord's name in vain? Well, what does that mean?

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Have you ever used God's name in place of a swear word? Yeah, okay,

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I have done that. Well, then by God's own assessment, according to his word, you've admitted that you're not good, but you are a liar and an adulterer and a blasphemer at heart.

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And unless you turn to Christ, your place will be in the lake of fire.

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I think many of us are familiar with that approach, how we drill in deeper to help people out of love for them, to know just how bad they are and just how needy they are for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And that's exactly what Christ does here. This whole statement about selling your possessions and giving to the poor is him drilling deeper still.

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He says, well, if you have obeyed the law perfectly and if you're truly good, then there's only one thing left to do, to demonstrate it, to demonstrate your perfect love for God and your perfect love for neighbor by selling all that you have.

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Give that money to the poor and then come and follow me. He provides a man with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate his perfect obedience to the law.

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But the man's response proved that he was not in fact able or willing to keep the spirit of God's commandments because we're told in verse 22, disheartened, literally shocked, appalled.

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The man clung to his possessions. He clung to his self -righteousness and departed.

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He couldn't come to Christ, not only because he was clinging to his own possessions, but because he was clinging to his own self -sufficiency, self -righteousness, his own high view of himself.

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And while Jesus loved this man, he was prepared to let him walk away at that particular juncture.

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Now some people today read this passage and they believe, as I said earlier on, that we need to sell all of our possessions.

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We need to live as nomads in this world for Christ. To my wife's great discomfort,

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I was once telling her that we need to do exactly that. And it was a misled notion, and it was unhelpful, and God is gracious because we didn't do that.

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That assertion is incorrect. But still there are others, maybe there are people in this room who simply don't know what to do with this passage.

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Maybe you've been reading it for the last number of years and you think that, well, certainly God very well might be telling me that I need to sell everything and give to the poor, give it all to the poor.

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Now I don't say this just as a note to the neglect of the poor, to the neglect of mercy, to the neglect of love, but just to rightly interpret this particular text.

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And there might be some of you who have either tucked that passage away to deal with it another time, I don't know what to do with it,

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I'll deal with it later. Or maybe for some of you who have a very sensitive conscience, you might be sitting here going,

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I have lived with this nagging sense that I might be in disobedience for days or weeks or months or years.

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And there might be a whole group of people here who don't know what to do with this passage. And as I said at the onset,

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I think this results from a failure to properly distinguish between law and gospel in this interaction.

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Many believers, many believe that what Christ is doing here is laying out, they would say, the demands of the gospel, the lordship of Christ's gospel.

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But I would suggest, and I think I would stand in the corner with R .C. Sproul and John Calvin in this one, that what

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Christ is doing here is pre -evangelism. He's not sharing the way to eternal life, he is implying the first use of the law to show man his need for Christ.

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Now, at this point, we could get fairly theological, I'm not going to go deep into it, but what

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I will say is this, that at least since the time of John Calvin and probably before, it might go all the way back to Augustine, theologians have talked about the uses of the law, the correct uses of the law.

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And it was John Calvin who said that there is a threefold use of the law throughout the

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Bible, meaning that the authors of the Old and the New Testament have used the Old Testament, the

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Old Covenant law, in one of three ways. The first is what they call the first use of the law, or the pedagogical use of the law.

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And what that simply is is this, that so often the law is given, was given to the

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Old Covenant people and is given now to people in order to show them their wretched nature before a holy

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God. Our brother read this in Romans 3, in verse 19 and 20, where it says, Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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So if ever you hear theologians talking about that's the first use of the law, that's exactly what they're talking about here.

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That's exactly what I would suggest Christ is doing here, that he is using the law to show man's neediness.

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Now there's a second use of the law that Calvin talks about, that was called often the civil use of the law.

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And that's to secure civility and order in the world by restraining evil. And the third use of the law, just in case someone is thinking that I'm up here preaching antinomianism, that we are bound by a law, but it is not the

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Old Covenant law of God, it is the New Covenant law of Christ. We see that in Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20, where Christ says,

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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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That is the third use of the law. So if we understand what

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Christ is rightly getting at here, our reflex ought not to be to sell all our earthly goods, but dear friends, if you read this text and you want to apply it in your life today, then apply it in the way that Christ intended it, by casting away all notions of your own self -righteousness.

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And in all honesty, it might be more difficult to cast away your notions of self -righteousness than to sell all of your worldly possessions.

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It just seems built into us that we want to cling to our own merit, cling to our own works and deeds and commendations before a holy

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God. We love to cling to the old vestiges of our self -righteousness. Even for the redeemed saint, we drift toward this.

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But we must be like, if we're to apply this correctly, like Paul in Philippians 3 .3. He says,

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For we are the circumcision. Who is the true Jew? Who is the true man or woman of God?

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He says, Who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

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And then, almost as if it's an application of what Christ has just told the rich young ruler, he says, Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain

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Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible

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I may attain the resurrection from the dead. So this is what

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Paul says. And yet, I fully expect that there are people in this room who still believe that they are enough and that they have something to offer before a holy

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God. I'm not sure if it's an adult or if it's children in this room, but you must sell all, give away, abandon all of your self -righteousness and exchange all that you are not for all that Christ is.

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Charles Spurgeon once said, he said, When you see my coffin carried to the silent grave,

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I should like every one of you, whether converted or not, to be constrained to say,

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He did earnestly urge us in plain and simple language not to put off consideration of eternal things.

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He did entreat us to look to Christ. If the

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Lord is going to call me home tomorrow or in 10 years or in 50 years, one thing I want to be certain of is this, that at every opportunity

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I urged each of you not to look to yourself, but to look to Christ.

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If you've not placed your faith in him, look to Christ. And if you're a believer in this room, this means that you can take hold of the assurance that Christ has purchased for you apart from works of the law.

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Yes, you are a great sinner. It is true. But Christ is a greater Savior still.

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We know Martin Luther, how he wrestled with the difficulty of his own life, obsessively looking at himself.

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And at one point he wrote to a depressed man that he felt was likely doing the same. And he said to this man, he said,

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Man, some of you need to hear this. Man, what are you doing? Can you think of nothing else but your sins and dying and damnation?

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Turn your eyes away and direct them at Christ. Cease to fear and lament.

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You really have no reason for it. If Christ were not here and had not done this for you, you would then have reason to fear.

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But he is here. He has suffered death for you. He has secured comfort and protection for you and now sits at the right hand of his heavenly

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Father to intercede for you. Some of you in this room are not enjoying the full benefits of Christ because, like this man, you are still clinging to your own self -righteousness.

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But in Christ we have been justified and we have peace with God. Now, I put it on heavy for this first point.

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I promise the next two points are much faster. We're going to look at next to verses 23 to 27.

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It says, 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.

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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.

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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.

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And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said,

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With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.

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So if you're going to sell one thing, first of all sell your self -righteousness. If you're going to sell another thing, point number two

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I want to make here is sell all your self -sufficiency. Now I think that most credible commentators, when you look at them, they will not tell you that God himself looks unfavorably upon the rich and the wealthy.

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It's very possible that God can and will and does save those who are wealthy.

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But I think that what the text is getting at here is that it is very difficult to be saved, especially amongst those who are wealthy, because of a mindset of self -sufficiency.

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We're told here that Christ looked around and said to his disciples, the

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Greek word there is a commanding survey. There's a moment of pause and he looks at each of his disciples and he says how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

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One commentator writes, He says wealth is a potential danger to faith.

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The greatest enemies of faith is self -satisfaction and pride.

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Interestingly enough, I don't mean to use so many examples from our time on White Avenue, but it just seems fitting because this is a very evangelistic passage in one respect.

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My children and I will often have a little activity when they come and do evangelism with me on White Avenue.

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And kids, maybe you remember doing this, where if it's sparse and we get lots of I -lead time or we see people walking towards us,

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I will ask my children, will they accept a gospel tract or not? And it's a fun guessing game in terms of keeping the children engaged.

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But one of the things that I have noticed over time, because my children and I have done this a number of times now, is that my children are probably accurate to about 90 % at who will take a gospel tract and who will not take a gospel tract.

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And why is that? Because as people walk towards us, almost invariably my children will see a man walking down White Avenue with his $8 coffee and his blazer on, and he's walking with purpose down White Avenue.

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And I'll ask the children, will he take a gospel tract? It is fully possible for God to enable that man to take a gospel tract.

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But 90 % of the time that man, who is well -dressed and very confident and very self -assertive, will pass aside and say, no thank you,

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I'm not interested. Or maybe a snide remark of some kind. And then my children also will see someone else who's coming who's very plainly dressed.

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Or maybe they're waiting at the bus stop and they're maybe even a newcomer to Canada, something like that.

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And my kids will say, oh, this person will take a gospel tract. And almost invariably, 90 % of the time, those people take a gospel tract.

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Now, what is the main difference that I can see in those people? Is largely the people that turn down the gospel tracts on White Avenue are those who are affluent.

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Those who are self -sufficient in their own mind. As our

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Lord said to the Laodiceans, you think that you are rich, but you are actually poor and wretched and naked and blind.

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And such as many in the world today, wealth is a potential danger to faith.

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In James 2 .5, it says this, James says, Listen, my beloved brothers. Is not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?

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One reputable commentator says, The poor have an important place in God's economy of salvation.

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I don't want you to get from this message that God does not care about the poor, that we ought not to care for the poor, because it seems very much that God does care for the poor.

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But what it is that often holds people away from Christ is not so much their wealth, but their self and their self -sufficiency.

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In Psalm 49, verse 78, it says, Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice.

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It is frequently the case that the self -sufficient and the wealthy and the well -to -do and people like us in Canada feel that if there's anything that we need, we will buy it ourselves.

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But if there's one thing that we can never buy, that we can never afford, it is the ransom price that must be paid to God himself for the price of our very souls.

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At the same time, maybe I'll say this, at the same time, it is

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God's good pleasure, and it's God's electing love, and it's God's unconditional election that chooses people.

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And so we ought, when we are amongst our unbelieving friends, our rich and wealthy neighbors, whoever it might be, to call them to Christ.

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And I remember coming across a story about a woman named Selina Hastings. She was a countess in Huntington in the 1700s, and she said, reflecting one day on 1

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Corinthians 1, 26 -31, she said, Blessed be God that God did not save, sorry, that God did not say that he would not save any mighty or any noble, but many mighty and many noble.

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And she said, I owe my salvation to the letter M, that God will save and does save who he pleases.

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He will save the rich, he will save the noble, he will save the mighty, but he must first destroy self -sufficiency in that man.

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And if I can turn this to all of you for a second, dear friends, how many of you are living in this same pattern of self -sufficiency?

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And the first place that it shows up without fail is in your prayer life, that you are sufficient for everything that God has called you to do and to be, and so you neglect to pray.

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I can buy the time, we don't need the Lord's provision, we can pay for that ourselves.

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How many of you, if I can turn it the other way, at this very moment are being seemingly destroyed to eradicate that self -sufficiency?

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There's an anonymous poem that we read in the Institute amongst many of the brothers. I think a couple guys here have heard this at least a few times.

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But when God wants to use a man, when he wants to give you assurance and usefulness and purpose in the world, he is going to first destroy all vestiges of your self -sufficiency.

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And the poem reads like this. When God wants to drill a man and thrill a man and skill a man, when

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God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part, when he yearns with all his heart to create so great and bold a man that all the world shall be amazed, watch his methods, watch his ways.

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What does he do? Does he make the man rich? Does he make him wealthy? It says this, how he ruthlessly perfects whom he royally elects, how he hammers him and hurts him and with mighty blows converts him into trial shapes of clay which only

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God understands. While his tortured heart is crying, he lifts beseeching hands, how he bends but never breaks when his good

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God undertakes, how God uses whom he chooses and whichever purpose fuses him, by every act induces him to try his splendor out.

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God knows what he is about. Is God bringing you through a fiery trial? Brother Steve, I think of you.

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Is God bringing you through a fiery trial? Do you feel as if God has given you almost too much grief to bear?

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Could it be that God is using such a season as this to refine you in order to rid you of the wretched dross of self -sufficiency, of independence, of a godless and Christless way of thinking?

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And lastly, in verses 28 through 31, I'll read briefly. Jesus said,

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Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mothers or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands and with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

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But many who are first will be last and the last first. If you're to follow

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Christ, sell your self -righteousness, sell your self -sufficiency and sell all of your worldly allegiances.

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Cast them aside. Cast aside every worldly affection. It is impossible to be both a friend of God and a friend of the world.

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In this particular passage, Christ says that everyone who leaves house or brother or sister or mother or father or children or lands will receive a hundredfold now in this time and in the life to come and persecutions, he says.

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And what I would say is this. As part of Christian freedom and as part of our living out wisely and righteously following Christ, not to be saved as a result of our salvation, it is wise and it is good to sacrifice and to cast aside worldly things for the sake of eternal things.

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R .C. Sproul says in verse 28, he says, Well, salvation cannot be earned. Allegiance to Christ entails surrendering him control of one's life, including possessions and relationships.

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And so while you need not live under the heavy burden of guilt that you are not saved, it's very possible, even very likely, that the

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Lord is calling some of you to be missionaries and to exchange your house here in Edmonton for a hut in Papua New Guinea to give up what good things you have, to give good and to give the gospel to others.

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And in verse 31, we can see there's a, if you like things like this, there's a chiasm.

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But many who are first will be last, and the last first. We've already seen this before.

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What Christ is getting at here is this. That to follow Christ not only comes at great cost, but it comes at great benefit.

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To follow Christ, and I can say this from experience, is truly an adventure. I was recently thinking about it before.

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Before I came to Christ, I grew up in a small town with a small family and not many cousins, one brother, and that was it.

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And we had a beautiful acreage, and we could ride our snowmobiles and run amuck and do all kinds of things.

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But before I was a Christian, I had a very small existence that I clinged to desperately.

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And by God's grace, since I had become a

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Christian, and since I had been afforded the opportunity to abandon some of the luxuries of this world and the pursuits of this world and comfort and security and money and all the things that this world chases,

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I have brothers and sisters, not one brother who lives in Fort Saskatchewan, but a hundred -fold brothers and sisters.

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I think it's an amazing thing that my wife and I could get on the phone this afternoon and we would have a house to go to in Africa or in Asia or somewhere across Canada or in the

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United States somewhere that we can trade what little we have for a hundred -fold.

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There's a tremendous cost to following Christ in this life. Christ counsels each of us to count that cost.

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But the benefits far exceed any of the cost.

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I think of David Livingston, who was a missionary to Africa. When he was asked about his time in Africa, he said,

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I never made a sacrifice. He knew that everything that he had exchanged, he had gained a thousand times more in God's good blessings in that endeavor, even through much hardship.

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There's another missionary. We don't often hear about him. His name is Samuel Zwemer. He was an 18th century or 19th century

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American missionary who went to, of all places, if you can picture this, it's the 1800s, you're going to get on a boat, you're going to go across the world.

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Where are you going to go? I think often the idea of the noble savage.

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Well, I'm going to go to the friendly people in South America or the friendly people of Hawaii, maybe, and go share the gospel with them.

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But he took his family to the Middle East amongst a massive population of Muslim people.

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In the year 1904, in the span of just eight days, he lost both of his daughters.

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He had a daughter named Ruth, who was four years old, and his daughter Katarina, who was seven. They buried those children in the ground and on their gravestones.

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They carved in the front of them, "'Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive riches.'"

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Zwemer's biographer, he writes this, he says, "'In spite of all of the opposition and the small outward results that were apparent, in spite of the sacrifice of life and the intense heat and fever and loneliness,'

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Zwemer could explain as he looked back 50 years later on his time amongst the

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Muslim people, he said, "'But the sheer joy of it all comes back, how gladly

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I would do it all over again.'" To live the

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Christian life faithfully, to abandon all of your self -righteousness, to abandon all of your self -sufficiency, and to abandon all of your worldly allegiances, is one of the greatest joys and greatest wonders of the

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Christian life. And, Christ says, it will come with persecution.

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And I think increasingly in this world, it will come. We should expect persecution if we are to remain faithful to God's word and faithful to God himself.

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We cannot remain silent. We must share the gospel. We must speak up for what is good and righteous and true.

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We must stand up against all of that which is offensive and evil and ugly in the eyes of God. And, again, another example.

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I like missionary examples. I think you know that by now. But a Puritan missionary in the 1600s, his name was

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Jim Elliott. He was an American Puritan missionary. He was called to share the gospel with the indigenous people of Massachusetts.

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And many people called him the Apostle to the Indians. But this was not some exalted title,

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Apostle to the Indians. He was often resisted and persecuted and threatened at the hands of many of the tribal chiefs.

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But I love his boldness. On one occasion, a bunch of the tribal chiefs came together and threatened him with a very credible threat.

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I'm not sure if it was to harm him or to kill him or whatever the case was. But he looked at them and he said this.

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He said, I am about the work of the great God. And my

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God is with me. So that I neither fear you nor all the chiefs in the country.

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I will go on. Touch me if you dare. Do you live like that?

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I will speak for what is true. I will stand up for what is right. I will align my values with the values of God.

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I will go on. Touch me if you dare. Dear friends, this is a wonderful text.

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At the end of it all, what it ought to do is bring us to this. That we must give all that we are, all that we are not in fact, to all that Christ is, to place all of our faith in Him.

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And once we are certain of that assurance of salvation, that we are in fact right with Him, not because of anything that we have done or can do, but because of what

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He has already done already, then we are to take the joy of that salvation, and the fruit of that salvation, and go and pour out our lives in service to Him.

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To give away houses, to give away lands, to give away whatever we need to do with the expectation, not that it's going to bring us a tremendous amount of guilt, it's going to weigh us down for years and cause conflict in our marriages when we sell everything under our wife's nose, but great peace and great joy and great reward, not only in this life, but in the life to come.