Amos 5:6-15
Psalm 90:1-12
Hebrews 3:1-6
Mark 10:17-21
Into Throughout Scripture, the Lord is persistent in challenging our worldly tendency to place ourselves and our material possessions ahead of Him and ahead of the needs of others. What we do with what the Lord has materially given us is a big deal with God.
Readings This
morning in our reading from the Prophet Amos, God rebukes
the people of God for building houses of hewn stone and planting pleasant
vineyards, He says, while at the same time trampling on the poor.
In
today’s Gospel, Jesus challenges the rich young man to
sell all that he has, give it to the poor, and follow him. Jesus is not so much focusing on the fact
that the young man is wealthy, because God is the source of all things; rather,
Jesus is challenging this young man on two things more specifically: first, on what
he is doing with all that God has given him; and secondly, that he has placed the
love of mammon ahead of his love of God, although, interestingly, he is a man who
seeks to be devoted to God. Jesus says
in Luke 16:13 “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon.” God says in Exodus 20:2 that we are to have
no other gods before Him, which is the first of the 10 Commandments. Anything we put ahead of God in our lives is,
by definition, an idol. Wealth and possessions
can so easily become our idol.
The
Rich Young Man The young man apparently thinks that
his abundant possessions can provide abundant life. This is a malady common in our today’s materialistic
society. To think that life in abundance can be found in material possessions
is simply an impoverished view of life, at least life as God intends it. Jesus says in John 10:10 that He came that
they may have life and have it abundantly. The abundant life Jesus is talking about is one
of submission to God, perfected relationships, mutual love, sacrificial giving,
radical generosity, having God’s transcendent purpose for living, and having a clear
vision on where we are headed as children of God. Jesus’ point to the rich young man today is
that he will only find these things by following Him.
This rich young man is on
the same journey that we are all on, and he sadly choses to take a different road. Our Christian journey is to be from self-centered-ness to a Christ-centered-ness, from self-absorption
to self-giving, from a life focused on the kingdom of this world to life that
seeks the Kingdom of God.
Our pilgrimage is, of
course, a life-long journey and one we cannot make on our own. The Holy Spirit empowers us for the journey
and Jesus promises to walk the road with us.
The fact is that we are all a work in progress. In Christ, we are ever moving heavenward,
until at our last day Jesus takes me by the hand and presents us to the Father,
unblemished, healed and perfected. We can all say amen to that.
Spokes of a wheel A helpful visual for me has always been
life as the spokes of a wheel. Each spoke represents some facet of your
lives… our family, career, relationships, hobbies, spirituality, our wealth,
whatever. But something needs to be at
the center… the hub of our existence, so to speak. Given our human nature, tainted by this world
as it is, we place ourselves and our material needs at
the center. To the world that sounds
right, and Jesus Himself said in Matthew 6 that God knows we need all these
things, but the center of our lives needs to be God
Himself. God calls us to a much more
transcendent and meaningful life than what the material world can provide, one
in which all the various facets and spokes of our lives are submitted to Him. That is the Christian call.
My on-going journey from self to self-giving Let me tell you a
bit about my journey as it relates to all this.
It was over a half-century ago that Nancy and I got married- (I love now
being old enough to mark my journey in half-centuries. It helps me realize how long and far Christ has
taken us). We married right out of
college in 1970.
We soon discovered all the American middle-class
struggles of mortgage, career, balancing finances, raising children and securing
their future. Family and career became
the center of my existence. God was
there, but He was, in effect, somewhere on the fringe, just another one of those
spokes in the wheel.
One Sunday morning, while standing
in the churchyard where we were attending, about to go into adult Sunday
School, I was contemplating these things.
Nancy was off doing her ministries.
The kids were in Sunday School and nursery. It was just God and me. From what I knew about being a Christian, it
was not rational to have God in some compartmentalized fringe of my life. I thought of Jesus’ words in His Sermon on the
Mount recorded in Matthew 6, “…25 [be
not anxious] about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor
about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body
more than clothing? … 33But seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
That
morning in the churchyard was a watershed moment in my life, a Nicodemus, John
3, born again moment. Perhaps you have had a similar encounter with God. God invited me to receive him as the hub of
my life. I have been stiving to do that
ever since.
Because
it is the topic of God’s message to us today, let me mention one thing Nancy
and I did soon after, which was to move to the biblical tithe as a submission
of our finances to the Lord. Of all the facets
and spokes of our lives, our pocketbook tends to be one of the last things we
sanctify to the Lord.
Closing So, in closing, know
that God has much to say about how we are to deal with wealth and material
possessions with which He has graced us.
The rich young man was not ready to hear the words of our Lord; as for
you and me, let us follow Jesus.
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