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[0:00] The scripture reading today comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18. Please follow along in your bulletins. Now they were bringing even infants to him, that he might touch them.

[0:17] And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them.

[0:30] For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child, shall not enter it.

[0:42] And a ruler asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

[0:53] No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness.

[1:05] Honor your father and mother. And he said, All these I have kept from my youth. When Jesus heard this, He said to him, One thing you still lack.

[1:20] Sell all that you have, And distribute to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. But when he heard these things, He became very sad, For he was extremely rich.

[1:36] Jesus, Seeing that he had become sad, Said, How difficult it is For those who have wealth To enter the kingdom of God.

[1:50] For 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. Those who heard it said, Then who can be saved?

[2:02] But he said, What is impossible with man Is possible with God. And Peter said, See, We have left our homes And follow you.

[2:17] And he said to them, Truly I say to you, There is no one Who has left house Or wife Or brothers Or parents Or children For the sake of the kingdom of God Who will not receive Many times more in this time And in the age to come Eternal life.

[2:41] This is God's word. Okay. How's everybody doing? Good. Wow, that's That's a good first good.

[2:54] Sounds good. I think. Hey, we are My name is Tobin Miller. I'm a Teaching pastor here.

[3:06] One of the pastors. I met At least five people For the first time Today As I creak As I walk on here. I must be gaining weight Or something.

[3:18] And so If you're here For the first time You are in for a treat Because we have been here For about two years A little over two years now. And we have been going through The gospel of Luke.

[3:30] We just figured Well, what do we start What do we do When we start a church? Let's just stick with Jesus. And so Jesus is a good thing. And so We've been looking at the life of Jesus. And we've been going through The gospel of Luke For about two years.

[3:42] And It's interesting When you walk in Christ's footsteps That you You don't get to choose What you're going to teach on. Sometimes you teach on things That are very Intense.

[3:52] In the last couple weeks And months We've talked about hell. We've talked about Heaven. We've talked about judgment. We've talked about accountability. We've talked about Wealth. We've talked about Making good choices.

[4:03] We've talked about The gospel. We've talked about how There is a fake gospel Out there That often We Are attracted to. It's a gospel That shows us How we can Repair ourselves.

[4:17] It's a gospel That says If you do this This and this Then you're going to be good. It's the gospel That you hear Most often I did Growing up Was a gospel Of self-help And we're trying As Alfie said That the goal for us Is to To look at What is the gospel And preach on that And teach on that And to talk about that And I gotta be honest With you guys That if I do that If we do that And You don't get bothered Sometimes Then maybe You're not Listening to The gospel If you hear Christ's words And it doesn't Bother you Sometimes It doesn't Freak you out If it doesn't Disturb you If it doesn't Challenge you If you can just go Well that's cool And you walk away Then maybe Maybe you're not Hearing What God Wants us To hear In his word The message Of the gospel Should in one way Crush us

[5:17] And show us That God Wants something So great from us Far beyond We can ever Imagine But the message Of the gospel Should also say That God Wants to give us Something so amazing And so great Greater than Any treasure We could ever Get here on earth And so if you Don't come away And listen sometimes To those things I wonder if I've Done a good job Because today's Passage is Challenging It's intense It's challenged Me the last month As I've continued To look over this I have had choices To make Do I preach this And just preach it Like anesthetically And this is what it says And this is what I do Or do I look at my life And say What about you Tobin What are you going to do with this How are you going to deal with this How is this going to change you Am I going to come to you And be a hypocrite And not talk about things That I have to deal with In my own life Or am I going to say Wow this is This is really hard And it's challenging

[6:18] And it's amazing You know to start this Sermon off I was Went to a website Which is very interesting And so I'm going to make Some assumptions here Which might get me in trouble Well I hope they don't Get me in trouble I went to this website And on this website It allows you to type in How much money you make Every year And then it compares you To the rest of the people In the world You ever seen that It's pretty amazing They have like Five billion and a half people In their average salaries And all these things And so you can go in And you can type on this It's free They don't ask you For any information They're not going to Call you up later And say hey You make a lot of money Can you donate to What we're doing It's nothing like that It's just this Matter of fact thing And you can go on there And you can type in So I typed in My salary for this year And it popped up And it said that I was in the top 4% Of all the people In the world The top 4% Now and I realize That if I'm in the top 4% Then all of us Are in the top 4% Some of us are in the top 1% But I just realized

[7:19] Okay if I'm If I'm in the top 1% So I'm going to go On the assumption That we all are wealthy In here That we all are That we all are We all are rich We have resources Available to us That we all have These issues I'm also going to go On the assumption here As I read scripture And read this passage That we all have Some kind of problem With wealth And riches And the Bible says That we are blinded To our blindness Have you ever heard That before?

[7:48] That we are blinded To our blindness That wealth And richness And things And stuff Come in And they actually Blind us To how blind We really are And so I'm going to Go on the assumption That every one of us In here Has something to learn From God's word And every one of us Here has to learn From this passage today And my prayer Is that we would not Be blinded That God would Open our eyes In his book Richistan Which is a very Fascinating book It's a guy Wall Street Journal Reporter His name is Robert Frank He was trying To Richistan R-I-C-H-I-S-T-A-N He was trying To define wealth And riches In the world And this is what He came to As he looked at it He goes The definition Of rich Or wealth Is very subjective What I found Is it's usually Twice as much As your net worth And so if you Make one dollar You would not Consider yourself rich But the person Who makes two dollars Would You'd consider them rich If you make A million dollars You don't consider Yourself rich You would consider The person who Makes two million dollars Rich If you make

[8:48] A billion dollars You would not Consider yourself Wealthy or rich You would consider The person who Makes two billion dollars Wealthy And rich He went on And he says It's a safe Assumption That the amount Of money That you think That you really Need To live in life Is more than You actually do He says It's a safe Assumption That the amount Of money That you think You can give away Is less Than what you Could really give away He says It's a safe Assumption That if we Are in Hong Kong That we are Dealing with Some of these Issues And that money Blinds us Today's passage That you heard Read is a passage That is in three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke They're called The synaptic gospels It means they're the same And it always goes In the same way It goes four stories It's a story Of this publican Official wealthy guy And a tax collector And they're praying

[9:48] In church And they have Very different responses It's a story Of the children Which you heard read It's a story Of this rich young ruler Who comes To talk to Jesus And it's a story Of a blind man Who finds Christ Who finds the gospel And they're always told In that order It's one week out In one week Jesus is going to Walk into Jerusalem And he knows What's ahead of him He knows it's the cross He knows it's sacrifice He knows it's Going to be very Very difficult And so he's leaving A trail of messages And sermons For us And for his disciples And what it means To walk with him He's been in this village For a while We're told In Matthew, Mark He's been in there For a while And he's been teaching And he's been blessing And he's been healing And he's been curing He's been doing All these things And now's the time For him to leave And as he gets up And he starts to leave The village All the women In the village Everyone starts to Bring their children To Jesus And they want him

[10:49] To touch him And they want them To pray for him And they want him To bless these children We're told in verse 16 That when the disciples Saw this They were frustrated But come on Jesus has more Important things to do Than deal with children I mean He's He's the Messiah He's going to change He's going to bring power He's going to bring Totally new culture And society He doesn't have time To mess with children And Jesus We're told in verse 16 And 17 He calmly Kind of rebukes them He's a little frustrated With them In the Greek And he says Hey don't hinder the children Because such Are these Who belong to the kingdom Of God And then he makes This amazing statement He says Hey unless you Come to the kingdom Of God Like one of these Infants Then you're not Going to make it How does a baby Come To the kingdom Of God Well physically They come Because they're just Carried They can't walk They can't do anything

[11:50] They're just Carried They come Internally And physiologically Because they have a need They need to be fed They need to be changed They need to do something And so he's saying Unless you come To the kingdom Like this Totally dependent You won't come at all Verse 18 And a ruler Asked him So this ruler Comes up And this guy He is amazing He has it all together He would be the guy That you would think Wow this is This is our dream This is the Hong Kong dream The ruler comes up And no one stops him They see him Walking up Into the church And they put him In the front row They see him walking up To Jesus And they push people aside And they let him Come up to Jesus And what do we know About this guy Well he's the exact Opposite of a baby He comes into the room And no one stops him No one questions His qualifications He's young He's rich He's powerful The word archon Which is the Greek For power It means he's the head So he's either The head of the government Of that city In that area Or he's the head

[12:51] Of the synagogue Just like Just as we're told Later on Nicodemus is the archon He's the head So he's very Very powerful He's religious He knows the Torah He knows scripture He's moral He has this incredible idea Of this is what I do And this is what I don't do He's respectful He comes to Jesus And he addresses him In a way that Jesus has never been addressed Ever before And never again I mean he's sincere His heart is sincere Everything about him Is amazing No one looks at him And says Don't come here Everybody wants To be like him Everybody wants Their sons To end up like him In Hong Kong Everybody wants Their daughters To marry him I mean he is The perfect Person And he comes to Jesus With this question Which is very interesting And he asks this question And basically what he asks In this question is How do I know If I'm good enough How do I know If I've done enough How do I know If I'm good

[13:51] He addresses Jesus As good Which if you were in there In that culture Because there's a lot Of things going on here We don't have time To talk about everything But there's cultural There's theological There's historical There's all these things Layered upon him But the minute he said good Everybody would have Because no rabbi In the history of the world Has ever been called good There's never in the writing That a rabbi Is called good You would never call A teacher good You would only call God good And so the minute He said good teacher Everybody would have Perked up And would have been Asking a lot of questions Is he trying to Smooge up to this guy Is he trying to Make his self Look really good Or does he believe That Jesus is the Messiah Does he believe That Jesus is God I mean this question Is really interesting He basically asks This question How can I achieve Eternal life On my own efforts His focus is the future And he wants to know From Jesus What can I do

[14:51] Right now What can I do To secure my future What can I do What can I sign off What can I build Can I build a synagogue And put my name on it Can I build a school What can I do right now So that I know I can stick that In my back pocket And well I got that Going for me When I go to heaven But now I can just Live my life The way I want to live And that's the question He's asking He's saying What do I need to do Right now So I don't have to Stop worrying about Things What is enough What do I have to add So that I can be safe What do I need to do And I think that That's the question We all ask today Kind of isn't it We often ask this question What do we need to do What do we need to add To our life What do we need to Subtract from our life If you're like me You're asking the question What do you need to Subtract from your life What do I need to not do So that I'm more Acceptable to God And so he asks this question And Jesus It's very interesting Because Jesus just kind of Throws out all the evangelism Books out Because the minute you said What do I need to do Except eternal life Everybody pulls out Four spiritual laws I do

[15:52] And say well this is what you do God loves you He offers a wonderful plan For your life You're a sinner Repent of your sin And you get to heaven Woo And angels are rejoicing That's what we do Right That's what we've been taught My whole life But Jesus doesn't do that When he breaks all the rules He treats the person As an individual And not as a task And Jesus says Well why do you call me good Because everybody knows Only God is good The underlying message Behind this is Do you think that I'm God And if you think that I'm God Then you're going to obey Everything I say Right Because you're going to obey What God has to say You're going to do that And we're told in the verses That the ruler is silent He doesn't say anything He's kind of dumbfounded By Jesus' response Culturally he's dumbfounded Because it should have Gone like this Good teacher What must I do To inherit eternal life And Jesus should have Replied to them Oh fabulous

[16:52] And amazing Leader This is what you need to do I mean but Jesus doesn't He skips all that Talking and passing The business cards He just goes right To the heart And so everybody Would have been looking there And going wow This is really weird This is Something's going on here And so Jesus Then he basically In verse 20 He just I'm just going to Walk through this for you And we're going to See where we're going to go Is I'm just going to Walk through this And then I want to Share with you Three things that God's Been showing me in my life And then we'll talk about What we do as a church But in verse 20 He just lists out The Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments The first four About how we interact With God This way The last of them Are how we interact With our brothers and sisters Like this And so he just lays out Those things This is what you need to do This is how you Live righteously This is how you do these things And the ruler answers him In a very very unique way Again if you were there And you heard this Your draws would have dropped You would have been Freaking out Because he said Well I've already done that What else you got for me I've already done all those things

[17:55] I've already added all those things I've already kept those things He said I've kept those things perfectly I've kept the law perfectly From the time I was bar mitzvah At 12 to 13 years old I've done it perfectly And everybody would have Looked at him and go Wow that is a huge Assumption Because as far as we know Only Abraham And Moses And maybe Aaron Kept all the law perfectly And you're putting yourself Up there with Moses And Aaron And you said you kept All the law And people look at this guy And they go wow He's blinded to his blindness He doesn't see his heart He doesn't see what's going on In his life He doesn't understand What's happening there In verse 22 The passage says In the gospel of Mark It's very unique When you get a chance To go back and read Matthew 19 Mark 10 And Luke 18 They're all the same stories The passage says That Jesus Looked at the young ruler He doesn't rebuke him at all He doesn't come back And say okay come on

[18:55] You know you're not like Moses He doesn't Because Jesus Doesn't want to call Through a program He's looking at This guy's heart He's dealing with this guy As a person As an individual He's dealing with us As people So Jesus says something That he never says To anybody else In the history Of scripture In the Greek It says when he looked at him He felt love for him His heart was drawn Towards this young ruler And then he says this Okay Well one thing You still lack One thing you need to do You just sell everything Give it to the poor And then follow me Jesus has said that twice One time there's a dinner party In Lazarus house And Martha and Mary

[19:55] Are there And Martha's busy And she's crazy And she's doing all this work In Luke 10 We've already studied it And Mary's just sitting there Watching Jesus And Martha comes up And she complains about Mary She says Mary's not doing enough She's not doing everything That's happened I'm doing everything How come I'm not doing All these things And Jesus looks at Martha And he goes Martha Martha One thing you lack Your focus isn't on me Look at Mary And so he says The same thing To this young man One thing you lack And we're told That when he heard this He became very sad In Greek the word is He became grieved He became deeply despaired His face dropped And he walked away Because he was extremely rich He was in the top 4% Of the wealth Of all the world Jesus in verse 24 and 25

[20:59] Says how difficult it is For those who have wealth To enter into the kingdom of God Is easier for a camel The largest thing they know of He's given hyperbole Okay But he's saying it's impossible He's saying it's easier For a camel To walk through the smallest thing They know of A needle Than for a rich person To enter the kingdom of God He's talking about impossibilities In my house He would have said It'd be easier for A Krispy Kreme donut To walk through our household And survive one day With my kids Than for a rich person To enter into the kingdom of God That's how That's Tobinism right That's what he would have said That's how he does it But he says it in such a way And what I want to end our time with I want to talk about Really just Throw out some things God's been teaching me And I want to talk about How we can do this What we need to do How Because we're all These rich young rulers So I know your first time here You go wow He's talking like he knows everybody And I'm hoping I know everybody

[22:01] And I hope that you know my heart And you know That I'm the most Broken person In here This man Is the only person In the gospels Who comes to Jesus With a need And he walks away Worse Than when he came Every other person In the gospels When they come to Jesus They have their need met Something happens to them They change And their life is changed But this person He walks into Christ's presence He puts out his performance He asks what he wants to do And he walks away Deeply grieved He walks away sad He walks away burdened He walks away With his face down He can't look at anybody Why is that?

[22:59] Why is that? I think one of the reasons He comes in there And he walks away grieved Is because he comes in there And he says This is my faith This is my religion And Jesus takes it And he just Crashes it He says Faith Religion Isn't about doing It isn't about attaining It's not about doing One more thing It's not about Making yourself Look really good We all struggle with this Don't we?

[23:33] I mean we're in here And we're feeling A little empty spiritually And so we want to go On a retreat Or we want to Experience a new class Or we want to get A different gift Of the spirit In our life And we feel like If we do these things Then we'll feel happy We'll feel complete We'll be at peace Maybe Christianity Can offer us something Maybe this class Can give me something Maybe I can do something Maybe I can add something Maybe it's like a hobby If I do it long enough Then I'll feel peace Maybe it's a retreat Maybe it's a class I just take the notes Maybe it's Something that I add To my life Maybe it's a religious experience These are all the things This young ruler thought If I just do these things If I can just check them Off my list And I can put them away Then I'm good Everything's going to be great I'm going to be happy And Jesus says no You can't be good enough Only God is good enough I mean think about this Every other religion Every other faith Every other philosophy

[24:33] In the world What they're going to say to you Is you come here And you do these things And you'll get better If you come here And you give this amount Of money If you come here And do this program If you do all these things You're going to get better If you add these things To your life If you subtract these things For your life If you achieve these things And Jesus looks at this Young ruler And he says no You can't You can't You can never Be good enough You can never add Something to your life The ruler was walking Through life And I know you don't do this But I do this all the time The ruler was walking Through life And he was comparing himself He was looking at his goodness He was looking at his deeds He was looking at how much he tithes He was looking at how much he serves He was looking at how big his church is He was looking at how many people he meets He was looking at how busy his schedule is And he's comparing those things And he's saying Bad Good Unholy Holy Unrighteous Righteous Not too good Really good And Jesus looks at him

[25:36] And says dude Jesus didn't say dude Okay Sorry We're in a better accent maybe Or something like that But Jesus looks at him And he says no You don't compare yourself To people around you You don't say I'm not rich Because I only have one dollar And that person's really rich Because they have two dollars But Jesus says The lines aren't like this Jesus says the lines are like this God Tobin Holy Unholy Good Not good Righteous Not righteous Perfect Not perfect Jesus corrected The lines of communication And he said to this guy There are not two ways To get to God There's not God's way

[26:37] And your way And by being good enough You get there Jesus is saying There's only one way To get to God And that's through Him No matter how good you are You're not going to be Good enough It's not relative The problem that we have The problem that the rich young ruler has Our problem is that We don't need more goodness We don't need more programs We don't need more things To take off our box We don't need more certificates We don't need more degrees We need to be able to say I'm broken Holy Unholy Good Not good Righteous Not righteous Not righteous But Jesus says Until we understand that Until you understand that Goodness isn't becoming good But coming to God Means that you admit That deep in your heart You're really not that good

[27:39] And if you hold on to the delusion That you are that good You're going to end up like that Rich young guy You're going to walk away from Christ And you're not going to have Your needs met You're not going to understand What's going on The best thing I could do Is illustration This is a wedding band Christina gave it to me If you look over there It's a gold It looks like a smooth gold band But the closer you get You look at it And you realize There's Hebrew writing on it So it's not solid gold It's mixtured gold Or it's dug out Right If you got really close to it You look at it And you would say Wow there's some marks on it And there's some scratches Is Tobin One time actually And then they threw it out A six story building Which totally freaked me out I listened for it to clink But there's a mark on it From when I threw it out A six story building And as you get closer to it You see these marks But if you put this Under an electron microscope Dude you would see like Valleys and cliffs And fissures And brokenness And just Not pure

[28:40] Not solid And Jesus is saying To the ruler And he's saying To you and me That that's That's our life In the business place When people look at you They see you have Your act together You look good And everything's good But then when you get Closer to you You talk to your wife Or you talk to your kids They see that there's These little fissures there And God says When I look at your heart I see incredible brokenness In need And the rich young ruler Heard these things And he realized I can't do I can't be I can't add And the Greek says That he was depressed He was sad He was downtrodden He didn't know what to do I think another reason The guy walks away Is because he realized In that moment When Jesus asked that question What one thing you act When he asked that question Jesus opened up his heart And he showed that guy

[29:42] What he really Really worships He showed him What really is controlling His life He actually showed him What's steering his life He showed him What's giving him comfort And what's giving him meaning And what's giving him happiness What's giving him security What's giving him pleasure He showed him all these things And in verse 23 We're told those things Are his wealth He's very wealthy I mean wealth Is such an interesting thing Isn't it?

[30:09] I mean it's interesting And it's dangerous Jesus talks about it More than any other thing The Jews in this day When they heard this passage And Jesus said It's so hard for a rich man To come to the kingdom of heaven The disciples would have said Hey!

[30:22] Well how can anybody Get to heaven then If a rich man get there? Because in their culture The rich people Were the blessed people The rich people Were the ones Who had favor with God They were the ones Who built the buildings And named the synagogues And had the best seats In the place They're the ones Who could do They're the ones Who could check off They could do all those things And when Jesus said It's so hard for a rich man Actually he says It's not so hard He says it's impossible Everybody listening Would have They would have It would have been The most unusual thing It would have counteracted 2,000 years of culture They would never have Comprehended it They could never have Understood it And what he basically said Is you can't Be a rich person And rely on your riches To get to the kingdom Of God It's interesting I was going to threaten My wife to sing And dance up here And she said No I cannot sing And you are glad That I cannot sing But as I thought about this I realized that Wealth does something to us It makes us forget Our need It makes us forget God's grace

[31:24] Riches make us feel Superior Don't they? I mean When I was praying Through this What came to my mind I love musicals Okay so Warren is saying Fiddler on the roof If I were a rich man Because that song Has so much good theology in it Have you ever heard that song?

[31:46] Remember Tevye He's the father The papa He's Sorry Anyway So he's a milkman He's delivering milk And his horse goes lame And so he has to walk And carry his horse And he's carrying Through his horse And he's talking about God you made all these Poor people There's a couple rich people Wouldn't it be great If I were rich?

[32:08] And then he starts singing This song If I were a rich man And he sings about What happens when you're A rich man He says Everything's good Everything's perfect I wouldn't have to Da da da da I don't have to do anything I can just relax I don't have to worry About anything And the great thing is that You know People look at me differently There's a sign in there He says The most important people Will come in town And call on me They'll ask me All these theological questions And at the end of it He says Because when you're rich They really think you know Isn't that true?

[32:41] Try this exercise Okay so this week You're in your business place With a group of lawyers And you know What kind of law They're doing And so you just say You ask them a question About the law They don't do Well lawyers are really quick Like they're like Thinking in their mind Okay I can't build this I can't make any money off this That's not my profession That's not my line I don't know anything about that I deal with corporate law You get in a group of doctors And you ask them A medical question That doesn't surround Their specialty They'll look at each other Sometimes Like well you know There's a paper written About that You know I don't Yeah I can't answer that I don't know anything about that That's not my profession I don't know But if you get in A group of rich people And you ask them A question like Why do you think There's so many more sparrows Flying into Hong Kong Today than last year They have an answer Right I mean when you're rich People really think you know They think I'm laughing at myself Because I walk into Other cultures Where I'm perceived as rich

[33:42] Like Thailand Or other places In the middle of the boonies And I'm there And people ask me These questions That I have no idea What they're talking about Or how do we build this pipe So the water comes down At this angle But they ask me Because I look like A rich person I look like the person Who has it all together And I wonder Well this is how you do it And I don't know How to build a pipe Or water system But there's something About wealth That makes you think That you're smarter Than others Wealth makes you Feel secure Right Wealth makes you Feel secure It doesn't make you Think about the future Or what happens After you die It doesn't make you Think about building Wealth in heaven It makes you think About building wealth Down here Riches can distort Your thinking They can make you Think differently They made this rich guy Think very differently Didn't they He compared himself To Moses And to Abraham And sometimes You and I do also Having wealth Like we do In the top 4% Can often blind us To our blindness I mean money is good

[34:47] Don't get me wrong But it's dangerous And so Jesus Asks him this question What one thing Do you lack One thing you lack And the minute He asks that question He exposes The ruler's heart He exposes The ruler's idols He exposes The ruler's God And he sees What he's really Clinging to So the question Would be for me Is what Would Jesus Say to you As Jesus Talking to you Tonight Before you go to bed And he said You know There's one thing You lack What would be That thing What would be The thing That you have In your heart That if you Weren't a Christian You would rely On it more Than anything else To make your life Good And acceptable And comforting And important And Jesus Is asking The disciples He's asking

[35:48] Us He's asking This young man What is it That's in your life That you wouldn't Want to give away What is it That's in your life That you hold on to That you cling to What is it That gives you Identity and peace And security What is it That makes you Feel in control And if you don't Have it You feel out of control I mean I don't want to Use names Or examples But we all know People like that Right We all know People that if they Aren't married by now Their life is out of control And they just think God is so bad to them We know people right now Who you know If they don't have That job security Or that money set aside Or that third home That they need To live in Hong Kong You live in one You rent two They just feel like Wow I don't have security And things are not good We know people Whose health is bad And they blame God Because that's the one thing They need to hold on to We know couples Who can't have children And they're so angry And their lives fall apart Because that's their God

[36:48] That's what they're hoping on That's what That's going to give them meaning That's going to give them success What is it That one thing That you hold on to That if Jesus says You need to give this up You would say I can't do that I'm sorry Because the passage Is all about trusting him And what Jesus Is actually asking The rich man is Do you Do you trust me You've called me God You've called me good Do you believe that Do you believe I'm in control Do you believe I want your best I think sometimes We walk around And our lives Are out of control Because we have this One thing And we cling to it And we hold to it And because we do Our life is chaos And Jesus is looking

[37:50] In that ruler's heart And saying This is that one thing For you And until you give that up Until you trust me With that Until you trust me To be God Until you trust me To be good Your life Is always going to be lacking You're always going to hurt How are we doing He walked away Because he couldn't do the boxes Couldn't take the things He walked away Because his heart was hurt He realized how broken he was He realized that his God Was his wealth And not really God Even though he knew all the rules He knew everything If you're like me And you read these passages And you heard it for the first time But I pretty much guarantee I've probably read it about 60 times In the last two weeks In many different Many different translations I read these things And I listen to these things And I go That's It sounds really good But that's really hard In fact I read these things I look at these things And I go That sounds Amazing But I don't know

[38:52] If I can do that I don't know If that's realistic In our world today I don't know If that's possible For me in Hong Kong In 2013 And the passage says You're right You can't It's impossible With man But in verse 27 Jesus says But what is impossible With man Is possible with God This is a very interesting story There's actually two Rich young rulers In this story There's one young ruler Who comes And he has everything And everybody loves him And they want to be Just like him And Jesus comes And he says The one thing you lack And when he hears that He Is in amazing grief And sorrow And he walks away With his head Down low And everybody watching Is in amazement Because he just can't do

[39:52] That one thing He can't give up his riches He can't give up his position He can't give up his authority But there's another young ruler In this story He came from the most amazing kingdom Ever Heaven And he heard the call He gave up all his riches The Bible says That he became poor So that we might become Rich In a week He's going to walk Through the streets of Jerusalem He's going to be beat He's going to be stripped He's going to be naked On a cross He's going to give up everything Like the young young ruler Was asked to do But he's going to do it perfectly For you and me And the amazing thing About that When you read the crucifixion Is that Jesus Jesus doesn't tithe his blood He doesn't just give us 10%

[40:54] Or 20% Or whatever that is But Jesus gives Everything He gives everything To you and I Who are poor And broken So that we might become His children His brothers and sisters Basically what Jesus Is saying here Is he Trust me Let me be your treasure Let me be your treasure In earth Let me be your treasure In heaven You can trust me Because I'm God And because I'm good How we doing?

[41:36] I don't know how you feel When you read this passage But to me I feel incredibly Overwhelmed That a holy God Would look at us Look at me Give up everything Become poor So that I might become rich Become beaten So that I might be healed Die So that I don't have to die Rise from the grave So that one day I will also And I don't have to do anything I don't have to tick a box I don't have to change I just have to surrender my life And trust Him to be God Father we just thank you for this day We thank you for your goodness In our life We thank you for this message Of this young young ruler It is so challenging And humbling Lord I know that even now There are people in here Who

[42:37] They don't know what to do With this passage And I don't know What to do with it sometimes Father I pray for us Who still hold on To That one thing In our heart I pray to us Who still try to Tick the boxes And do all the right things I pray for us Lord Who try to tick The right Pieces of paper And tie the right amount And serve the right way Hoping that we become Better And more good Lord would you speak to us now And just show us That that's If we do that We're going to be disappointed We're going to be lost We're going to be sad We're going to be grieved Deeply Deeply Grieved Lord help us to see your son Who was the young ruler Who did it all So that we might Have it all And come to you And Lord I pray for Some of us in here Who've made mistakes We've made a lot of mistakes We've made poor choices

[43:38] We haven't tithed We haven't seen Stuff as our stuff We haven't served We haven't just allowed you To surrender our life to you We're still holding on To things Lord I pray For those of us Who are in your family And we're trying to live that way As family members And even as family members It's even worse Because we know what we should have But we don't have it And we're trying to wonder Why we don't have it And this passage says We don't have it Because we're holding on To something We're holding on To an idol We're holding on To a small God That we're going to cling to Just in case Just in case You aren't really God And just in case You're not really good Lord I just repent And I ask your forgiveness For me And for this church And help us To be people Who love you And see you In amazing ways And trust you With everything And help us To be people Who trust you That you are the treasure That you are the treasure Here on earth And you are the treasure In heaven And we can walk No matter what happens Because we know You're there In your control Lord we come before you And we just We just marvel at your mercy

[44:39]  And we grace And we thank you Help us to be a church That walks from these doors Wherever you send us this week Realizing that we're surrounded By rich young rulers Who are trying to do And be And yet we have The only thing That will truly bring them Peace and happiness And fulfillment And make them the way You meant for them to be Which is Your son Help us to take steps Of faith in that direction To point them to him We pray that they would Fall in love with him That eternity Would be different Not as they look at us And our imperfections And our brokenness For they say Look at him Who is perfect Who is broken for us Lord we love you We need you desperately Thank you that you are holy Thank you that you are righteous Thank you that you are good We pray all these things In your son Jesus Holy name Amen