The Basic Christian Life (Mark 10.23-31)

I’m going to start by saying something a lot of you know already, but it’s particularly important for this text.

There is a particular brand of so-called Christianity that has been going around for several decades now; it’s come to be known as the “prosperity gospel.” I could try explaining it to you, but I think it would be more effective to simply give you some quotes from some very famous (and very rich) pastors who teach this.

Joel Osteen: “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.”

Kenneth Copeland: “Let’s receive our offering this evening, and give you a chance to raise your income.”

Benny Hinn: “There will no sickness for the saint of God… If your body belongs to God, it does not and cannot belong to sickness.”

And here’s Benny Hinn again: “God will begin to prosper you, for money always follows righteousness.”

So you see the essence of this teaching: if you come to God, he will give you riches. He will give you health. He will give you that job promotion you’ve been wanting. He will give you the wife or husband you’ve been wanting.

We can all understand why such a message would be so appealing—because we all have something we want. We all have something we dream of. So if someone seems to give us a way to get exactly what we’ve always wanted, it’s pretty hard to resist.

This teaching is a horrendous twisting of the actual gospel message. The last man I quoted, Benny Hinn, is an interesting case. He is the one I’m most familiar with, because he was always on the television at my grandmother’s house—he’s always been one of the most exuberant proponents of this so-called prosperity gospel. He’s old now, and he’s reaching the end of his ministry, and apparently starting to re-examine some things. He asked forgiveness for his years of giving this particular teaching, and promised to never again ask for money from his listeners.

If he holds to that, he’s absolutely right, because this teaching is not the gospel. The message of the gospel is that we have all rebelled against God—that’s what sin is—and deserve his just wrath against our sin. But because he loved us, God sent his Son Jesus Christ to live the life we should have lived, suffer the death that we deserve, in our place, in order that we might be freed from our sin and reconciled to him.

And now he calls us all to turn from our sin, to trust in him alone for our salvation, and to follow him. But following him requires a radical reorientation of our priorities, as we’ve seen these past few weeks. At the end of Mark chapter 8, Jesus says this:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

So the gospel is not just the means by which we escape hell; it is the means by which the focus of our entire life changes. Everything we wanted, everything we desired before, now takes a back seat to what he calls us to do.

And the difficult thing about this is that very often, it doesn’t seem to be worth it. We are short-sighted people, and few things seem less immediate to us than the idea of heaven, because that’s something that happens a long time from now—or at least, something that happens after we die. And it’s hard to imagine what it will be like (it’s actually not that hard: the Bible gives us an awful lot of information about heaven—we just don’t know it). So it can be easy to feel like Jesus is asking us to give up an awful lot—a lot of very tangible, immediate things—for something that feels less tangible, less immediate.

We see a really good example of this in the text that we saw last week.

Let’s re-read the story of the rich young man, because that is the context in which today’s text really plays out. V. 17:

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 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.’ ” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

So Jesus calls this rich young man to go further than simply obeying the commandments God has already given. He tells him to go sell all of his possessions, to give the money to the poor, and then to come and follow him. And what does he get in return? “Treasure in heaven,” or eternal life, as the young man said it in v. 17…and then who knows how many years of following Jesus.

And for the young man, it just doesn’t seem worth it. He’s very sad about this, because he wants to follow Jesus…but the exchange just doesn’t seem worthwhile, at least not at this point.

So here is the real question of today’s text: Is this exchange really worthwhile? Letting go of everything to follow Christ…is it worth it, not one day in heaven, but today? Does Jesus really promise us nothing but a life of difficulty if we follow him, and then—once we’re dead—eternal life?

That’s the question this text answers for us.

Riches and the Kingdom of God (v. 23-27)

Let’s keep reading in v. 23—this is immediately after the rich young man has walked away disheartened.

23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 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.”

Wealth is just an illustration of what Jesus is talking about…but it’s a very good one.

Few things reveal our hearts better than our bank accounts. Our bank accounts give an in-depth picture of what is important to us. Of course, a lot of our expenses go toward necessities. I’m not talking about true necessities: food, housing, things like that. I’m talking about everything else. How much money do we spend on leisure activities? On vacation? On clothes (that go beyond the merely functional)? On fancy restaurants (that go beyond the simple need to eat)? I’m not saying these things are necessarily bad; they’re not. I’m just stating a fact—we spend money on things that are important to us.

The danger is when these extraneous things, that aren’t really necessary for us to live, become necessities in our minds. When we no longer think of these things as something we could do, but as something we need to do.

That’s why Jesus says it’s difficult for those who have wealth to enter into the kingdom of God. Wealth is not a bad thing in itself—but if you’re not careful, it’s easy to get used to certain things that are nice, but that you don’t really need, and to get used to them to the point where living without those things becomes unthinkable. That was the problem with the rich young man—it’s not that he really couldn’t live without all of his possessions, but that he was so used to having them that life without them was something he couldn’t conceive of.

Now the disciples, surprisingly, show a good bit of intelligence after Jesus says this. You can see they’re thinking about it—v. 26:

And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”

That’s a very good question. Even though most of the disciples weren’t rich before, they are able to recognize that everyone has something that is important to them—everyone has something that constitutes their “wealth”. Something they desire, something they hold dear, something they can’t imagine living without. And if Jesus asked them to give that away… Would they respond the same way the rich young man did? Most people probably would. Their question shows that they understand Jesus is talking about something more than just material wealth—he’s talking about what is closest to our hearts.

And Jesus agrees. V. 27:

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

He puts it very bluntly: With man it is impossible. The disciples are right.  If what Jesus really requires is that we put everything in second place—all of our dreams, all of our priorities, all of our desires—in order to give him the first place… That’s a very hard sell. In fact, it’s an impossible sell. No one has ever seen a camel go through the eye of a needle. It’s impossible.

But not with God. All things are possible with God. God can take the hardest heart and change it so that he, God, actually is more important than all the other things we hold dear.

We see him do it over and over again in the Bible. The apostle Paul is a great example—the apostle Paul was a very well-educated man, a Pharisee who prided himself on his knowledge and strict application of the law of Moses. But in one encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, everything changed. Everything that used to be important for him took second place—to the point where Paul called it all “rubbish” (Philippians 3.7-11). After he met Christ, Paul lived the hard life of a nomad, a life filled with persecution and suffering and hunger and thirst and imprisonment, and eventually, even death.

And he’s far from the only one.

So here is the question this text is pushing us toward: For those who “give everything” to follow Christ, letting all their former dreams and priorities take second place… Are they getting the short end of the stick? Are they the losers in that exchange?

The Promise of the Kingdom of God (v. 28-31)

Let’s keep reading. The disciples recognize how hard this is, and Jesus says it’s impossible for man but possible for God.

And then Peter gets an idea.

We know Peter. He’s the hothead, the industrious one—the one who not so long ago, on the mount of the Transfiguration, actually said to Jesus, “It’s a good thing we’re here, so we can build tents for you and Elijah and Moses!” (Mark 9.5). For everything he’s learned, clearly he’s not quite grasped everything yet. V. 28:

28 Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.”

This is only partially true. It’s true that Peter left his job as a fisherman to follow Jesus, and he’s travelling with him for long periods of time. But we also know that Peter was married, and had a mother-in-law, and after one of their trips the disciples come and eat at Peter’s house, with his mother-in-law. So while he did leave a lot to follow Jesus, he didn’t literally “leave everything”—he didn’t abandon his family; he didn’t divorce his wife; he didn’t break ties with those who were close to him.

So why does Peter say this? It’s possible that he’s just trying to check that they really have left enough to “inherit eternal life,” as the rich young man said. But that kind of self-doubt isn’t really in keeping with his character. It’s more likely (especially given Jesus’s response) that he wants Jesus to see that he and the disciples aren’t like that rich young man. That man wouldn’t sell everything he had and give it to the poor, but they have “left everything” to follow him.

I went with elders went to a conference a couple weeks ago, and there was a talk on the parallel text to this one, in Luke 18, by Joël Favre. He helpfully put it this way: Peter and the rich young man are two very different men, with two very different paths…and they both fall into the same trap. By pointing out his own sacrifices, Peter shows that he is just as self-centered as the rich young man. By insisting on everything he sacrificed, he shows that he still hasn’t let go of the need to be recognized for having done it.

Peter gave up a lot to follow Jesus, yes. But he hadn’t yet given up the need to be seen as sacrificial.

To this, Jesus gives a very interesting response. He doesn’t argue with Peter—doesn’t say, “No you haven’t, you still have your wife!”—but he does push back a little, in a very encouraging way. V. 29:

29 Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Jesus says a lot in these three verses.

First, he talks about what someone might give up for him—and just as the disciples had seen before, he goes far beyond material wealth. He talks about those who give up “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands”. Two of those are material, and the rest is family. Nothing hits closer to the heart than family.

Second, he makes two promises to those who would “leave” their house or family or land. The second thing he promises is what we would expect: “in the age to come, eternal life.” That is not surprising—it’s what the rich young man asked about, and it tends to be what we think of when we think of “the kingdom of God.” We usually put most of our eggs in the “eternity” basket, because that is where we’ll spend the vast majority of our time.

But the first thing Jesus promises might take us off guard. He says that those who leave all of these things for his sake and for the gospel will receive “a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”.

That sounds suspiciously like what those prosperity preachers said, doesn’t it? Those guys regularly say things like, “Give a hundred dollars to our ministry today, and God will return it to you tenfold.” And they often use these verses as a reference point to defend that teaching.

It’s a little disconcerting. Jesus doesn’t just make a promise for the future, in heaven, after we die—he makes a promise for now, in this time. And that promise doesn’t seem to be purely spiritual, but quite real and tangible—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands—the same things these people will have given up.

Now, I don’t believe Jesus is saying that every believer will be like Job, who lost all of his possessions and whose children died, but then who later had more kids and became even richer than before. There are plenty of believers—like the disciples, like the apostle Paul—who gave up almost everything to follow Christ, and who didn’t literally receive all this. (And the prosperity preachers conveniently ignore what Jesus adds on to the list of promises in v. 30: “with persecution.” He never promises that all our troubles will go away.)

We need to remember that a lot of what Jesus says is not meant to be taken in the most purely literal sense: he often uses images or exaggeration to make a point.

So when Jesus talks like this, what exactly is he doing? He’s expanding the way the disciples think about what is important to them.

Think about the promises of family—brothers and sisters and mothers and children, multiplied by a hundred. We have a lot of missionaries in the church, who haven’t broken all ties with their families in their home countries, but who have accepted to “leave” them—leave their homes, leave the regular contact with their families—and move to another country to serve the gospel.

Go around and ask these missionaries if, in accepting to leave their homes to serve the gospel in a foreign country, they feel like they’ve lost family, or gained family. Through their “loss,” they have met brothers and sisters in Christ they never knew they had. They have met spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers. They have been welcomed into new homes, new countries, new cultures. Those who leave their homes for the gospel—if they have really left them for the gospel—invariably find their worlds expanded rather than reduced. Their families grow, they don’t shrink. They gain far more than they sacrifice.

Now when you’re a missionary, it’s easy to see that, because the contrast between your life in your home country and your life in your new country is so extreme. But all of us who follow Christ undergo the same expansion of our worlds. We all have families—some of us are close to our families, and some of us are not. Some of us have families who celebrate our faith, and others of us have families with whom our faith has created hostility.

Jesus has not called us to cut off all ties to our families, to abandon our wives, to abandon our children. But he does call us to see that the world he has given us, the “kingdom of God” he has brought us into, is far bigger than that. Look around you. If you have faith in Christ, then you now have dozens, hundreds, countless brothers and sisters you didn’t know before. You have new fathers and new mothers. You have a new family. And this new family will last far longer than your family at home. Your family at home will last for as long as you’re alive—this new family will last forever.

And you have it, now. Not tomorrow, not in heaven—now. Jesus has made good on his promise.

At the conference Joël Favre told the story of the famous Welsh pastor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones; it’s too good not to share. Lloyd-Jones began a brilliant career in medicine. Very quickly, when he was young, he became the chief clinical assistant for the king’s personal physician—a position that he likely would have taken upon his boss’s retirement. He was well-known in his field, known to the press. He had an incredible career ahead of him as the private physician to the royal family. But in his early twenties, the gospel took a particular hold on him, and he found that he was no longer able to refuse the pull of the gospel on his life. So he gave up his medical career to become a pastor.

His first pastorate was in Aberavon, in South Wales. His was an impoverished church in an impoverished town, populated mainly by sailors and miners. The press in London finally got wind of his move to the pastorate, and came out to see what was happening. When they arrived in town, they came to him and asked how he could have given up this brilliant career to come here, of all places, to live in relative poverty preaching to sailors and miners.

Lloyd-Jones’s response was simple and succinct: “I’ve left nothing; I’ve received everything.”

What Do You Want?

This text, perhaps more than any other in the New Testament, shows us exactly what changes in our lives if we give our lives to Christ. It is not a change meant for the elite, the “pros” of Christianity. This isn’t apostle-level faith; this isn’t “heroes of the faith” level Christianity. This is the first step. This is the foundation.

What changes in us when we meet Christ? The simplest response to that question is, our priorities. We follow after Christ instead of after ourselves. But do we do it gritting our teeth, because we’re afraid of what we’ll happen if we don’t?

No. There are many warnings of eternal punishment in hell if we reject Christ, yes. And sometimes those warnings are necessary, just like when we tell our little kids that if they disobey us, there will be consequences. But those warnings alone don’t produce lasting, heartfelt obedience; they don’t produce love.

There is a very famous quote from C.S. Lewis that many of you have heard before, but I’m going to read it again here, because it is perhaps the best summary I’ve ever heard of what Jesus is saying here:

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire… Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

So here is the challenge of this text: What do you want? Where is your treasure? I won’t even give examples, because it could be literally anything for any of us: people or habits or things or activities or even sins. What is most important to you? What do you want?

It’s really important that we know the answer to that question, because when you seek your treasure in one place, it’s very hard to let yourself find it in another. But we absolutely must find it elsewhere, because every treasure that is not Jesus Christ will ultimately fail us. Nothing that is not for him will last.

Following Jesus requires sacrifice, absolutely: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” Jesus said. Why do we accept this call?

We accept this call because of God’s past grace to us—because he sent his Son to live our life and die our death, in order that we might be saved.

We accept this call because of God’s present grace to us—because for everything he calls us to give up, he promises infinitely more in return.

We accept this call because of God’s future grace to us—an eternity in heaven with Christ, freed from suffering and sin, perfectly reconciled to God the Father in Christ.

It is indeed difficult for us to let go of what we have for Christ…but it pales in comparison to what we receive from Christ.

Do you believe that?

You have to know, because that is the test. Whether or not you believe that we receive far more than we sacrifice will determine whether or not we will persevere as Christians. If anyone would follow Christ, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ. There is no other way to follow him. That’s not professional-level Christianity; that’s not apostle-level Christianity; it is the basic Christian life.

The stakes could not be bigger. But neither could the reward. Don’t settle for less.