Matthew 19:16-22 I Would Do Anything for Love, But I Won’t Do That

You're listening 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. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Recast Church.

As Dave said, I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and we are obviously blessed with a lot of flexibility right now.

As Dave said, it's great that we have this area cleared out out here, and thanks to all of you for being understanding as we try new things.

I realize that we run the risk of multiplying distractions as we do things different from week to week, and so our goal is to eventually get into a bit of a pattern here.

So I'll just ask that you please continue to pray with me, that we continue to grow, and here's the point, that we continue to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service during this time of, obviously, changes and different things that are going on, and we move towards the fall.

Pray for the leadership to have wisdom as we make decisions. I'm really excited about the text that we're going to read and study together this morning.

I hope that this outdoor setting only serves to enhance our understanding of God's Word, that it serves in some way to help us to keep our focus as much as possible on the text of God's Word that has the power to transform and change us.

Our text is set in the backdrop of last week's, and I recognize that not everybody was here last week, and so I just want to catch you up to speed just a little bit because it matters what we talked about last week in the book of Matthew in terms of understanding the text this week.

Last week we saw a text where Jesus told his disciples that the kingdom, his kingdom, his eternal kingdom belongs to people who come to him like little children, people who would come like a little child, and he's not talking about coming like little children in terms of a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding, or naivety, or simplicity, or any of those kinds of things.

At the end of the day, what he's tying into, and we can go back into Matthew 18 to see what he's tying into and what he wants us to think when we think children, children, disciple, disciple, children, what he wants us to be thinking about is a humble dependence.

Children are humbled naturally in society. There's a dependence. There's a need for parents. There's a need for others to care for them, and so he wants us, people who come into his kingdom to come under in humility to come to him and then also to lean on him, to depend on him, and those are the kinds of people that he is bringing into his kingdom.

And so now we come to this text, a text that demonstrates a little bit and betrays a little bit of our attitude towards who ought to be in the kingdom.

You see, this text that we're looking at this morning, a man who most of us would want on our team, it comes to Jesus.

He's wealthy. He's young. He is powerful. He is upstanding.

He's able to actually say, yeah, I've basically done the best that I can to keep the law. Since my youth,

I have been a law -abiding, upstanding, civil person in my community and in my society.

And further, he comes to Jesus spiritually thirsty. He recognizes he lacks something, and he comes to Jesus for it, and he says,

I know that I'm missing something, good teacher. What else must I have? What else do I need?

And so by the disciples' standards, this guy ought to be a slam dunk for the kingdom. Do you get what I'm saying in that?

How many of you are tracking with me? You know what I'm talking about. Like, this guy ought to be a slam dunk. Like, I think the disciples are right, the twelve disciples are right in thinking we have just met the thirteenth disciple.

We have just met the other, the next guy to join the inner circle with Jesus. I mean, it seems pretty clear that this guy has all of the components, from an earthly standpoint it looks to our eyes like he has all the components necessary to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

But now I want to make sure that we notice the way that Jesus interacts with this guy as we read this text. Jesus knows all that is going on in this man's heart.

By the way, a benefit that we don't have in evangelism, right? Did you know that when you meet a coworker, when you meet your neighbor, you don't get to see all that's going on in their heart, do you?

But Jesus does. And so he interacts with them based on an understanding of being able to see what's going on in this guy's heart.

And I further don't want you to lose sight of the fact that whenever Jesus calls a person to follow him, he always asks them to leave everything else behind.

Leave everything else behind. Peter and John, they're fishing, mending the nets after a long night of fishing with their dad and Jesus comes and says, come and follow me.

And they leave their boats, they leave their nets, and they leave poor old

Zebedee there mending the nets by himself, their father, as they go and follow

Jesus. Matthew, who is the very author of the book that we're studying right here, was a tax collector and he's out in the outer courts of the temple collecting his taxes.

He's got a table, probably a low bench set up in front of him with some scales and probably piles and bags of coins there from collecting the taxes that people walk by and he's extorting people and Jesus comes to his table and says, come and follow me.

He gets up and leaves all the bags of money and comes and follows Jesus. It is not rare, and I want to point out, it is not rare for Jesus to call people to leave everything to follow him.

The problem is, unfortunately, that is a rare message to hear in the church today, isn't it?

And that's a rare message that's rare in evangelism, rare in our outreach, rare that we would actually call people to leave everything.

But this passage serves as a model for the way that the king reacts to self -made, self -righteous people.

And the lesson's going to keep coming at us in almost every phrase of the text this morning, so I encourage you to open your device or if you have a paper copy of the

Bible, open it to Matthew 19, verses 16 through 12, and we're going to read that together. God's powerful and precious word, a word that has the power to transform us when we understand it, when we see

Jesus, who he is, and how he interacts with people. So, Matthew 19, verses 16 through 22, check it out and follow along.

And behold, a man came up to him saying, Teacher, what good deed must

I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good?

There is only one who is good, and if you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, which ones?

And Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The young man said to him, all these I have kept, what do

I still lack? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.

When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for a word that addresses exactly our hearts and where we come from.

We come from a place of wealth, we come from a place of plenty, we live in a culture that is so saturated in so many ways with good things, with great possessions.

Father, I pray that you would help us even today, that you would use this text in our hearts and minds to cut through all of that to the greatest possession of all, that the possession of Christ and his salvation would outshine and outstrip all of the things that we might be tempted to put our hope and trust and faith in today.

We need Christ, Christ is sufficient, he indeed is all that we need.

So Father, I pray that from a position of understanding that, that we would lift our voices, that you would mingle our voices here outdoors to your glory and to your honor, that you would help us to sing these songs from hearts that are given over to you, that recognize the salvation that is available and has come to us in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, and that that would free us to worship you with enthusiasm and joy today in Jesus' name, amen.

I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles or your devices open to Matthew 19, verses 16 through 22, and that's going to be what we're going to follow through this text.

If at any time I recognize that the sun is going to come over those trees in about five to ten minutes and when that happens, you may need to shift, don't worry about that.

I mean, we're outside, just do what you need to do to get comfortable. I have a feeling there may end up eventually being an exodus from this side over that way, but we'll see.

So whatever it is, again, our goal is to keep our focus as much as possible on God's word, but we recognize we're outside and things are going to crash and there's going to be bugs and stuff like that, so hopefully you just enjoy that.

The opening of this text here is a word that I really, I find interesting. I always think it's kind of funny because it's a

Greek holder word. It's got kind of the equivalent, if you were to bring it right over into English, as check this out.

It's the word behold. It's not a word that you used this past week. How many of you said to one of your friends this week, behold, there's a new

Netflix series? Did anybody say that? You probably didn't say that. You said check this out or hey, look at this really funny

YouTube video or something like that, right? Like it's not behold this YouTube clip, it's check this out.

Well that's the equivalent and that's where this text starts. And it starts kind of with a fury.

Check this out. A man comes running to Jesus and kneels down before him. Now Matthew doesn't record that, but Mark and Luke have an equivalent account to this where they're sharing, they're three eyewitnesses to the same event.

They share different details and so I'm going to kind of combine those to some degree. That's where I get the guy comes running.

That's actually recorded for us in Mark and Luke. He kneels down before Jesus. We don't see that in Matthew, but we see that in Mark and Luke's account.

And they share those same details from a different perspective. But Luke identifies this man as a ruler. He's a man that has and possesses some level of authority.

We don't know what he ruled, if he ruled a little, if he was like a governor over a little district or something like that, or if he was a mayor of a town -ish, like that kind of thing.

If he just happened to have a lot of servants and ran fields or something like that. But he immediately speaks words of respect, addressing

Jesus, again combining the different accounts, he addresses him as good teacher, good teacher. He comes running, he bows down, and he says, good teacher.

And in verse 16, we see really three character traits of this young man that help us to understand exactly what's going on here in this text, at least understanding who the guy is.

And Matthew has every interest in showing us who this guy is by his behavior. The first thing that we see is that he's respectful, shown by his calling

Jesus good teacher and bowing respectfully before this rabbi, this notable teacher in Israel.

The second thing that we learn about the man is that he is spiritually thirsty. He lacks something and he knows it.

Now, keep in mind, all the different things that we know about this guy, he was wealthy, he was young, he's got a life out in front of him with this wealth, he was very religious, he was a man of power, and he knew, and he knew he was missing something.

So he comes running, according to Mark, showing an eagerness to have this thirst quenched. He comes to the teacher saying, what do

I lack? And the third thing that we know about this man who approaches Jesus here in the text, he has an assumption that many in this world have today.

We can earn eternal life. He comes with the assumption that I must do something to be okay with God, that what must

I do, what good deed, he says, outright asks. No shame in the question.

What good deed must I do to have eternal life? He thinks that salvation comes to us, that eternal life is like a wage that is earned.

So what do I need to do to get some of that, he says. And I just want to point out that he expects this notable teacher to have the key to eternal life.

And he is so unreasonably close to the kingdom itself as he comes and bows to Jesus and is there in the very presence of the king.

Whether he knew who he was coming to or not, the text doesn't make clear. My assumption is that he didn't. And we'll see that kind of throughout the text, there's an indication that he doesn't even know who he's talking to.

He thinks he's talking to a good teacher. He thinks he's talking to somebody who, at the end of the day, just has some wisdom.

I'm coming to you for wisdom. And he does not realize that he is speaking to the very eternal king himself.

But interestingly, in that assumption that he can earn eternal life, he is literally ready to leave the one who is himself eternal life to go do something.

What must I go do? He's there, and if he really understood the whole ball of wax, if he understood everything that's going on, he would just stay at Jesus' feet.

He would follow him, leave everything and follow him. But instead, he says, what must

I go do? He's not satisfied to be with Jesus. He wants to go do something.

And so, all of these revelations about this young man should be held in mind as we see the response of Jesus throughout this passage.

He is responding to a real person, with a real history, a person with real authority, with real money, with real youth.

And so in verse 17, Jesus begins his answer by challenging, immediately, the rich young ruler's fundamental assumption.

He says, why are you asking me about good deeds? Don't you know that there is only one who is good?

Why are you concerned with doing good when you... Do you realize there's only one who actually, really, truly does good?

If the rich young ruler had ears to hear how Jesus starts, he would want to know more about this opening statement from Jesus.

The emphasis in the Greek is on the word one there in verse 17. In other words, you could read it like a kind of Yoda -ish.

One only is there who is God. And the emphasis in the Greek is often placed on the first word of the sentence, and the first word is one.

One only is there who does good. So in essence,

Jesus is saying, why are you asking about good deeds? Why are you assuming that you can even do any good deeds?

So Jesus begins by expressing the unattainable goal of goodness. Jesus knows the arrogance of this man's assumption.

What must I do to unlock God's favor? What coin must I put in the vending machine of God to get what is

H3, eternal life? What coin? How much money do I need to put in there?

What are the deeds? What are the deeds that earned that from this vending machine of God? And Jesus is saying, don't you realize that there's only one who is truly good, and he is the standard?

And even at this, the young man is not to be deterred. So Jesus meets this man on his own playing field.

He says, you want to earn your own way? You want to keep with that narrative? You want to try to earn it? Then do this little thing called keeping the law.

Keep the commandments, says Jesus. Now I want to point out that I do not believe for a second that Jesus is declaring that you will be able to achieve righteousness or eternal life by keeping laws, and not even just keeping the laws that he mentions here.

He is saying, if you want to know what you must do to earn it, it's nothing less than keeping the law, so keep the commandments, he says.

If you want to go down the road of attempting to earn it, he's not saying you can, that you'll be capable of it, but that's the standard.

So the rich young ruler counters with what I think is a very reasonable Jewish question here. Which commands?

Well, it's very well documented, and the Old Testament has been studied by scholars for centuries, for millennia.

There are 613 commands of Moses in the law, in the first five books, and Jewish scholars have studied those in and out and in every angle, and added some on top of that, but there's 613 laws in the

Old Testament, really in the law of Moses. So I find it interesting that this rich young boy doesn't assume

Jesus means all of them. That's not his assumption. He doesn't say, you know, okay, obviously

I need to keep the whole law, and I find it even further astonishing that Jesus doesn't refer to all of them.

He doesn't even say, keep all the commandments, keep all 613 and then you'll be okay. Instead, I think what

Jesus does is throws out a smattering intentionally focused on this guy and where he lives.

So he throws out number six, seven, eight, and nine of the Ten Commandments. Follows that up with number five, by the way,

I think the way that he structures this, the reason he doesn't go in order, five, six, seven, eight, and nine, six, seven, eight, and nine are all negative in their construction, don't do these things, and then he adds five, which is a pro thing, go do this, honor your father and mother, and then adds up what

Jesus often used as a summary for that second half of the Ten Commandments, love your neighbor as yourself.

He liked to say the two greatest commandments summarize the entirety of the ten, love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, which is that first part, have no other gods before me, don't use my name in vain, have a

Sabbath and keep it holy, all of those things that are God word, and then the second half, love your neighbor as yourself.

So he summarizes here. He says, do this. What is Jesus doing here by mentioning these commands?

I believe he's appealing to laws that draw this man down into his own arrogance. I think that many methods of evangelism right now at this point in this conversation with Jesus would get into a bit of a juvenile back and forth in verse 20.

The young man says, all of these I have kept, and he even adds on top of that in Mark and Luke's account, since my youth,

I've been a good boy. I've done all the things that God desires of me, and you've got to remember that how could this guy say this?

Well, you have to remember that even in the Old Testament law, there were laws for when you broke the laws. There were sacrifices, and so this is a guy who would take sacrifices to the temple regularly.

This is a guy who, even when he fell short of the law, would do the things that Moses prescribed for that.

And so this young man says, all of these I have kept, and you can imagine Jesus saying, have not, and the young man says, have to, and Jesus says, have not, and the young man says, have to, and they get in this back and forth, right?

But Jesus doesn't take him up on that. I think that many of us would want to. There are methods of evangelism that are based on that, where the goal is to tell people that they're sinners.

The goal is to get them to realize that they've broken the law, and that's like evangelism 101, make sure that they know they're sinners.

But the doubt is revealed in this man, young man's confident reply, and Jesus lets it sit so that the guy actually, at the end of the day, implicates himself.

You see, Jesus doesn't have to tell him the law is not enough. The young man is about to say it himself, and Jesus lets him have it.

You want to keep laws? You say you've kept the law ever since you're youth? Then keep talking. Let me hear where you come to an end of yourself, and he does.

He says, I've been a good religious man, I've blessed my community, I've made the allotted sacrifices when

I've sinned, I've been good since my youth, I have kept the law, I have done all that Moses requires of me.

I don't believe he actually had, I don't think Jesus believes he actually had, but he lets him go down this road.

I have done what Moses required of me, but tell me Jesus, and here it is, because it is nagging in the back of my mind like a splinter, like a doubt that I cannot shed, like a hunger and a thirst that cannot be quenched.

Please tell me, good teacher, because I know I lack something.

What do I lack? I've tried to be good my entire life.

By the world's standards and by my community's standards, I'm an upstanding individual. I give to the poor.

I bless others. I am a really good guy, Jesus. What do I lack?

Why is he standing before Jesus? Because he has a hunger and a thirst for more.

He knows he hasn't accomplished it. He has no confidence that he has eternal life.

Notice what this man is teaching us so clearly here as he stands before the Lord and Savior. A person can have confidence in their own performance and still lack the confidence that they have done enough.

Do you see it in this young man? Literally saying, I've done it all, Jesus. I have honored

God in all of my ways, but I'm not even a little confident that I've done enough, that it is enough.

There is no assurance for this powerful, rich, upstanding young man. He has a hunger and a thirst that no amount of law keeping has been able to satiate.

So now Jesus gets down to brass tacks in verse 21. Okay, he has driven this man to acknowledge that the law hasn't been enough, and now we're getting somewhere.

Jesus has skillfully brought this religious Jew to the place where he admits that keeping the law and the commandments isn't enough, and the young man says it with his own mouth in verse 20.

I lack something. So Jesus says, okay, now we're talking about something different. You can be a law -abiding, nice citizen, a nice person who's civil to your neighbors and does good and doesn't murder and honors your parents and does all of this stuff, but if you want to be perfect, now

Jesus takes things up a notch. Not merely just law -abiding or upstanding, because you were already that in your own mind before you ever came to me, is what

Jesus is saying here. Now we're talking about something different. Perfect, the word perfect there in Greek has the image of something that is complete.

It's whole. It even has some nuances of being wholehearted in your devotion to God, a person who has complete and utter integrity in every part of their being.

If you want to be a whole person, you want to be complete, now we're talking about something different than just law -abiding.

And in essence, Jesus is saying, if you want to be wholehearted in your devotion to God, and if you want to be all in with his eternal kingdom, because you need to be perfect and wholehearted before God if you're going to have eternal life, then he says, then cast away any hurdles between you and the kingdom of God.

And for this particular man, we see what that hurdle was. It was his great wealth.

And so Jesus says, go, sell all your possessions, give to the poor, then you will have your treasure where?

What does it say in the text? Where will your treasure be? In heaven. Then do what?

Follow him. Then you will be free to come and follow

Jesus. Then you'll be ready to trust me with your whole heart, says

Christ. What this rich young ruler lacked was something modeled for us by the children in the previous text in verses 13 through 15 from last week.

They are humble, they are dependent. This man was not humble nor dependent. He thought he could earn a place in God's kingdom, and he had his great wealth.

And it was a huge impediment to his trust in God alone. What Jesus asks here, by the way,

I said in my introduction, is not a rare request. As a matter of fact, when we think of what it means to be a disciple, we ought to think of it as a call to push aside all hurdles in the way so that we can run straight into his arms without hindrance.

And I want to caution you, because I think some of you, your mind goes there when you've heard this text before, you've read it, you even heard it this morning and you're thinking about it.

Don't think that this selling all that he has and giving it to the poor is a work that God wants him to do to earn.

That's not the good deed that he's asking him to do to earn eternal life. Instead, it's a call to a humble and dependent trust in God.

This man, in other words, had an impediment to trusting in God. What was the thing that kept him from trusting in God?

Well, in this particular situation, it was his great wealth that he could always lean back and fall on. So in other words, he wouldn't get brownie points or earn a merit badge for giving money to the poor.

Instead, what he stands to gain is a heart that is free to depend fully and humbly on God and his eternal kingdom.

And he gains a heart that is free to truly follow Jesus. The follow me at the end of verse 21 isn't tacked on as an afterthought.

It is the whole goal of the remedy that Jesus offers. To follow Jesus is to enter into a relationship of discipleship, a lifelong relationship of walking with him, following him, living with him, going the direction that he does, listening and heeding his correction when we come and encounter his word to be altered in our behavior this week because we encounter his text today.

And then each day to be drawn closer to him and taking in his word. It is to enter into a life of growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service to others.

Jesus didn't come to, hear me carefully church, he did not come to show the way to the

Father. Jesus is the way to the Father. This is eternal life that we may know the

Father and Jesus Christ, his only son whom he sent. To have Jesus Christ as our

Lord and Master is to have everything. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus openly declared that you cannot serve two masters and he brought that teaching to a conclusion in Matthew 6 .24.

You jot that down, you don't need to turn to it, but Matthew 6 .24 says this. You cannot serve both

God and money. You cannot have two masters.

You will either despise the one and love the other or love the one and despise the other. You cannot serve two masters.

You cannot love both God and money. And that's starting to get into next week's message where we're going to see the follow -up to the conversation with the disciples that Jesus has after this interaction with this young man.

But verse 22 can be summarized by one phrase. One phrase that I made the title of this message, it's from that great theologian

Meatloaf. And I think it's the cry of this man in verse 22,

I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. I would do anything for eternal life, but man, sell it and give to the poor,

I won't do that. You got to remember that this rich young ruler came eager. He came running.

He came with respect. He was thirsty and he even knew he lacked something.

He wasn't complete. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't wholehearted and he knew it. But when he found out the barrier that stood in his way of wholeheartedness before God, it says in verse 22, he went away sorrowful.

Why? Because he had great possessions.

The word great, by the way, means many. It's not just that he had five really cool things. He had many things, many, many, many cool things.

He didn't have a two -star, he did not have a two -star garage. Let's put it that way. So contrast this response with the parable of Jesus where the man found a treasure buried in a field.

Well, he couldn't rightly carry it away because it didn't belong to him, so he hid it, concealed it in the field, and then in his joy went out and sold.

In his joy, in his joy, in his joy he went out and sold everything he had so that he could obtain that one field with the treasure in it.

In his joy, he found the one thing that mattered. That's a parable of the kingdom. That's a parable of finding

Christ. That's a parable of finding the one thing that matters, that all other things pale in comparison and you would joyfully give up all things when you truly understand who

Christ is and what he has done and what the future holds for those who are in his kingdom. In joy, he knew he had found what mattered more than all other possessions.

Contrast that with a man with much, with many possessions who leave sorrowful, not joyful at the call to give up all to follow

Jesus, sorrowful that the call is to give up all to follow Jesus.

I want to point out to you that some will walk away from Jesus contrary to our culture's view of Jesus, contrary to armchair theology or pop psychology's view of Jesus, some will walk away from Jesus with sorrow, with sadness.

And they walk away, I believe, because they already have a Lord and Master. They already have one to serve.

It may be themselves. It may be their wealth. It may be a whole host of things. But there are some who know that what they are filling their hearts with is not working, but they're going to keep trying.

This man came to Jesus because he knew deep in his heart that he still lacked something. But what he didn't realize, ironically and with a twist, what he didn't realize was that what he lacked was actually found in what he had.

We have a hard time seeing that what we have could potentially be an impediment. We only ever think of it as a good thing.

But for this particular young man, he had an impediment. And it was all his possessions, all his wealth.

He wasn't ready. He didn't like the answer Jesus gave because he wasn't ready to depend on God.

He was too eager to lean on his own law -keeping. And further, he was eager to lean on his own wealth.

So let's consider how to put this passage into action this week. The first thing that I want us to do, and I think is fundamental to this text, is rehearsing the gospel to ourselves.

The good news of Jesus is not about law -keeping or doing the right things. The good news is about gaining the great joy of eternal life by being reconciled to his

Son. Obedience will never be enough. You will always be left with that nagging thirst if you want to go the direction of good works.

Maybe some of you need to run to Jesus here for the first time. You're not all in with Jesus and you recognize that thirst. And there's something about the way that this young man responds to Jesus that echoes in your heart.

Like, yeah, I still have that hunger. I still have that thirst. I don't feel like it's been satiated and I'm still striving and I'm still trying.

I would encourage you to come and talk with me afterwards or come and talk with Dave or Dan who gave the announcement about the finances or whatever.

But come to one of us and talk with us after the service. We would love to interact with you. Come to him and forsake all else, asking him to rescue you and lead you.

But know this, those he calls always will need to sacrifice their idols before him.

This doesn't mean everyone has to go sell all that they have and give to the poor. This is not a straight application straight to your life.

But it does mean that you cannot serve both God and money. And each one of us needs to take assessment of our own hearts in regard to where we're at in our relationship to the great blessings that God has given to us.

And I would suggest to you that it's not just money. But some of us here might need to take a step of casting out our idols of sexual fulfillment or the idols of material possessions, yes, or the idols of family entanglements or the idols of workaholism or the idols and you can go on and on and on.

What is it for you? It's a serious calling for all of us to consider what things hinder our pure, humble dependence upon God.

What is an idol in your life that you need to cast off for the sake of dependence upon Jesus Christ alone? So rehearse the gospel.

And then second, I would just encourage you to think about don't dumb down the gospel. That's the second application.

Don't dumb it down. Where you might be shocked that Jesus could lose such a big fish as this in this text.

The disciples were, and we're going to see that next week. Next week's message is about their view of wealth and their understanding.

And how in the world can anybody even be in your kingdom then if this guy can't? I mean, think about this.

Do you have a category? Do you have room for somebody to come to Jesus spiritually hungry and leave unsatisfied?

Is that possible? How is that possible? I expect Jesus to seal the deal quickly with this one.

But Jesus isn't about winning hearts. I mean, he is about winning hearts. Not about winning external conformity.

He's not about getting people to just jump through hoops. I believe, I believe this sincerely. I believe

Jesus could have said, what good deed must you do? Well, why don't you just pray with me to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior right now?

Do you think the man would have done it? Probably. But this rich young ruler would not have allegiance to Christ.

He would have allegiance to his possessions. Well, praise

God that there's good news. The good news is that Jesus came to die for us on the cross. And our hope for one day being wholehearted comes to us in forsaking everything else to trust in the one who loved us so much that he gave his very life to pay the penalty that we deserved.

If you're resting in a humble dependence upon Jesus for forgiveness and for your hope, then let's remember that together as we take a cracker together to remember his body that was broken for us.

Let's take that juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. And now let's go out from here,

Recast, with a stronger and more informed understanding of the good news. Jesus doesn't just want to take us to heaven when we die.

He wants us to follow him in the here and now, striving after a wholehearted devotion to him.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace and for your mercy. I thank you for the hope that we have in Christ and that you are even willing to point out areas to us by your

Spirit where we have idols, where we have things that we're clinging to, where we've got a fallback plan in terms of, you know, if it's not really heaven, then at least we had some really good stuff here.

I pray that you would give us a wholehearted devotion to you. And then, Father, that you would win more, that you would bring more into the kingdom through this entire crazy time where there's so much division.

I believe that people are open and they're looking for hope. And so, Father, let us be a people who go out from here with voices speaking truth and hope that others would come into a wholehearted devotion to Jesus and would become followers of your

Son through our voices and through our winsome ways and through the way that you speak and the way that we work and the way that we communicate this gospel.

Father, make us a people who are bold during this season where people are hungry and thirsty and they're looking for more. And I pray that you would help us to find those who are ready and eager with joy to give it all up for the sake of Christ.