Motivational Moment with Pastor Al

Luke 18:18 – 25 (NRSV):

18 A certain ruler asked [Jesus], “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother.’” 21 [The ruler] replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.” 22 When Jesus heard this, He said to [the ruler], “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; then come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard this, [the ruler] became sad, for he was very rich. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

My brothers and my sisters in Christ!! Now, you KNOW we couldn’t do a devotional series on sacrifice WITHOUT eventually looking at the biblical narrative about the rich ruler in Luke 18!! At some point, we have to make a stop right here in The Third Gospel. Come on now!! This story about the young ruler is the scriptural elephant in the room whenever the topic of sacrifice is broached. There is no way that we can ever learn what sacrifice means to God’s leaders and not tackle this particular pericope of scripture. To not do so would be to do a disservice to all of us Christian disciples and stewards. Amen?! Amen!!

With that said, let us focus our attention on Luke 18:18 – 25 this morning. When we do, we see that Jesus is again teaching the masses about God’s will for the people. While He was teaching, a ruler came before Jesus asking Him a question. Before we get too far into our devotional this morning, let me say something about this ruler and the question he asked. First, it is not an accident that Luke NEVER tells us or otherwise discloses to us who this ruler is. We don’t know if he was a member of King Herod’s family or royal court. We also don’t know if this ruler was a ruler of some neighboring sovereign nation. The only information that Luke provides us with is the fact that he was indeed a ruler. Hold onto this fact for a moment. We will come back to it shortly.

Second, the question that this unnamed and otherwise unidentified ruler asked Jesus was a good question. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with the question itself. Nor was the ruler WRONG AT ALL for posing this question to Jesus. Dare I say, this question wasn’t just a good question to ask. It was also the RIGHT question to ask. Every single person that would call himself or herself a child of God has asked—or at a minimum, thought about—this question. One of the salient concepts about Christianity is the promise of eternal life. Every Christian hopes and dreams of the day when we will awaken from our earthly, mortal slumber to spend forever with the Great I AM in the Heavens where the streets are paved in gold. We should ascribe to this ruler no fault for asking Jesus this question. Nor should we attempt to conjure up any malfeasance on his part for posing such question to our Lord and Savior.

What God our Father wants to tackle this morning ISN’T necessarily the question that this ruler asked Jesus. Rather, His focus this morning is the response that the ruler gave to Jesus’ answer to the question. And the reason why our Heavenly Father focuses on the ruler’s response is because it has everything to do with sacrificing as God’s recognized leaders. With that said, let’s dive headfirst into this biblical narrative.

(FIRST POINT): AS GOD’S APPOINTED LEADERS, WE CHRISTIAN DISCIPLES AND STEWARDS CAN AND DO FALL SHORT IN TERMS OF OUR DEMONSTRATED LEADERSHIP.

If we will recall, I just shared some information about this ruler. I pointed out to you that Luke doesn’t identify who this leader was, who he was connected to, or where he was from. What I didn’t point out to you was that regardless of who this ruler was, he found Jesus and His teachings favorable. He approached Jesus and acknowledged Jesus as the “Good Teacher”. Because the Third Gospel doesn’t say otherwise, we are left with no reason or evidence that the ruler came to Jesus any other way but in humility. My sanctified imagination leads me to believe that when the ruler asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, he was nothing but sincere. I am absolutely convinced that this ruler really wanted to know what it was that he was required to do to put himself in the position to attain the blessing of eternal life.

What leads me to believe this is that this ruler has taken the time to study and internalize what Torah required. He knew the basis commandments and the tenets that undergirded them. He also indicated that he had tried his earnest to follow them. For all intents and purposes, this ruler had done everything that he believed Torah required him to do.

Unfortunately for him, this ruler soon learned that what he had already done wasn’t enough to attain eternal life. Instead, it was just the beginning. Jesus instructed this ruler that if he truly wanted to attain eternal life, then the ruler had to sell everything he had, give the proceeds of this sale along with all the money he had to the poor, and then follow Jesus. This was how the ruler would attain eternal life. This sacrifice would create riches for him in Heaven that would ensure his place among those that would spend eternity with the Great I AM.

In this exchange between Jesus and the ruler, we are explicitly informed that there are times when God’s appointed leaders fall short of the benchmark for spiritual leadership. Yes, we Christian disciples and stewards work hard day-in and day-out serving the Lord our God. But there are times when what we’ve already done thus far in our lives isn’t enough. There is more required of us. This is especially true if our aim is to acquire and attain those top-tier blessings that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has both promised us and set aside for us. The ruler was a leader both in the human sense and spiritual sense of the word. So are we. But I’m willing to bet you all of YOUR money that just like this ruler, there are requirements that we STILL haven’t met yet that will provide us with access to certain, specific blessings of the Lord.

There’s no need to get mad at me. You know what it is that the Man Upstairs has required of you. You know what He has instructed you to sacrifice that you haven’t sacrificed yet. I’m just telling us what our Heavenly Father instructed me to say.

(SECOND POINT): AT SOME POINT, EFFECTIVE, FAITHFUL SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP REQUIRES US TO MAKE A CHOICE: GOD’S WILL OR OUR WILL.

Luke 18 doesn’t mince words when it came to the ruler’s response to Jesus’ answer. We are told in no uncertain words that when Jesus informed the ruler that his leadership was lacking and that to attain the eternal life he sought he would have sacrifice everything he owned and possessed, the ruler became sad. Whenever I read this biblical narrative, my sanctified imagination creates this image in both my mind and spirit of the ruler becoming outwardly upset to hear that he needed to sacrifice like this. I can picture the brother stumbling backwards in shock. I can see him grab his stomach as if reacting to someone punching him in his guts. As bad as that is, the image created within me says that the ruler’s facial expressions were even worse. I can envision his face contorting in all kinds of ways. His face conveyed both his displeasure and disapproval of Jesus’ answer.

This is how the ruler physically responded to Jesus. We really shouldn’t be shocked at all by the ruler’s response. Luke 18 informs us exactly why this brother responded to Jesus the way he did. The ruler was rich. No, he was VERY rich. The brother was wealthy. To borrow from the comedian Christ Rock: “Shaquille O’Neal is rich, but the white man who pays him is wealthy.” Jesus instructed this ruler to basically abandon all his wealth. Again, borrowing from Chris Rock:

“If you have ten million dollars and someone wants half, you ain’t tripping. You still have five million dollars. But if you only make $35,000 per year and someone wants half, you may have to kill them.”

Here, Jesus wasn’t just asking for this ruler to part with half of his wealth. Instead, Jesus instructed this ruler to part with all of it. THIS is why the ruler was so bothered by Jesus’ answer. That answer required the brother to voluntarily relinquish everything he had as well as every privilege that came along with being wealthy.

Please don’t get caught up with WHAT God our Father required the ruler to sacrifice. That’s a red herring. That’s an immaterial fact. This fact is immaterial because for many of us, we aren’t wealthy. We’re nowhere close to being wealthy. We can’t even begin to imagine or conceive of the extent of loss Jesus instructed this brother to endure.

No, the issue on the table here this morning is intent. Whose will are we going to follow?! God’s will or our will?! When it all comes down to it, sacrifice is nothing more than choosing what’s more important to us. Is the Great Jehovah and His will for our lives the single most important thing to us? Or is what we want and what we desire—i.e., our will—more important?

The ruler demonstrated by walking away from Jesus that God’s will for his life wasn’t that important. It wasn’t his primary consideration. What was most important to this fellow was keeping his wealth and every opportunity such wealth afforded him. The question for all of us is: when the Lord our God requires us to sacrifice something we have, own, and possess to Him, will we make the same choice that the ruler made?! Will we decide that our will is more important in our lives than His will?!

(THIRD POINT): WHEN IT COMES TO SACRIFICING AS SPIRITUAL LEADERS, IT’S EASIER FOR MANY OF US TO PERFORM VIRTUAL HUMAN IMPOSSIBILITIES THAN IT IS TO BE OBEDIENT TO THIS DIVINE REQUIREMENT.

When the ruler realized what the requirement to attain eternal life was, he decided that the price to attain and possess eternal life was too expensive. It cost him too much. It cost him more than he was willing to pay. So, the brother decided to walk away from God and the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.

Seeing this, Jesus said to the ruler and to the crowd around Him that day that it was virtually impossible for wealthy people to enter the kingdom of God. He followed this statement with a second statement. Jesus declared that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. Now, if you are like me, hearing Jesus say this conjured up an image in your mind’s eye. We instantly thought of a sewing needle. The average sewing needle is a tiny pin with a loop at one end where we thread yarn through such loop for the purposes of sewing one piece of cloth to another piece of cloth. I don’t blame you for thinking this. Shoot!! For many years of my life, I thought it too. Yes, Jesus was absolutely correct. It is impossible for a camel—a humungous land animal—to pass through the eye of a tiny sewing needle.

Unfortunately or fortunately—depending on your spiritual perspective, a typical, sewing needle WAS NOT the needle that Jesus was referring to when He made His declaration. While there were sewing needles in use during Antiquity, the needles that Jesus speaks about were openings in the walls that surrounded a city or edifice. The Jewish Temple was such an edifice that had walls with needles in them. These openings were intentionally built so that persons with livestock or other animals could bring such livestock or animals into the city or edifice. Cultural norms and religious practices forbade persons from bringing their livestock and animals through the same gates that people used. If anyone want to bring their animals into certain cities or edifices, these animals had to enter through these needles.

I don’t know if we all have ever seen a camel in real life. These are some tall and large animals. The camels from Antiquity weren’t the small cute one-hump versions we see at the local petting zoo. No, these behemoths were massive. Most of them had two humps. Trying to get these behemoths through the needles in these walls was next to impossible. It was not unusual for camels to get stuck in these needles as their owners and other men tried to bring them inside of the enclosed city or edifice.

Jesus compared the extreme difficulty of passing camels through these particular needles with the chances of a wealthy person entering the kingdom of God. He insisted that it was EASIER to pass a camel through the needles in these walls than it was for a wealthy person to enter God’s kingdom. As hard as passing camels through these needles were, it was EVEN HARDER for a wealthy person to abandon their wealth and seek God in such a way that eternal life for them would be guaranteed.

In closing, the truth we must all walk away with is that there are certain people, places, and things that all of us Christian disciples and stewards aren’t readily willing to part with. There’s no need for us to pretend as if there are. All of us have spouses, children, family members, and loved ones that we feel are non-negotiable. We aren’t willing to lose them for anyone or any reason. Yet, the day may come when the Lord God Almighty asks us…no, requires us…to sacrifice our relationships with these persons so that His will may be done. Are we faithful enough to be obedient to this requirement?? Please don’t hear me to say that I am declaring that you will ever have to sacrifice your parent, child, or spouse for God. All I’m asking you, instead, is to consider how YOU would respond to Jesus if He instructed YOU to sacrifice that which means the most to you for God’s sake. Amen!!