Text: Mark 10:17-22

"Get Rich Quick"

Have you got enough money? Who would ever answer yes to that? When is enough, enough? Some people work very hard and have little. Others don’t have to do much and have more than they need. But when is enough really enough?

Jesus once met a man who had a lot of things. He had everything, but he saw something in Jesus, and he wanted to be his disciple and follow him. Jesus had previously been preaching about little children, and said that if anyone wanted to enter the kingdom of God had to become like a child.

This man must have thought that would be easy for him. Apparently in his life things had gone very well. So when he saw Jesus, he came running up, got down on his knees before Christ, and said, “Good Teacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”

Sometimes along the way we get questions that we do not know how to begin to answer. Like when your wife comes to you and says, “Do you know what special day it is today?” You are not sure what to answer. Whatever you guess might be wrong, and you will suffer for it.

That young man’s question was flawed. An inheritance is neither earned nor deserved. You receive it because you are born into a family. The amount of the inheritance may have to do with how you behaved in the family. You might lose the whole thing if you misbehave. A person cannot do something in order to get an inheritance. You are either born into a family of some wealth, or you aren’t. You don’t do something to get an inheritance. It is given because of love of family.

The kingdom of heaven is like that too. So Jesus apparently decided to get at the heart of the matter with this person. Did he need to hear law or gospel?

So he said to him. “You know the 10 Commandments, right? Do not murder. Do not commit adultery, do not steal. And so forth.

What do you see when you examine yourself? Someone who does most everything right and tries hard? Does that put you in line to heaven ahead of other people who don’t measure up so well?

Or do you see yourself as a failure when it comes to keeping the law and commandments of God?

I don’t imagine that the rich young man had faced many failures in his life. He was well taken care of and was apparently used to people giving him compliments.

So he said to Jesus, “Yes, I know the commandments. And I have kept them from the time I was a little boy.”

What does this man need from Jesus? He has all the money he’ll ever need. He can hire a private teacher to learn anything he wants. If he wants to start a family there’s a multitude of young women who would gladly marry him and come live in his house. What does he need? Jesus approval of how he is living his life?

So Jesus looked at him. Mark says Jesus looked at him, and LOVED him. He cared enough to challenge the man’s opinion of himself. He had one task left for him. “Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come, follow me.”

A lot of people think it would be great to have a lot of money. They dream of winning the lottery, of coming into a fortune through an inheritance or a stroke of good fortune, so they can take it easy and not worry about the future. They tell themselves that if they had a lot of money they would give some of it away to charity or missions. But what they don’t realize is what a sudden influx of wealth might do to their faith.

It’s hard to struggle with finances. There’s so much we want to do for our children, our spouses, our grandchildren. But for most of us a lot of money would hinder our faith, because we would be too worried about losing it. How many of you have lost a considerable amount of your investment in the economy over the last year and a half? It’s really troubling to read your 401K statement and see how much you have lost. Then we worry about losing our jobs. There’s a lot of stress there.

Jesus asked this man to make a choice between being a disciple and holding on to his money. The man chose holding on to his money and walked away from Jesus. Don’t make that mistake. It’s not that God wants you to give away everything you have and be poor so everyone else has to take care of you. That would only burden the system. But before you come to Jesus, check yourself to see who your God really is. Is there anything Jesus would ask you to do that you couldn’t do? Are you ready to follow and obey whatever Jesus asks? Make sure, because if there’s something you won’t give up for Jesus, then that’s your god.

If you have another god, make sure it can save you. Whatever we trust in to help and save us can become our god. Make sure the god you worship can save you from death.

Some people advertise a business opportunity or investment that will make us rich very quickly. The experts tell us be very careful. For every success story, there are a hundred other stories of people who invested all their savings in a scheme that seemed too good to be true, and it turned out to be just that. Just think of Bernard Madoff and all the people he defrauded.

With Jesus, there’s an opportunity to get rich quick. It’s not that you will get rich in money or other material wealth. But if we follow Him, he gives us something that is worth more than all the money we can dream of.

Jesus gives himself, bloodied and crucified on the cross. He is the bargain of the century. His perfect life offered up in exchange for our sinful lives. The forgives of sins is totally free, but it requires us to have no other gods. Can you follow Jesus? Can you walk away from that which is precious to you in order to follow Jesus? That is what faith is.

Jesus warned us about making money the center of our world. Matthew 6:19-21 says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The Bible doesn’t say if the rich man thought it over and came back to follow Jesus. I hope that he did. But don’t let that happen to you. One of the ways we prove to ourselves that money is not our god is by bringing an offering to the Lord. There’s always a need in the church for more, but we don’t bring it because of that. We give because the Lord calls us to. When we do, we demonstrate to ourselves that we really trust God with our finances. We also know that we not all the money in the world would be enough for us, but we have everything if we have Jesus in our life. He has made us rich through his love and forgiveness for our sins.