Matthew 19:23-30 A Call to Treasure

To the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

Wealth, the Rich Young Ruler, and Treasure in Heaven

Well, good morning, everybody. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here. We're going to go ahead and get started. And surprise, we're outside. Some of you probably got the early morning memo that said we were going to be inside.

We were for the nine o 'clock service, and we were inside while the sun was shining outside the entire time. So we decided to move out here. Know that just the fact that the wind blowing through the trees, you might get a little shower once in a while, but it's not raining out there.

It's just raining in here. But welcome, everybody. I'm glad that you're here. I look forward to our gathering every week, and I'm super excited just for what God has for us in regard to his word, but also just the challenge that it is to rub shoulders with one another and have God kind of rub off some of the edges.

We need each other, and my prayer for all of us is that God continues to grow us in faith, grow us in community, and grow us in service, and that's what we're all about here as a church. My hope is that you've been able to continue to do that, even much more so while we're going through this entire crazy time with COVID and with all the different things that are going on and the divisions in our culture and all of that.

So how many of you would just raise your hand and say, yes, I need others? I need other people in my life sharpening me and making me stronger, and I think that's really all of us. So this morning, we're going to come into contact with God's word.

That's where our faith grows. Our faith grows in connection with his word. When our heart connects with that and believes it and trusts it, and enough that we go out and we live it out, that's really what it's all about.

And so this is a convicting text. How many of you like it when you encounter a text of scripture that's encouraging? You enjoy that. How many of you like it just a little bit less when it's super convicting?

Like, do you know what I'm talking about? Well, this is one of those texts that tends towards the conviction side of things. It's going to have something to say to all of us. And most of the texts are convicting to some degree.

They have the power to change us, to alter the way that we think about things. But this is a hot topic. It's a hot topic because it's not talked about. It's a hot topic because it's one that we don't think about very often, but it's something that really touches where we live in our culture.

This morning, our text hits really hard in our American context by talking about wealth and abundance. Wealth and abundance. I would say to you that we're a nation based on freedoms and been blessed by freedoms, and that those freedoms have produced a lot of wealth.

Would you guys agree with me on that? There's a lot of wealth in our culture, a lot of wealth in our society. We're a culture that not only values wealth, and hear me carefully, I think that all cultures down to the ages have valued wealth.

I don't know that there's a culture that exists that's valued scarcity and a lack of supplies. At the end of the day, everybody wants wealth. Everybody knows that there's benefit to having more food than not having enough food.

And at the same time, the way that we get that wealth or the way that we think about it, the way we conceive of it is different in different cultures. We're a culture that's leveraging wealth. We believe that wealth is like kind of a tool that we can use to obtain certain ends.

But further on the dark side of it, I would say that we're a culture that values wealth, but we're also a culture that worships wealth. And in many ways, we think of wealth and abundance as a way of life, don't we?

It's kind of like just a way of life. I mean, there's a reason why it's called the American dream, right? It has something to do with America. It has something to do with the way that we conceive of wealth, the way that we think of it as providing kind of a paradise of sorts for us in the here and now.

A heaven on earth, so to speak, might be the mindset of a lot of people and what a lot of people want. And anybody who's ever said, man, if I just won the lottery, has conceived in their mind some type of heaven on earth, right?

If I could just get that thing, if I could just have that stuff, if I could have that amount of wealth, then I'd be all set. And that betrays a mindset that is at the end of the day, worshipful towards wealth, a wealth of salvation, a wealth that could solve all of my problems is the mindset there.

And that couldn't be further from the truth and further from what Jesus has to say here in our text to us. But before we read the text this morning and consider it a wet blanket on all the abundance and all the blessings, I don't think that Jesus has that intention at all, that he wants to just kill all the fun, kill all the wealth, kill all the joy.

Let me encourage you to look at this text through a different lens, because I think most of us have heard it before. I think a lot of us are familiar with camels going through eyes of needles, and you maybe heard that phrase before, and you understand it in this context.

But I think all of us who are familiar with this text have read it through the lens of wealth is bad, as if that's the end of the story. Wealth is bad. But instead, I want you to read this text through the lens of a business proposition.

Surprisingly, Jesus is actually extending investment opportunity to each one of us. And if you look at it that way, it flavors it and it changes it to something positive that Jesus is trying to do here.

Jesus just dismissed in our text last week, the rich young ruler. Jesus identified that rich young ruler allowed his wealth, that that young man who had power, authority, and an abundance of possessions and wealth, that he was allowing that to get in the way of a complete and wholehearted dependence upon God.

And so he told him to sell all he had. He said, because this is in the way, this is in the way of a relationship with God that's pure hearted. Get rid of it, get it, shed it, get rid of anything that's a hurdle between you and God.

And in this young man's case, it was his great wealth. And so he said, go sell all you have, give it to the poor. Then you will have something. Then you will have, he said, treasure in heaven. He talked about the positive side of things.

Then you will have treasure in heaven, what really matters. And then he says, you will be truly free to come and follow me with a pure heart, a heart that's not muddied, a heart that's not divided over a bunch of different things and a bunch of different possessions and a bunch of money.

So listen to this text as I read it to identify what Jesus is calling us to not just what he's calling us from. He's not just calling us to give up something, but he's calling his followers to a greater investment.

And whenever God asks us to give up something, it is always because he wants to give us something greater in return. And that's been my personal experience. That's what I see in the pages of scripture.

And I think probably we could sit around and share testimonies of how in that understanding God has blessed us richly, even if it's not with material stuff. And so let's open our Bibles if you're not already there to Matthew chapter 19 verses 23 through 30.

Again, Matthew 19, 23 through 30. And we're going to go ahead and read this together. If you have a device, navigate in that over there. But let's read God's holy word. This is a word that has the power to change us, to transform us.

And so it's super awesome that we get to read it together. And Jesus said to his disciples, truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, 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 when the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished saying, who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Then Peter said in reply, see, we have left everything and followed you.

What then? What then will we have? Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you in the new world, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will sit on 12 thrones, judging, judging the 12 tribes and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my namesake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last will be first. Let's pray as Dave comes to lead us in worship. Father, I thank you for this text that corrects our faulty notions about the power of wealth in our lives.

I confess that I personally at times in my history have just looked at money as a defining thing and as a noble goal or a good thing to achieve. Father, at the end of the day, it is a good tool and it is a blessing from you, but it is not ultimate.

And so father, I pray that you would help us to be able to discern the difficulty, the trickiness of being a people with many means, being a people with many possessions and reading this text and not softening the blow in our own hearts.

We want to look at ourselves as the exceptions. And so father, I pray that you would have your way in our hearts, that you would radically transform us to conform to the way that Jesus is talking about our ultimate trust here and that no one would leave here without a commitment to really working through their own trust in terms of possessions and wealth and you.

Father, I thank you for the salvation that we have, that it's not by giving up or sacrificing that we have salvation, but it's at the end of the day, your sacrifice on our behalf, your sacrifice for us and your son, Jesus Christ.

And it's in him that we have hope. And so father, I pray that you would set our hearts to rejoice, even as we have some hard and heavy lifting to think through all of these issues of wealth today, that we still are lighthearted in terms of our salvation being already purchased for us.

And so these are things we get to work on in our lives with you. Father, thank you. And I pray that you would help us to lift our voices together outside today in your nature and in your creation and with joyful hearts together.

Thank you for bringing us together this morning in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thanks to Dave for leading us. I always appreciate the opportunity we have to come before God and worship and hope you enjoyed that as well.

I encourage you to get comfortable, as comfortable as possible out here. And then also to make sure that your Bibles or your devices are open to Matthew chapter 19 verses 23 through 30. We're going to be walking through that text and kind of explaining that.

And so I want to start off with a quote from a quote that maybe some of you recognize. A great missionary martyr wrote the following and he wrote this in his journal just a few years before he was speared to death for the cause of Christ among a tribe in Ecuador.

And he wrote this in his journal. He said, he is no fool who would choose to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. That man's name was Jim Elliott. How many of you are familiar with the story of Jim Elliott and the five martyrs down in Ecuador?

Let me read that quote again so that you can normally have it up on the screen. We don't have screens out here. He is no fool who would choose to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. I don't believe for a second that Jim Elliott thought that he could earn his salvation, that his sacrifice, that somehow by dying on a mission field or by some level of sacrifice that he could obtain salvation.

I think Jim Elliott was already secure in his salvation. I think he knew that he was heaven-bound because of what Christ did on the cross and he need do nothing else. So in what context would he say that it wouldn't be foolish for him to sacrifice for the cause of Christ?

But I do think that he had this quote right and what he had in mind was the rewards of his Lord and Savior. I think he understood that the life that he lived after salvation still mattered. And it still mattered in terms of the rewards and the well-done good and faithful servant.

And so that's a quote about the rewards and living for the reward of God not the reward of men, not the reward of the here and now, not the reward that a really good paycheck can get or the reward of the accolades for your really fine car or your really great house or any of those kinds of things and that's where it's going to tie in here.

It's not foolish to give up the temporary pleasures of wealth and abundance for the cause of Christ in order to gain the heavenly treasures and rewards that are laid up for those who sacrifice for the King in the here and now.

That's not a foolish life. Now in one sense it's kind of strange because it could sound self-serving to our ears. Give up stuff now, gain really great rewards later, right? But Jesus himself, hear me carefully, these are the words of Jesus here in this text.

Jesus himself offers this as a reality by the end of what we're reading here. This text of scripture is like an investment manager sitting down and going over a great deal with us. A deal as a matter of fact that I would say is too good to be true.

A 100 fold investment. 100 fold investments don't come along very often. How many of you are making a hundred percent or a hundred fold hundred times investment right now? Are you got any investments like that?

No one? None of us. 100 to 1 odds don't often come in the form of easy bets, do they? Those aren't easy bets to go against the 100 to 1. Now verses 23 through 26 give us the teaching of Jesus regarding the rich young ruler.

Last week we saw the encounter, this week we see the fallout. This week we see after the rich young ruler, remember and some of you weren't here, you can go back and you could listen to that message, but the rich young ruler departed sorrowful and apparently unwilling to leave everything to follow Jesus.

He had great wealth, he had great possessions, he came hungry, he came thirsty, he came with the desire to know what he could do to inherit. What good deed must I do, he asked Jesus, to inherit eternal life?

What do I have to do? And at the end of the day Jesus said, well it's not really at the end of the day about that, it's about your love for God and you have something that you love more than God right now.

Your wealth and your possessions. And we don't know how it went for that rich young ruler, we just know that he left in verse 22 last week sorrowful. He was sad. And the text told us because he had a great many great possessions, he had a lot of good things and he could not stand the thought of parting with them.

Well Jesus goes into teacher mode here and you know so that the guy is like he's probably his back is like moving through the crowds as Jesus begins to teach about what the disciples have just seen. And he says he starts off with, I tell you honestly.

Remember who's talking? I, Jesus. Jesus is speaking here. He says, I tell you truly. What I say I want you to take on is truth. It is difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And with that simple statement he flies in the face of centuries of Jewish thought.

Centuries of even pagan thought. It even, even maybe some of our thoughts. You see it's been common thought down through the ages that great wealth is a sign of great blessing. That if you have a lot, if you have a lot then you must be close with God.

God likes you better than the poor. That would be the mindset. That's the way that a lot of people think and have thought down through the ages. And how many of you can think of some exceptions to that right away?

I, we're in America right? How many of you can think of some wealthy people that are not like really close to God? Anybody? There's probably some names that came to mind. I mean maybe some, maybe some athletes, maybe some actresses and actors and all different kinds of people right?

Like at the end of the day we know that to be false don't we? Really? Deeply? We know that to be false and at the same time we, we recognize that exceptions exist but proverbial wisdom in human, human culture and in all the cultures down through the ages has been that wealth is a sign that God has blessed and approved of a person.

And that's not just Jewish thought but that comes all the way down to where we live this morning. This is seen very clearly in the prosperity gospel that is being preached somewhere not from, not very far from here.

My hunch is that in every community around this nation you could pretty much find somebody who's willing to tell you that the measurement of a person's connection with God is found in their health and in their bank account.

How many of you have heard that message before? That God only wants you to be wealthy. He only wants you to be healthy and that if you just have enough faith you can name your promise and God will come through for you.

Just claim that jet, claim that car, claim that house, claim that new job and you name it and he'll give it to you. Well that could be, those clips could be taken out of context and remixed couldn't they?

And you guys know that that's not what I believe. You guys know that that's not what Jesus believes because we come back to the word to see what his word says and I don't know how preachers that preach that message can get past texts like this because Jesus is seeking to destroy that idea with this one radical statement.

I tell you honestly says Jesus, I'm telling you the truth. It is difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. What? I thought they were the closest. I thought the rich were basically already in.

And he follows it up with a kind of humorous statement for emphasis. He says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Now there is no reason that we're supposed to be guessing as to what Jesus might have meant by camel nor what he meant by needle.

There's a rumor that was started back in the 1800s. Some pastor actually preached a sermon and came up with this illustration about a gate. How many of you ever heard of the gate called the needle? That's just not true.

There's no such thing. There's no archaeological evidence for that. That's a urban legend that has served to soften the blow of this text to us to some degree as if Jesus meant something other than a camel and other than a needle.

But he meant those. Those are actual words in Greek that mean. How many of you ever seen a camel? Go ahead and raise your hand. Have you seen them? How many of you seen them over at Binder Park? You go through the like Africa section and then you get to the end and there's some camels there.

How many of you ever ridden a camel? It's just curious. Sweet. They smell good? No, they're pretty stinky, aren't they? Pretty gross. How many of you have ever held a needle in your hand like a sewing needle?

How many of you have threaded that needle? Okay. So now if you have that picture of that camel in your mind, by the way, the largest animal in the known world at that time, that was in the Israel area where Jesus is talking.

So they would have immediately thought, whoa, that's a, that's a huge animal. Camels are huge. So and then a needle being like one of the smallest holes. And so how do you put these things together? So get that in your mind because Jesus wants you to think camel and he wants you to think needle.

Put them together. Now you could poke the camel with a needle, but I mean, are you going to poke the needle with a camel? Like at the end of the day, like, how, where do you start thinking you have the camel in your mind?

Where do you start? Do you lick the tail, you know, to get it started? Where do you start? Where do you start with a whisker? You probably get one of his whiskers through there or a hair or something.

But I mean, it's meant, you see, you guys just left and it's, that's the way Jesus meant it. I think he was bringing some levity to a pretty serious and stern situation. And he would, he would kind of go in and out of that kind of using humor.

But at the end of the day, hear me carefully, church, because just as much as he uses levity, he brings it back to seriousness. This is not an exaggeration. He's not exaggerating here. He's not like, oh no, I'm just kidding.

It's not really that tough. Rich people really get it easily. I just was joking about the camel and the needle thing, or I was just hyper exaggerating. It's more like maybe parking a Mack truck in the parking lot.

You know, like it's, it's more like that. You could do it, but it's kind of tough. You know, you're going to have, you're going to have a little bit of a harder time working around the cars that are there.

That's not what he's saying. He's saying, take a camel, take a needle, put the camel through the needle's eye. And that's how easy it is for a person who is wealthy to get into God's kingdom. He's running with it in verse 26, the way the disciples ask the question, it says with great astonishment shows that they fully understood the impossibility of this task.

It shows that they assumed by the way, also that rich people were already blessed by God and therefore closer to him. So if it's hard or impossible for them to be saved, what does that mean? Oh no, for the rest of us who are not as close to God by being blessed by him.

But of course, there's still hope. And it says that what Jesus says next, by the way, what he's going to say next is a deep theological concept that comes in just very short words. Jesus looked at them and the word looked at them is a little bit stronger than what the English standard version has there.

He fixed his gaze upon them. What I picture is a moment of silence so that he's looking at them sternly so that they're all like maybe shifty and like looking at the trees and looking at things. And I mean, in the silence, it's like he finally gets all their attention.

He's like, eyes here, class, eyes up here. There's an intensity to what he's about to say and he's making sure that they're tracking with him. And what he says is deep theology. With man, think the camel, think the needle, think the rich man, think the kingdom of God.

With man, this is impossible. With man, you don't thread camels through needles. But with God, all things are possible. If it's up to humanity, if it's up to us, if it's up to our nature, if it's up to the individual, then it is truly impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom.

We will always trust in what we can hear and see and taste and smell. We will always defer to that. That's our nature. That's part of how we're created. And so we will always pad the here and now. We will always make for ourselves a kingdom here and now.

We will never take that which we can't see over what we can see. Better a really warm meal now than the one that you promised me three days from now, right? Or 30 years from now or in eternity. So that's the way that humanity works.

But with God, all things are possible. What you need to understand is that what Jesus is saying is that God has overcome insurmountable impossibilities every single time a rich person gives up their trust in their riches.

Every time a rich person gives up their trust in their own kingdoms, their trust in their retirement, their trust in their houses and their possessions, their trust in themselves in order to follow Jesus in a humble dependence.

He is realizing impossibilities every time he saves a rich person. Part of the Red Sea, I would suggest to you, is nothing compared to the work and the miracle that God performs every time he saves a person, but especially somebody who has a lot to lean on themselves.

You know what's a good phrase to build your life upon right now? Some of us are maybe, maybe you're in the quest for some bedrock right now. How many of you would say, my life has been kind of a little shifty lately?

And a lot of things up in the air, a lot of questions, where in the world are my kids going to school? Right? Like, I mean, there's a lot of things. Are my kids going to school? And then where am I working?

And what does that mean for my sanity? And there's all kinds of questions that are rolling on in our mind. And who's going to be our next president? And what's all this? And, and, and debates back and forth and masks or no masks and all kinds of stuff.

Here is a great thing in this text to build your life upon. With God, all things are possible. That's bedrock. That's where the sand stops shifting. That's when you get down to something stable to stand upon.

With God, all things are possible. This kind of trust in his sovereign power. It's a stable, unshaken place. As the world rages, with God, all things are possible. As the nation seems more divided than ever, with God, all things are possible.

As fear seems to stalk the world around every turn, with God, all things are possible. Do you see how it has the power to give hope? The power to give stability in the midst of shifting things. And hear me carefully before we move on to the second movement of this text.

Jesus is clearly teaching that our possessions and our wealth are a detriment. Don't lose sight of the main point here. I can't soften that blow for you, but I can add to it what Jesus says here. And he says our wealth creates unique obstacles to the goal of a wholehearted devotion to God.

But with God, all things are possible. Here we find again the call to a humble dependence upon him. With trust in man, you won't get there. With trust in riches, you won't be saved. With trust in riches, you won't be saved.

You won't enter the kingdom of heaven. You won't enter the kingdom of God. All three mentioned in this text. But with God, humbly depending upon him, even the rich will stream in if they would forsake their trust in their riches and lean fully on God with a heart willing to let it all go in following him.

Rewards for Sacrifice in the New World

Now our second movement is from verses 27 through 30 where what we see is a light bulb comes on for Peter and he's a little slow on the draw and it's kind of funny to observe this because here we get this in 27 to 30 but it's actually something that Jesus said earlier that it's quite clear that Peter has been mulling over.

Maybe he wasn't even paying attention to Jesus' teaching right now because what he says next shows kind of like that, wait you've been thinking about what I said five minutes ago. You haven't been listening to me right now.

A bit slow on this one because his insight comes from the text last week. Remember that Jesus told the rich young ruler to go give up all he had and then he would have treasures in heaven and that appears to have been on Peter's mind.

He's kind of been thinking about this treasures in heaven thing. What does that mean? And then it dawns on him. Wait a minute. Like in a moment of like you can almost see the light bulb over Peter's head.

Wait a minute. We've left everything. Wait a minute. You just asked this guy to sell all he had, give to the and then come and follow you and then they would have treasure in heaven. He would have treasure in heaven.

That means that we have treasure in heaven. Can you talk about that a little bit? Can you tell us what that looks like? How many of you at times in your life you're like I need a little encouragement.

I need to know what this sacrifice is for. I need to know why I'm living this way while all of my friends are going this way. Why I'm living this way and everybody else is living high on the hog and I'm trying to sacrifice over here.

Do you know what I'm talking about? And so that's that's where Peter's at. Wait a minute. We left our boats. We left our nets. I left my own father Zebedee there tending the nets and I just left him to follow you.

And Peter unashamedly says talk to me about these treasures in heaven. Spell that out for me a little bit. Can you put some flesh on that? What do we get for having left everything to follow you? Well Jesus doesn't disappoint him.

And I want to point out what's not here. Because if we served a stingy Lord, if Jesus was stingy, if he was not a gracious and merciful Lord, what we would expect to say and to be quite honest what some of us may be sitting here expect him to say is Peter slow down not so greedy.

Why does that matter to you? Am I not enough? Come on I'm Jesus. I mean am I not enough? I mean why do you need to know what you're going to get in heaven? Why do you need the extras? Why do you need the frills?

Why are you driving towards the question of what's in it for us? But that's not how he responds. Instead Jesus uses Peter's question as a chance to unashamedly declare that his kingdom is like an investment.

A super great investment. An investment that Jim Elliot understood by his journal from that famous quote, he is no fool who would give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Amazing, amazing, amazing investment.

In verse 28 we see an intriguing benefit given only to the 12 disciples. And then verse 29 we see something that's offered to anybody who makes sacrifices for Jesus for his name's sake. But to the 12 in verse 28 we see an obscure but amazing promise.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on because it's very obscure. But Jesus tells them he says here's one of your rewards. The specific reward to those 12 who followed him in his earthly ministry. They would sit on 12 thrones in the renewal, in the new world.

They're going to be judges and they're going to judge the 12 tribes of Israel. And there's so little mention about this I need to be careful and I would encourage you to be careful speculating too much about what shape this judgment of the apostles over Israel takes.

But what we do know from this is that Jesus who will sit on his glorious throne in a future kingdom will also share specifically the judgment of the Jewish tribes with his 12 apostles. A bit mystifying, a bit curious, something that I think will be amazing to behold.

But nestled in here in this strange verse is a great phrase that speaks directly into one of the main points of Jesus regarding wealth. There will be a renewal. There will be a new world. Without that, without believing that, without trust in that, why would you sacrifice anything?

Why would you live for yourself? Why would you ever give to the poor? Why would you ever help somebody else out? If this is all that there is and there is no new world coming, there is no renewal, then live it up, right?

So there's a hope that's based on this new world. There is a when and aware of this realized sacrificial investment. The investment of our sacrifices in the here and now will mature. When will they come to full maturity?

When the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne in the new world, in the renewal. Do you want to find that you have invested well there for eternity? I think you will. I think you will. I think all of us will wish we had invested more in heavenly treasure and less in earthly treasure.

But to be quite honest, I think, and I'm convinced that many of us, and myself at times, I would prefer the temporary investment of real estate diversification or 401ks or retirement plans or a nice house or a nice car or whatever.

Let me be careful here at this point. Just emphasize that we need to be aware of what a lot of evangelicals want to do now, is we want to absolutize this. What I mean by that is that we want to make this a black and white, either there or here dualism.

Either I can invest now or I can invest later. But every investment that I invest now, having a retirement account, how many of you have some kind of investment? It's a money market account or a savings account or something.

All of us, I think probably most all of us do and almost all of us should. And so what's going on here? Is it like every dollar that I invest in some kind of retirement account is a dollar taken away from my heavenly account?

Do you see how that's confusing? And so is it a one or the other kind of proposition? Is it sinful that we would have some kind of investment? But Jesus is offering, hear me carefully, Jesus is offering a genuine caution about our trust and wealth here.

But the bottom line in this text is primarily about a humble dependence upon God alone. Some of us just find, ironically, some of you here, you find that money clings to you. Not everyone, but some. Circumstantially, some have invested wisely, right?

Some have inherited money and that interest has helped or you've worked hard. You've worked hard and at the end of the day, God has blessed that hard work and has provided for you in that. Your risk is paid off.