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South Bay SDA Church

Eric Nelson

How God Deals With the Rich

As mentioned, excuse me, and as you probably saw in the bulletin, our sermon title is How God Deals With Rich People.

And It was not my choice of a topic, it was assigned.

So our topic next week is how God deals with poor people.

And Eric Flickinger is going to be holding forth on that topic.

I don't know what he's going to do with his topic.

I assume he'll do something similar to what I'm going to do here at the beginning, which is make sure everybody knows that you're included.

A patient of mine, so you're all going to be rich today and I'll explain how.

Maybe we'll all be poor next week so that we can get something out of the sermon.

A patient of mine gave me a book that I loved reading.

It was a great book for a colorectal surgeon.

And the subtitle was, I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was getting across the idea that this is a very, very important topic, how we deal with human waste.

You can imagine what the book went over, but I loved the book.

Out of that book I've come to a realization about wealth.

Here's my definition of what makes someone rich for our purposes this morning.

If you have access to a working toilet, you are rich.

And that's more important than you might think when it comes to all the diseases that afflict our world.

So if you have access to a working toilet, you are rich.

So I'm pretty sure that catches most of you.

There's a toilet right out there if you, you know, and that 1 counts as a working toilet.

Again, compared to the entire world, it's a smaller percentage than you might imagine that has access to a working toilet.

So with that introduction, now that you all know you're rich, what we're going to do today is study a story and a parable.

Because the question is, how does Jesus deal with people who are rich?

Okay, you might remember there's a story about a rich young man who came to Jesus and we're gonna study how Jesus dealt with him.

Take your Bibles, everybody get out your Bible.

We're just gonna talk through the story today.

There's a parallel account in Luke chapter 18 and Mark chapter 10.

I'll draw on those very briefly, but you guys can stay in your Bibles right there in Matthew chapter 19.

Before we study God's word, let's pray together.

Dear Jesus, I ask that this story of scripture will say something to each 1 of us today, help us to learn a lesson of how you deal with us, how you want us to deal with others, and a lesson about your kingdom.

Notice the context, and it's the same context in both Mark and Luke.

What happens right before this rich young ruler comes to Jesus?

And based on the fact that this rich young ruler among the Jews is willing to come to Jesus openly as opposed to Nicodemus for instance it makes me think he probably saw Jesus blessing the children and it kind of touched his heart.

It's like, man, that rabbi's got something that I need.

He loves the children and in his heart, there was like this love kindled for Jesus and he desired to be his disciple.

He was so deeply moved that as Jesus is just kind of walking away, he runs after him, he kneels down, and he asks probably the most important question ever, right?

What good work shall I do that I might have eternal life?" The King James Version.

What struck me about this story is that if you went to pretty much any church in this area, probably including our church, and you went and you met with the pastor and you said, pastor, what do I need to do to be saved?

Do you think you'd get the same answer Jesus gave?

Even at our church, this is probably not what I would lead with, right?

This is not the answer that I would give.

And to be fair, Jesus was asked the same question in slightly different words in John 3 by Nicodemus and John 6 by lots of other people.

And I believe they're all parallel and related.

But in this situation, what does Jesus say?

Verse 17, if you want to enter life, do what?

It seems to me that the character of God is expressed in his law.

And if you want to be in harmony with God, you're gonna be in harmony with his law.

Jesus does not lessen the claims of God's law.

I mean, he just says right out, if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.

He doesn't lessen the obligation of the 10 Commandments.

The conditions of eternal life are exactly what the same, are exactly the same now as they were in Eden.

Now all of the Sabbath school classes here are studying the covenants.

And it just struck me that this type of answer, it might, it makes me a little bit uncomfortable to hear it expressed that way.

I mean, Jesus doesn't make mistakes, right?

But it does seem there's a little bit of a difference in the old covenant and the new covenant, right?

The biggest difference in the old covenant and the new covenant is not the law, however.

You might remember under the old covenant, probably best expressed in Exodus 24, 7, the people heard the 10 commandments.

Yeah, probably on an individual level, probably even less than those 40 days.

You probably have some experience in your personal life with this idea that human promises to do right are a little bit like ropes of sand.

In the new covenant who makes the promise?

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How God Deals With the Rich

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