We're going to be looking in the book of Mark, chapter 10, verse 17. If you would please turn there with me. Mark 10, verse 17, and we'll read till verse 22. As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him and asked him, "Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to me, "Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother." And he said to him, "Teacher, I've kept all these things from my youth up." Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, "One thing you lack.

Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me." But at these words, he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. Would you bow your heads in prayer with me?

Dear God, as we look into your word today, we marvel at it because we know this is your word. Father, thank you for the privilege that we have. God, help us to treat it as such. Let this be instructive to our souls. And Father, would this be something that lasts as the Holy Spirit carries it into the depths of our hearts.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well the story of the rich young ruler is a common one, and it has to do with works salvation. So I'll get that out right in the front. Works salvation. And the nature of true discipleship. So if you've ever heard this story, which likelihood of you having heard it is pretty high, that's what it's about.

It's about following Jesus as his disciple, which is actually synonymous as to what it means to be a Christian. And so to follow Christ, it requires us not to work out our salvation in a way where we would be working, doing, performing to receive it, but instead that our salvation is bought by the blood of Christ and given to us freely through the work of Jesus.

And most of us know this, but today what I'm hoping to take a look at this passage and see is how this kind of living, the kind of living that this rich young ruler lived, might be closer to even us as Christians, might be prone to follow. It threatens our ability to live following Jesus on a day-to-day basis, and it also threatens the joy that we might have in following him as well.

So if you look down at the passage in verse 17 through 22, it kind of pinballs back and forth from here's the rich young ruler, then Jesus, then rich young ruler, then Jesus, then rich young ruler. So in verse 17, if you look there, it says that this man runs up to him and he says this, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" So he's asking this deep, profound question, "How can I get salvation?" And then in verse 18, Jesus responds to that, he says, "Why do you call me good?" Which is a weird question.

It's a very strange question. Jesus tends to do this every once in a while. Someone will come up with this, I mean, we would say this was a great question, right? What must I do to inherit eternal life? And we just kind of do a double-take on Jesus. Why do you call me good?

Like, why does he focus on this title that this man has given to him? And he says, "No one is good except God alone." And then Jesus says, "You know the commandments, do not murder." And he continues to go and he lists out six different commandments. And then this man says, "Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up." And then verse 21, it says that Jesus looks at him, that he loves him.

And he says to him, "Well, you're lacking one thing. Great, you've been a moral guy. Great, you've upheld the law, but you lack one thing. Go and sell everything that you have and then come and follow me." At those words, that's when the man walks away with his head hung because he was unwilling to do that.

We're going to two points. And after the two points, we're going to hit an application. This is our first point today. First, good intentions and heartfelt fervor are not enough to truly follow Christ. Good intentions and heartfelt fervor are not enough to truly follow Christ. We could have good intentions.

We could have a deep desire of religious things and even the things of God, but that's not enough. That's what we'll see. Now, it says in verse 17 that Jesus was setting out on a journey. And this journey that is happening here is a very specific one. This is the journey to the cross, which is going to be found in chapter 11 of Mark.

Jesus has been doing all this ministry in the first 11 chapters of Mark. And in the book of Mark, if you're familiar with it, the word that comes up a lot is the word immediately. And so it says immediately Jesus did this, and he got up and he did this, and he woke up and he did this.

And it says that he's just kind of going all over the place. And it's a very fast-paced, action-packed gospel. And so with that, if we kind of think about what happens beyond chapter 11 is it kind of grinds to a screeching halt. Jesus all of a sudden finds himself in Jerusalem, and then the last days play out very, very slowly.

And so in chapter 10, verse 17, it says he's setting out on a journey, specifically talking about that journey to Jerusalem, to the cross, where he'll complete what he came to the earth to do. And this is where we find this encounter with the rich young ruler. Now this account in Mark, if you're wondering, why is he called the rich young ruler?

That should be a question as you kind of read through this. This says something, it says nothing about him being young, and it says nothing about him being a ruler. It says everything about him being rich. But you'll see it in the account of Matthew that he is considered a young man, and he's labeled young, young, young multiple times.

It's seen as important there. We won't go into why. And then in Luke, it says that he's a ruler. It defines his political status. Now what's interesting about Luke's account is that as a ruler, it's strange to find a ruler who is so young as this man. And the reason why that's interesting is because it's not a position easily given to a young person.

It'd be given to older, wiser, seasoned people, people who have been kind of approved by the leadership of the synagogue. This was a ruler of a synagogue, by the way. He probably held the esteem of all these rulers, of the people that were above him. And just because he was rich, it doesn't mean that he could just buy this position.

So he didn't do that either. This was a man held in high regard by society for his religious affections. And now as Jesus is preparing for his final journey to the cross, this guy comes running up to him, and what we would think initially is that this is a perfect candidate for the kingdom of God.

Who would think that? This is a man who has good intentions, and we know this by some clues in Scripture. And we'll go through a few of them. In verse 17, it says that this man ran up to Jesus. That shows desperation. That shows urgency. Because respectable, honorable, self-respecting, noble men didn't run during times like this.

If you've ever heard of the parable of the prodigal son, you're going to see that the father, upon seeing his prodigal son return from a distance, he hikes up his robes, and then he runs through the town where everyone can see him. Communities are probably listening to this and gasping.

Respectable men didn't run. And so it shows something about this man. He is desperate. He is urgent. There's also a sense of humility here. Next it says not only that this man ran up to him, but that he knelt before him. Reverent and humble. Now this is a rich man.

And this is a ruler. And this is a hierarchical community. This isn't something that should happen, but in a culture like this, this is seen then as a very radical, drastic action by this rich young man. This was a sign of great respect. Continuing in verse 17, it says that he runs up, he kneels, and then he asks.

By the way, whenever you see a bunch of verbs like this kind of describing an encounter, you should kind of perk your attention up because you want to see why is he, especially in a book like Mark where everything is so fast, very deliberate about these things. He runs, he kneels, and then he asks.

What does asking show about this man? Well, he's inquisitive and hungry. This is the student that every teacher loves. If you've ever been a small group leader, this is like your favorite small group kid. This is the one. He asks great questions, profound questions even, deep thinker, wants the right things.

It also says in verse 17 that this man addresses Jesus as good teacher. That's another sign that he's ready to learn, that he's ready to give his attention to Jesus. Fifthly, in verse 17, it says that he asks this question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" There's a depth to that question.

You would think that this young man is well on his way to eternal life already, right? He's a synagogue ruler. You would think that he's done enough, but he understands something more and he wants more and he's hungering for more. So he asks that question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Shouldn't he be someone that you go to to ask that question?

There's something going on with him. And then in verse 20, after Jesus answers him and says, "Hey, here are six commandments. Keep those. That's what you must do to inherit eternal life." It says that he responds in this manner, "I have kept all these things from my youth." Now at first glance, that might make you feel like, "Man, that's kind of hypocritical.

That sounds a little bit arrogant. How can you say that?" And there is hypocrisy and arrogance here, but it's not overt. It's not malicious intent. This is actually something that he believes he's done. He's genuine in his understanding of like, "I've really kept to this law." This was a morally upright man.

How else do we know that this man was genuine in heart? Well, in verse 21, this is probably the best evidence of it. In verse 21, it says, "Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him," and then Jesus says his thing. Jesus wouldn't look upon blatant hypocrisy with this kind of compassion and love.

And we know that in Matthew chapter 23, if you know that chapter. I have a passage for you, but we're going to skip it for time sake. But these are the woes to the Pharisees. And these Pharisees, Jesus encounters them and says, "Woe is you. Woe is you. Woe is you because you are so religious.

You are so hypocritical. You teach, but you do not receive what you teach. You do not live what you're telling all these people to do. You are placing burdens on people. You are whitewashed tombs." He says all this damning stuff to them. But to this man, there is no such thing.

Jesus looks at him, looks at him, and he loves him. There's a level of compassion that Jesus has upon this man because this is a genuine man before him. This man was not in blatant hypocrisy trying to puff himself up. Unfortunately this is the only time in Mark where it says that Jesus looks at someone and loves them.

All appearances indicate that this is a sincere man, that he really wants to get into the kingdom of God. And if I were to ask you that question today, like who wants to go to heaven after they die? Or if we were to ask ourselves that question right now, like this is a real question for us, right?

What must I do to inherit eternal life? We can be genuine at heart in desire, in a depth of wanting what this question is asking, and yet it's not enough to truly follow Jesus. It's scary because we've grown so accustomed to knowing what religious leaders look like, right? Pharisees.

We shouldn't look like them. Hypocrisy and things like that. This is scary for us because this man is a religious leader who's genuine and still isn't making it into the kingdom of God. We can be like this. We can be genuine in hunger. We can be genuine in wanting to learn.

We can be genuine in the pursuit of truth. We can be genuine in desire, but we might still fall into this category of good intentions and heartfelt fervor that might not lead us to eternal life. It might still just be religious pride. Something about the way he was living was off.

It's tough to initially put a finger on it, but the rest of the passage goes on to show that he was living off of his works. He says to the commandments, "I've kept all these." There was this overshadowing cloud of sin and ugliness and selfishness that not only threatened his standing as a person trying to follow God, but his response shows that it completely made all the good he was trying to do obsolete.

And there's our danger. We might be doing so much. We might be thinking we're glorifying God, but that doesn't mean God will accept that. God doesn't overlook the sinful parts and accept the service part. He doesn't just divide us up and say, "Oh, well, that's okay. Oh, thank you so much for this." If the heart isn't in the right place, God is not pleased by our service.

We can actually today do service, live for God in the midst of sinful living. If you're to think about a marriage, if a husband was cheating on a wife, he was committing adultery, and yet this husband is kind of a nice man. He's a good guy. And so he goes home.

He regularly buys his wife flowers and chocolates, cooks her her favorite meals, takes out the trash, does the dishes, does everything like that, takes her on heartfelt dates, goes into deep conversations, "How was your day?" and really starts talking through like, "Oh, man, I really want to listen to you." Well, in light of the cheating, it won't matter.

All of these actions that he's doing, it's all tainted. It's all marred. Actually, those acts of service, if you think about it, takes on kind of a disgusting tinge, right, in light of that. So it can be with God and man. We think that we can keep sinning and keep living in darkness and still serve God and think that He's happy by it.

We think that with what we're able to, we will give to God. And with our surplus, we will serve Him, but not wholeheartedly, not with everything that we have. So with that, we place conditions on our following of Jesus. And there are places we say, "Don't touch this part of my life.

This part is reserved for me. I've given you 95%, but this five, I need it." We place those conditions on it. And it seems like such a small part of our heart. Largely, we are serving God. Largely, we are living in accordance to what we believe. But if we become people who divide up our heart and say, like, with the way we live, have it all, but not this, that is not what a Christian does or says.

And in that, it's possible that all our service gets tainted. Why? Because we're not actually wholeheartedly serving God. We've relegated Him to portions in our lives. And that in and of itself begins the great danger of Christianity that's half-hearted. This is what you would call a deluded person. God has become an accessory in our lives.

He is something that we just kind of staple onto the end of it, instead of becoming the core of who we are. Because as soon as He starts to infringe on the things that really matter, we back up and we say no. We could have a true desire for God.

We could have a true desire for the things of God, for church things, for service things. But even true desire can be devoid of submission to Christ. Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ. There is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." It's not me anymore.

I'm dead in this. And I am found only in the person of Jesus. That's a Christian. Now if we have a knee-jerk reaction of rebellion to that understanding of what it is to be a Christian, that I have been crucified with Christ, that I no longer live. That's what a Christian says.

I no longer live. But has that been our weeks this last week? We have this. Rebellion against this. We say, "I can't even keep a little bit of my time. I can't keep a little bit of my resources, a little bit of my life for myself." Because the call to Christian living in Scripture seems to scream against that concept.

All of it is His. Top to bottom, everything is His. We can talk about enjoying vacations and food and entertainment and partaking in simple pleasures of life. We can talk about that. But the problem with that is that is not the starting point. The starting point is what as a Christian?

We've given all that up. That's the beginning point. We don't need those things. That's the beginning point. I have been crucified with Christ and these things are rubbish to me. That's the starting point. But day to day, knee-jerk reaction, rebellion. And until we get that straight in our lives, we cannot move on to how we might enjoy those things properly.

God is not honored in a life when hearts are divided. He wants our whole heart. He wants a heart that cannot be categorized, structured, and divided. It can only be given entirely. That's it. Salvation requires everything. Nothing can be kept back from Him. There is nothing off limits. And as soon as we cut it up and say, "I'm serving here and here and here and here," even if that's a majority of our time, that is not what a true Christian looks like.

There are lots of examples of scripture about God not wanting just sacrifices, just service. In Psalms 51, verse 16, it says, "For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it." How easy would it be? You know, if it was just give sacrifices, it would be so easy to follow God, right?

He says, "Otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." It says in Hosea 6, "For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." And then Romans 14, 23, it says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." And so in this story, if you look down at verse 17 again, there's one word in verse 17 that sends off alarms in our head, and that word is good.

Good. How does he use it? He uses it as good teacher. And this is big talk. This wasn't a word very easily ascribed to people. This was a word usually reserved and ascribed to God. That explains why Jesus responds in the way he does in verse 18, if you look there.

He says, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." This rich young ruler was flippantly using this word. Jesus isn't denying what he's saying, okay? He isn't saying like, "No, no, no, I'm not good. I actually have sin in me." That would be heretical, right?

He is saying, "Your understanding of good is all wrong." This man isn't coming to Jesus thinking that Jesus is God. He's coming to Jesus as a teacher. He's saying, "Good teacher." How can you say to a man in that context, "Good teacher," only if your understanding of that is off?

In Romans 3, verse 10 through 12, it says, "There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one." Now this is a New Testament passage and you're thinking this comes later after the rich young ruler.

You're thinking this comes from Psalm chapter 14, where it says, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand who seek after God.

They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one." How could this man come up to Jesus and say, "Good teacher," only if his understanding of good is off? In Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9, it says, "The heart is deceitful more than all else." This is talking about every human heart.

And is desperately sick. Who can understand it? And Isaiah 64, 6, talking about the works that we might present. "For all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. And all of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind take us away.

Even our best filthy rags before God." There is no one who can do good. There is no such thing as that. I have a daughter, she's three and a half years old. Her name is Addy. When she obeys, sometimes I am tempted to say something and it slips out.

Sometimes I say, "Oh, you've been so good." It's temptation. Or when I'm leaving for work in the morning, what might I say? "Be good today, Addy. Listen to mommy." Or at the end of the day, can have a conversation. Because you can be like, "Man, Addy was so good today." "Yesterday, she was a bad girl." What do we know?

Let's take this three and a half year old girl. Sinner. Right? Dead in her trespasses. Enemies of God. Hater of God. Insolent. We know that. Be good, Addy. If you're a parent and you say that, I have to remind myself, "That is a cruel thing to ask a little kid to do." Be good.

It's not possible. But might it not show our misunderstanding of what good actually is? Even doing good gets all mixed up with being a good person. But they're completely different things. And so I'm just as guilty as having this flippant attitude of good. And we know this. We know that there's no good.

But I think so did this ruler. He knew it too. But he still felt an improper understanding of it. And it was affecting the most important question in the world to him, and that is how to receive salvation. And this is something we can easily fall into. We can know that we're not good.

It's easy. It's really easy to know that we're not good, right? We can know that we're desperately in need of God's grace and his mercy in our lives to save us. But for real, we don't believe it. We think we're actually not too bad. And in that, work salvation doesn't just creep in.

It becomes the false foundation upon which we build our faith. We think I can actually be good by my works, apart from God. And we come back to this divided life, this divided heart again, because we have to be able to separate our hearts if we think that we can do it.

Why? Because we think in certain portions we can serve God. And we can actually look good in it. We all kind of get ready to come to church, right? At least we wash our faces and brush our teeth and put on clothes that maybe you wouldn't wear around the house or whatever.

We do that. And we come here. And then we might serve. I took a walk around this morning, and it was nice. It was really pleasant. I'm just walking around. And then I see someone at the cafes. They're like, "Oh, do you want anything from cafe?" It's like, "Well, thank you.

No, it's okay." And then I come down, and then two people are handing me bulletins like, "Good morning!" I was like, "Oh, this is nice." I've got a praise team. They sound great. Look at everything that's going. Everyone looks nice and put together. And so we divide it up, and we say, like, in certain places, this is our service of God.

And even if that's a majority of our lives, if there are portions in our heart that we've divided and said, "No," we begin to dissect and categorize things in our lives. So things begin to happen. We have a place for the big sins. We have a place for the things that we really struggle with.

And they're designated as the sinful things. But we come to church, and we still look like a shining example of a Christian. We go through the motions. We sing the right things. We use our talents in the right ways. It's just those other places in our lives that are filled with sin.

And so as we divide up our heart, we struggle with laziness, but we don't really feel bad about it, honestly. We struggle with arrogance and ego, but it doesn't break our hearts. We're greedy. But it's not a big deal to us. So it becomes something accepted in our lives because we've gotten so good at this understanding of thinking, "There's a way for me to be good." But should we not, if this is all sin, despise all of it?

How could sin possibly become acceptable to us in our lives? Should not every sinful thought and intention and encounter in our hearts cause us to desperately, not just, "God, I need you," but in desperation and urgency, when we sense sin, that the Holy Spirit would cause our hearts to see need for God.

But we don't function in that way because we think we're pretty good. And so we're good people who kind of sort of struggle with sin. And we relegate our sin struggles with one of the pet sins we have in our lives, and we look at that one sin and we say, "If I just kick that sin, man, I'm flying high.

If I just get that one, I know I'm going to look like what I want to look like as a Christian." And our standard is not God who says, "Be perfect as I am perfect. Be holy as I am holy." Our standard becomes this world. And further broken down, our standard is each other.

Like for those of us who have been at church for a longer time, we think we know more, we've experienced more. And so we actually feel pretty good as people, generally. We may say with our words what we know, "I'm not good. I'm sinful. I need God." But the whisper, whisper part of our hearts, it says, "But I'm not really that, but I'm actually pretty good." And so how do we do it?

How do we demarcate it? We kind of compare with standards. We say, "Oh, Pastor Peter, I'm like there. I'm not there." And we look at like this home group leader, "I'm not there." This I don't know who else there might be. There are lots of people that we might look up to, a small group leader, like an elder, Philip.

And just like this rich young ruler came before Jesus, that's how we start to kind of think through good, evil, sin, how I'm doing. And so this man, this rich young ruler has come before Jesus with that kind of attitude. That's why he calls Jesus good. Because he thinks Jesus is gooder than him.

See how deluded this could become? Wasn't it the Apostle Paul himself toward the latter years of his life who said, "I am the chief of sinners"? Not that this became his sole focus, but that it became a fodder to an increasing need and urgency for the gospel in his own life till the day he dies.

Our sin should cause us to understand that there is nothing good in me. That Christ alone is my only good. That everything else drives me to him. And we come and we try to manipulate our hearts on Sunday mornings to feel some kind of guilt for the sin we know we've been committing.

Or we look at it improperly and just are weighed down with guilt and try to figure out, "What can I do to get rid of this thing?" This man comes to Jesus and throws around that word "good teacher" and Jesus says, "You don't know what it is to be good." And this is the very place where you subtly and quietly declare that God isn't really needed in your life.

This is the epitome of work salvation. A religion that works for it rather than depending on the heart of the gospel message, which is grace, mercy, compassion. It's a gift. You cannot earn it. It must be given to you. And for us today, then we might need to ask the question, "Am I really saved?

Have I thrust myself onto the grace and mercy of God?" And for those of us who are already believers, we might need to ask, "Is the same gospel that we were justified into the same gospel that continues to save us in sanctification today?" This rich young ruler thought he knew what it meant to be good and that it pretty much applied to him.

Did he really need Jesus? I think he just needed advice on how to become a better person. God was never the goal. God was always a byproduct for him. And so in verse 19, if you look there, Jesus brings out these six commandments. He says, "You know the commandments.

Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother." Now, the Ten Commandments up for you here. And so how that works is he goes into number six, seven, eight, nine, and then he says ten in an application-based way.

Don't defraud is probably to a rich young man like this guy, coveting was probably like, he probably wouldn't have gotten hit by that. So it's don't defraud. It's an application of what coveting might do. And then it goes back to commandment number five. Those are the six commandments given.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, five. And when Jesus says this, this man responds by saying, "I've kept them all." And we know this is ridiculous. Look at Matthew chapter five. It says, "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court." In verse 27, it says, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." See, being religious is a danger to true Christianity.

This was the problem for the Pharisees. They thought they could follow a set of rules, that this was religion. And we might look at this and say, "I know this. That is not me. I stay clear to that. I don't live legalistically." But this is closer than we might think.

How often do we, when asked by someone how we're doing spiritually, think about how well we've been keeping God's commands? Like, "Have I been lying? Well, no, I haven't been lying. I haven't been, you know, I haven't been like cheating or, uh, I, I, you know." We kind of think this way, right?

How many of us do that? How many of us, when we're asked how we're doing spiritually, think about, "Well, how have I been keeping up in the disciplines?" Our starting point just goes right to the actions. What have I been doing? And this is the problem for us today.

You might say this is a story about people who call themselves Christians but don't really follow after Christ. But what about us? As true Christ followers, what it shows is that this is, this is the inclination of a sinful heart. Do we call ourselves Christians but in our own way don't really follow after Jesus?

Have we been blindfolded by heartfelt, desired religiosity? Because just because we genuinely desire something, just because we're heartfelt in our service, and we kind of want the things of God, and we don't want to do the things that God is, like when we think about, like, let's say you lied this week, right?

We think about lying like, "Oh, I really don't want to lie." You could be heartfelt in that, even be guilty in that, think like, "I don't want to be like that anymore," and be devoid of God. If we were to set on a gradient scale how a nominal Christian lived versus how a true believer is to live, maybe here at Berean we look a little bit more biblical.

But in our hearts, are we actually any different? This man was genuine and heartfelt, but he was puffed up in pride, arrogance, and self-centeredness. What looked like humility was not humility. So what about you? What about me? What about us as a church? Might we look like a shadow of the rich young ruler?

If we want to answer that question, this is our second and final point for today. The command that Jesus gives next to the rich young ruler will help us to identify that. Look down at verse 21. Jesus responds and says, "Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, 'One thing you lack, go and sell all you possess and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come, follow me.'" It says that Jesus looks past all the superficial stuff.

It says he looks, he loves, and then he answers. This rich young ruler, if he walked through the back of our doors, this would be the guy who were like, "Hey, join a service team immediately. Get into our membership. We want you to start discipling people really soon." This is the type of person you're tempted to do that with.

But Jesus looks past all of those externals. Jesus' command to this person when he asked, "What must I do to be saved?" You would expect something different from Jesus, right? You would expect if someone comes up to Jesus and says, "What must I do to be saved?" It would look kind of like Acts 16.30.

That's where the Philippian jailer comes and says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household." But Jesus doesn't say anything like that. Why? Because this is a man who has grown accustomed to doing and to performing.

So what Jesus does is almost like, man, it's like the word "savage" would kind of get to it, right? You can't just do this. Jesus is playing his game and he asks him to do something that is going to prove that he can't do this without what is actually needed.

And what's needed? It's a complete and utter dependence and desperation and urgency and a love and a need for God. The rich young ruler, he answers this question and shows everything that's needed to know about his heart. Beyond all this man's accolades, beyond all his credentials, beyond how long he's been in the synagogue, beyond his good deeds and his good works and his service, Jesus is seeing right through all the money that he's given to the poor.

He's looking right through all the words that he's used as a teacher to teach people in the synagogue of the word of God. And Jesus just simply says in verse 21, "Go and sell everything that you have and you'll have treasure in heaven." Now why does Jesus choose those six commandments?

That's a question for us. And leave out the first four. Well, we know that the last six of the Ten Commandments have to do with relationship with people. And the first four of the commandments have to do with relationship with us and God. And then in Matthew 22, verse 37 through 40, we understand that all the commandments have everything to do about loving God and others.

To put it simply, it's about love. Here's this man who comes up and says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Do the commandments." And the man sits there and goes, "Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo," checks them all off. See, these aren't just things to do.

These aren't just things to check off. It's not just service. Those things are all going to be a fruit, a result, an indicator of something that exists beyond what you can actually do. Like this is a love for God. But these Ten Commandments are built to show us something.

First is to show us that everything is about love. That this relationship that God is wanting to have with people isn't so much, "Do what I say." It's about, "I love you. Love me." And secondly, these commands are meant to show, "Doo, doo, we can't do it. I cannot lie.

I cannot steal. I cannot cheat. But you tell me to love. How can I do that?" You can try to do things to manipulate your heart to love people. With me and Keziah, if our anniversary is coming up, I could put it on my calendar a week before and then I could say, "Oh, I better get something ready, like a date night or whatever, whatever." And it's because I love her.

So I could do those kinds of actions, but devoid of love for Keziah. We could try to force ourselves to love people. Think about a nagging parent. Like a parent is nagging. And then, when I was a college student, what I began to do was, "Okay, I have to love my parents, but this is really hard to love my parents sometimes.

And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to think about all the things that she's done for me that was so nice over the years and how sacrificial she was of me." And I think about it, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, my mom." I'd have to do it that way.

And so we manipulate ourselves to try to love people, but we cannot in our own souls love people or love God without the transforming love of God coming into our souls and wrecking it and overhauling the soul. It's just not possible. This rich young ruler thought he was doing the things, but he didn't understand.

He did not truly love God. He did not truly love other people, even. This rich young ruler had not and cannot keep these commandments that he thought he had kept. He was genuine in desire. He was heartfelt, even. But it wasn't real. This was religion. And that's why in verse 22 it says that he "hangs his head and he walks away saddened." That word is actually, it's a cloud that comes above.

Your whole world just darkens. And Jesus says to this rich young ruler, "One thing you lack." To a man who has never lacked anything, he says, "One thing you lack." And it's like, "What? What do I lack?" Jesus omitted the first four commandments, right, in his list to show that this man does not actually love God.

If he did, the answer to what Jesus says next, "Go and sell all that you have," we know what that would have looked like. That would have been an instantaneous yes. If you love God. All Christians make that claim, actually. Before becoming true believers and Christ followers, all Christians make this claim.

That we have forsaken the world because we desperately need Jesus. That we don't want the things of the world because we love Christ. That is every Christian's mantra and claim to what we believe. The idea is that we aren't to look at what we're sacrificing. That's what this man did.

His whole world darkens because he sees the things that he's being asked to sacrifice. Because as soon as we start looking at the things that we're asked to sacrifice, that shows that we love those things. We love God. The idea is that we are to look at the beauty of the one we're following.

It's that our desire is to drop everything when we see something of such great, infinite value. And it's our application. What does it look like to give up everything then? Because this story can be discouraging to us. Because then aren't we supposed to give up everything? Aren't we supposed to sell everything?

Keep nothing to ourselves? And that's the question we ask. Rather than look at like, "Oh man, Jesus, I would follow him for anything." Rather that being our knee jerk, our knee jerk becomes what? "What do I have to give up?" And already it's too late. Already that has become an indicator.

As soon as we ask it. This passage doesn't literally mean sell everything. This is a call to discipleship, not poverty. So then what does it mean? It's that at any moment in time when we evaluate our hearts, we would gladly and willingly give up everything we have in our lives.

All things. Nothing reserved, nothing untouched. We evaluate our hearts and we dig and we dig and we dig and we look in there and we look up at Christ again and we say, "Yes, today I give it all up to follow you because I love you. Because you are worth that." So much so that it doesn't even feel like a sacrifice.

That's the Christian. That's the call to discipleship. All our aspirations, all our hopes, all our dreams, anything that we claim as our own, we would bend our knee and say, "Lord Jesus, take it all. You are better. You are my life and I will follow you to the cross.

The Father's kingdom, that's why I want to come. I no longer function as a citizen of this world. These things you're asking me to let go of, these are things of the world. Of course not. Of course I don't want this. What are you... Yes, I'll give it up for you." And so to that question, again, if we say you're meeting up with someone this week and you ask that question to each other, "Hey, how are you doing spiritually?" I've been very encouraged by the way here at Berean.

I've been seeing a lot of people meeting up and going deep into these talks. A lot of them starting with that very question, "How are you doing spiritually?" But to that question, our minds should not drift to how little we're sinning, how well we're keeping our disciplines, that we're gauging in upon these different factors and values.

Maybe like, "Oh, I'm reading this really interesting book. It's a Christian book." It's not about the amount of tangible service you're rendering to the church. We might think about these things. "How are you doing spiritually?" "I'm pretty good." See, the thing about this is that rich young ruler could be given this list and he could check them off and say, "I'm doing pretty good," and that's what happened.

But to be doing well spiritually, all you need to ask is, "Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?" That's it. So much so that everything becomes shadows and byproducts and things that don't matter as much and things that are meant as a means to love my God more.

Let's look at the disciplines. There's so much more than a religious activity. We know this. The question of these disciplines is, "Do we do it out of our love for God and as a result of every discipline, do we love God more?" Every discipline, every single time we do it, is deemed successful only if it causes us to love God more.

That's all. If it doesn't, you might be puffing up your head. I might be deluding myself into thinking things. What about evangelizing? What drives us in evangelizing? Is it a love for God? I think a lot of times it might be fear. I don't want this person to experience the eternal wrath and judgment of God.

So we think about our mom and go, "Oh my goodness. Mom, let me tell you about Jesus." That's helpful and good and necessary. But shouldn't we be driven more out of a love for God? You know when you love something or someone, you just kind of talk about that?

It's not so much a theological exercise or trying to convince people. We throw around terms of imputations and first Adams and all this different stuff. We're just kind of saying these things. Or we might be big on apologetics, which is again, helpful, good, and necessary. But we have these evolutionary things down.

Or it might be philosophical, like the moral argument. We have all these things and we're evangelizing. We're ready. Okay, let's talk. And then all these things become words that come out of us, nothing showing that we love God. But shouldn't that be the thing that drives everything? That out of a love for God, "Let me tell you about this God that I love and I know.

Let me tell you. He saved my life. He sacrificed his son for me." Yeah, these questions are important to answer and they're going to be answered. But you need to know who He is because I want you to know what I know, who I know, what I know is going to come.

This is so important to me, so valuable to me, that God is worth that much to me. We can give money, a lot of it, to the point it hurts. To the India pastors, to missions, literally to the point where we have nothing left for ourselves. We can give, but it could be devoid of a love for God.

It could still be considered good works. Remember some of the passages in Scripture that talk about these people who are doing things but the result is completely opposite. In Matthew 7.21 it says, "Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

And in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles.'" This is a person who's done so much for the kingdom of God supposedly and then it says Jesus looks at them, "I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. You have not been keeping the law." First Corinthians 13.1, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels," look at what I could do, I do all these things, "but do not have love, I become a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy, I know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it's nothing." Nothing.

Our service to God is nothing. So the big question is, do you, do I, do we as a church, do we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? The story is so challenging to us because as believers we need to be reminded that we are prone to this, that even genuine heartfelt desire can be sinful.

We could want the things of God, but actually not want God. And at every point in life we need to reevaluate this. Have I truly given up everything? Because that question is going to help us answer, do I love him? And we need to identify those things in our lives that we are unwilling to give up.

And then we need to give it up. It's not very hard. Find the thing that we're unwilling to give up and then figure out the way to give that up because I love God. We cannot be looking at the time once upon a go, you know, that I gave up everything to follow Christ and say like, "See, I'm saved.

Oh, I remember those days when I was passionate and I gave up everything. Dealing with apathy today, but I remember then I actually gave up everything." That means nothing for today. Today is when we need to give up everything. The Christian call to discipleship, what Jesus is saying, this is not a starting point, this is life.

God becomes everything to you forever. In heaven, God is going to be everything to us forever. After 10,000 years you're like, "Whoa, I've just lived 10,000 years." You're going to be still God. So I hope that this story of the rich young ruler will be reminding us today. And I'll kind of close this off on these words that Jesus gave to this man, "Go sell all that you have and come follow me." Would you take a moment to pray with me?

Heavenly Father, we thank you. Oh God, you are, you really are a great, awesome, worthy, beautiful, sovereign, powerful, magnificent God. You are the creator. You are everything. There is no one, there is nothing like you. Father, you are life itself. God, there is nothing I would trade in for my relationship with you.

And so God, would you help us then to turn around, look at our lives and see if how we're living fits with what we believe. God, you are all we want. And so today, would you help us to remember that and remember the original call. And remember God, that today is the day you want us then to let go of these things, to put aside the sins and the weight that so easily entangles us, to draw our eyes on our Christ all the way to the cross where he was crucified, that we might be crucified with him, that we might attain to the resurrection that he might give to us so that one day we can attain not the inheritances that we're given here on this world, but God, the inheritance of heaven, the heavenly things that he promises.

And God, even devoid of those things, even if we had nothing else, God, if you are there, Lord that's all we want. So God, teach us that, let us be a church who doesn't just do nice things and good things and think we're okay, but Father, that we understand that we are in sin, that we are in need of you and that we love God more than anything else.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.