Sermon Tone Analysis

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*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.

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

*27 *Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God.” *28 *Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.”

*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.”

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We ended last week’s sermon discussing whether or not access to the kingdom of God is easy or difficult.

We said it was both.

It is easy because even infants possess the necessary qualities for admittance.

But it is difficult because only by becoming as hopeless as a newborn baby can we enter in.

This goes against every natural tendency within us, to receive the kingdom like a child rather than to receive the kingdom like a victor.

A victor receives the kingdom as a reward for his efforts.

A child receives the kingdom only because it has been freely given to him.

To show why it is difficult for us to become like little children in order to receive the kingdom, we come now to the question we find in Mark 10:17.

As Jesus continued on his journey toward Jerusalem, he was met by a rich man who ran up to him, knelt down before him, and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

This is the defining question for Jesus and his ministry.

And it is the central question for religion to this day.

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How Good Is Good Enough?

But before we get to Jesus’ answer to this question, we read verse 18 where Jesus first addresses rhetorically the title with which this rich man has addressed him.

He had referred to Jesus as “Good Teacher,” and Jesus questions him, “Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.”

Why does Jesus take issue with this man addressing him as “Good Teacher?”

Maybe he suspects this man is only trying to trap him in his words much like the Pharisees have attempted on a few occasions (see Mark 10:2).

Perhaps he is questioning the man’s sincerity by delaying the response to his actual question.

In other words, Jesus may be saying something like this: “Why have you come to ask me about eternal life if you don’t really believe in me?

Do you really think I am a good teacher?

Are you ready to receive what it is I will tell you?

Are you really willing to grant me the same authority as God?”

On the other hand, there is nothing here to suggest that this man has been sent by the Pharisees to test Jesus.

It appears to be a sincere question.

So there must be more to this initial response from Jesus.

I think he is not dodging the question.

Rather he is going straight to the heart of the question.

!! God is the standard of goodness

He begins by urging this man to consider more carefully the standard of goodness that he has in mind.

The man has asked Jesus, “What must I /do/ to inherit eternal life?”

Another way to ask this is, “How good must I be to go to heaven?”

It is a fair and honest question, but it makes one very wrong assumption.

It assumes that God does not hold us to his standard of goodness, that he will accept less than perfect goodness.

You see the simple answer to this man’s question is this: In order to inherit eternal life you must be as good as God.

The problem of course is that “no one is good except God alone.”

Compared to God we are all evil and wicked and sinful.

God is the only standard of goodness.

No one can measure up to this standard.

This is something that would have been widely accepted within Judaism in Jesus’ day.

God was understood to be “good” in a sense that no one else could ever be.

Now this rich man was probably only addressing Jesus with a title of respect and meant nothing else by referring to Jesus as “Good Teacher.”

And Jesus was not denying anything in regards to his own deity in asking “Why do you call me good?”

But Jesus wants to get this man thinking deeply about his question and the concept of goodness.

If we want to know what we must do to be “good enough” to enter into God’s kingdom then we must measure ourselves by the standard of God’s goodness.

!! God’s standard of goodness

So what standard do we have to reveal the goodness of God to us?

We do not have to guess.

If we want to know how good we must be to enter the kingdom of God, Jesus urges us to consider the commandments of God.

The question was, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus now replies, “you must keep the commandments of God.” Why?

Because these commandments outline the standard of goodness of God himself and the standard that God expects of us.

Jesus mentions six specific commandments, which are clearly meant to be only a representation of all that God commands.

Five of the six come directly from the Ten Commandments.

The prohibition against defrauding may be a summary application of the eighth and ninth commandments (do not bear false witness and do not covet).

So Jesus has given the entire “second half” of the Decalogue which detail proper behavior toward other people.

Here we have a moral checklist of sorts to reveal to us the standard of goodness which God expects of his people.

Jesus agrees with what was taught in the Scriptures.

Those who obey God’s laws will live.

“/You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD/” (Leviticus 18:5).

God has not hidden from us what he expects of us.

He expects of us what is true of him.

The obedience that God demands is not based on arbitrary laws.

Neither are God’s laws first for the ordering of society.

They are first a revelation of God.

They are given to show us his standard of goodness that he expects us to follow.

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Why we rebel against God’s standard

This is why the Bible says that God’s laws are good (Rom 7:12).

God’s laws are good because he is good and the laws of God are a revelation of God.

To the extent that we can see that we should have no problem agreeing with the psalmist when he said, “Oh how I love your law!

It is my meditation all the day” (Psa 119:97).

But we are more likely to rebel against God’s laws than we are to keep them.

Why is that?

It’s because we do not desire God.

Our depraved hearts have an appetite for sin rather than for God’s goodness.

We instinctively believe that God is not good and that what will truly satisfy us is something other than God.

Sometimes we rebel blatantly by doing what God forbids.

But that’s not the only way to rebel.

There is another way that is more subtle, and it is pictured for us in this rich man.

Having heard Jesus refer to the commandments of God, he proclaimed, “all these I have kept from my youth.”

(v.

20).

This was not an exaggeration.

The Jews did not think that the commandments of God were an impossible standard.

It was believed that people could keep the entire law and thus be found blameless in God’s sight.

The Apostle Paul himself claimed that as a Pharisee he had not failed to attain the righteousness of the law, being found blameless according to its demands (Phil 3:6).

This man believes he has been obedient to what God has commanded.

Yet he remains unsure that this is enough.

He asks, “what must I do to inherit eternal life” because he is concerned that all that he has done will not be sufficient to satisfy God’s demands.

Jesus does not challenge this man’s claim to righteousness by the law.

And he does not question the man’s sincere desire to be right with God.