How Can We Be Saved?

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If you ask most people if they wanted to go to heaven, or if you ask people if they wanted to go to heaven, I think most people would give the same answer. Of course they do. I mean, why would you not?

But if you asked a group of people the question, how do you plan on going about getting there? What you’d find is not only would they not all have the same answer, but there would be tons of different answers. How do you think you’ll get to heaven?

How do you get saved? The world doesn’t have the answer to that question nailed down. The world at large does not know.

They hope they’ll go to heaven, but in the end they have no idea how they’ll get there. And so there are lots of people that struggle with the question, well, how can I be saved? If you think long and hard about it, you may not even need to think long and hard about it, But I would wager that everybody in here knows somebody who would ask that question.

I don’t know how I’d be saved. How would I be saved? Some of you in this room today may be wondering the same thing.

You may have that same question. As you’ve come here and you’ve listened to us for weeks talk about salvation, but you’re still a little unclear on how to get there. How can I be saved?

And this is not a new question. It’s not something that people just started asking. People have been asking this question all along.

One man went and asked Jesus the very same question. As we’ve been looking through some of the questions. Again, we’ve done this for four weeks.

There are a lot more than four questions that people asked Jesus. If you get beyond actual technical questions and you go so far as to say the things that people said to Jesus when they were wanting an answer, but they were trying not to ask him the question, and he gave them an answer anyway. There are tons of those, tons of questioning statements and actual questions in the New Testament.

And we’ve had time to look at only four of them. And so I’ve gone with what I thought were some of the most important and some of the ones that were still the most relevant today. And I think this is the most important question of all.

How can I be saved? And if you haven’t already turned with me there to Luke chapter 18, we’re going to look at this question this morning. The book of Luke is the third book of the New Testament.

If you find Matthew, turn back Matthew, Mark, Luke. If you get to John, you’ve gone too far. It’s about two-thirds of the way through your Bible.

The book of Luke, chapter 18, and we’re going to start looking at verse 18 of chapter 18. And verse 18 says, And a certain ruler asked him, now he’s asking of Jesus, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? This was a Jewish ruler.

It wasn’t one of the Romans. We know that because a Roman wouldn’t have necessarily called him good master. That word master is the word rabbi.

It also means teacher. But if you took somebody as your rabbi, you were going to follow them and live under their authority. So those words are kind of interchangeable there.

And he calls him good master. So this was a Jewish ruler, possibly a judge, maybe a ruler of the synagogue. but it’s somebody who was in a position of authority, and he approached Jesus.

Now, we see this story also in the books of Matthew and Mark, and each one of them record the details just a little bit differently. It doesn’t mean they contradict one another. It means, you know, if you have three people that witnessed the same event, we’re all going to remember different details of those events.

If I talked about what we did yesterday, what happened at my house yesterday, if I was going to tell you a story about what happened at my house, I’d probably talk about putting together the fire pit for Wednesday. Benjamin would probably talk about the Lunchable that he was given for lunch. Madeline might talk about reading books and jumping on the trampoline.

It doesn’t mean that two of us are wrong and one is right. It means we’re all talking about the same events that took place, but different details stand out to us. So Matthew tells a little bit different detail about the story where Mark says he approached Jesus.

Matthew goes into detail. I’m sorry, where Luke says he approached Jesus. Mark goes into a little bit more detail.

And in Mark 10, 17, it says he chased Jesus down. This is a paraphrase, but he says he chased Jesus down and knelt before him. So this wasn’t something like we’ve seen in some of the other questions where the Pharisees and scribes were trying to trip Jesus up.

This is somebody who came to Jesus really wanting an answer because he valued Jesus’ opinion. So he knelt down before him, and this wasn’t to worship him. This was just a show of respect, again, to somebody that he considered to be a knowledgeable rabbi.

And when he gets to Jesus, he asks him, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And see, he understands this well in part because he says, inherit. He realizes that eternal life is a gift from God.

It’s something that God gives us out of his grace and out of his kindness. Something that we inherit. So what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?

What he’s asking is, what do I have to do to be saved? What do I have to do for God to give me that gift? He asked Jesus what he had to do to be saved.

And this was somebody who was well-versed in the Old Testament scriptures, but he wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. He wanted to hear what Jesus’ answer was. And so he came to Jesus and asked him, How can I be saved?

And so we go to look at verse 19. And in verses 19 and 20 it says, And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one that is God.

Thou knowest the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not kill, Do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor thy father and thy mother. So Jesus asked the man why he would call him good. Because if you look at the previous verse, he had called him good master.

So he said, why are you calling me good? There’s nobody who’s good except God. And now some people who do not believe that Jesus Christ is God have taken this passage out of context and said, see, there’s proof right there he’s saying he’s not God.

No, no, no, because there are other places in the Gospels where he very clearly says that he and his father are one. He tells the Pharisees that before Abraham was, I am. He’s identifying himself as the God of the Old Testament.

What he’s saying here is not, hey, I’m not God, so you shouldn’t call me good. But he knew he was talking to somebody who did not recognize him as God. So in this man’s mind, he knows he’s not God.

He says, so why then would you call me good? because there’s nobody who lives up to God’s standard of goodness. There’s nobody who’s as good as God.

Why would you call somebody good when you believe that they’re a mere man? And so, again, it’s not Jesus saying, I’m not God. It’s Jesus challenging this man’s perception of what is good and saying no mere human being can be good.

He’s already hinting at the answer here. This was Jesus’ way of pointing out that nobody is good by God’s standards. There’s no man who’s good in God’s sight.

And so he reminded the man then that living up to God’s standards meant living up to the commandments perfectly. He brings in the commandments here. He told him, you know what the commandments are.

You know what they say. And if we look at Matthew’s account of this story in Matthew 19, 18, it says the man asked him which commandments. When Jesus says, you’ve heard the commandments, you know the commandments, the man asks him, okay, which ones are the really important ones to keep?

Isn’t that kind of a silly idea? I mean, it’s one thing for them to come and ask Jesus, what’s the most important? But here, he’s wanting to divide them into two categories.

These are the ones you need to worry about, and these are the ones you don’t need to worry about. As though God would command us, as though God would give us a command that we didn’t need to be concerned with. And I feel like he’s doing what a lot of people try to do today and practice a cafeteria religion.

You know what I mean by that? It’s been years since I’ve been to a cafeteria. But I remember as a kid going to Luby’s in the city, and I loved that.

I was old before my time. I loved going to eat at the cafeteria with my parents. Because you could pick whatever, you go through the line and there are all these kinds of food, and you pick your main course and you pick whatever side you want, And you get to pick a dessert.

And you just get to pick and choose whatever you want. I love that. It’s great.

But it doesn’t really work with God’s commands. To go to the Bible and say, oh, I like this one. I’m going to follow this one.

Oh, that one’s difficult. We’ll put it in the maybe pile. It doesn’t work that way.

It shouldn’t work that way. I think we try to make it work that way. I think that’s human nature.

But it really doesn’t. There should be things. There should be things.

Hear me on this. There should be things in God’s word that make you uncomfortable. and you think, oh, that’s no fun to follow.

And then we do it anyway. Because if everything God is asking you to do is something you want to do, if God never asks you to do anything that’s outside of your own will, then you’re not worshiping the God of the Bible. Because all the time he gives commands that are not things that we would do otherwise.

But this man is trying to pick and choose. And we can’t pick and choose. It all matters.

And the book of James tells us that if we transgress in one area of the law, we’ve broken the whole law. I mean, we can say, oh, I haven’t murdered anybody. I’ve just told a little lie.

Well, it doesn’t matter. You’ve broken the whole law. Okay?

So we don’t get to just pick and choose. So what Jesus does, instead of answering this question and saying, well, you know, these are important, these are not, Jesus lists a few of the commandments. Now, he doesn’t list these because these are the super important ones and none of the others really matter.

He lists these because I think he’s setting up the conversation for where it’s going to go next. He reminded him of several commandments. He said, don’t commit adultery, don’t murder, don’t steal. He lists these in verse 20.

Don’t steal, don’t lie about people, honor your father and mother. All of these things are, all of these are commandments that involve the way we treat others. In Matthew 19, 19, where it’s Matthew telling this story, he goes on to say that Jesus reminded him of the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

All of these deal with outward things, the way we treat one another. You know, it’s really easy not to kill people. I know some people seem to have trouble with that, but for me it’s always been easy not to kill people.

You just don’t go kill people, and that takes care of it. It’s really easy to not go out and have an affair. You just don’t go have an affair.

You know, I’ve teased my wife for a long time. She knows I’m not going to do this anyway, but I’ve told her, I will never cheat on you because it seems like a lot of work. That’s not the only reason, all right?

It’s not the only reason. But I hear about these guys that try to have an affair on the side, and they have to lie, and they have to cover their tracks, and they have to keep everything. I don’t have the energy for that.

There are much better reasons not to have an affair. But that definitely is a mark against having an affair. It just seems like a lot of work.

It’s a lot easier just to be faithful. It’s easy not to steal things. I go to Walmart and I just don’t shove things in my pocket and leave without paying for it.

All of these are things that it’s pretty easy not to do. You can accomplish these things without a lot of effort. And what we’re going to see is that this passage doesn’t mean that we earn our way to heaven by being good.

That’s not what Jesus is saying here. He’s leading the man to a place where the man will say, yeah, I’ve done all that. That’s great.

I must be perfect. Because Jesus has listed all these commandments that, again, I think are pretty easy, at least in their outward interpretation. Now, Jesus says, if you’re angry with somebody without cause, you might as well have committed murder.

If you’ve lusted after somebody that you’re not married to, you might as well have committed adultery. So the inward keeping of these commandments is not as easy. But again, the outward keeping of these commandments, hey, I’ve done all of that.

Outwardly, I’m just right there with this ruler, because I’ve not done these things either. But the condition of the heart is a different thing. And that’s where Jesus wants this conversation to go.

So that’s where he leads the man. And his point in all of this is that God’s standard is absolute perfection. If we’re looking to earn our way into heaven, if we’re looking to do things to get into heaven, God’s standard is absolute perfection.

If you want to get into heaven on your own merits, that’s what it takes, absolute perfection. And the point is that God, because this is God’s standard, nobody can live up to it perfectly. So we look at verse 21.

the man says he said in all these things all these have I kept from my youth up all these have I kept from my youth up ever since I was a little boy I’ve done all of these things perfectly I think he’s probably feeling pretty good at this moment because he’s asked Jesus what do I have to do to inherit eternal life, what do I have to do to be saved Jesus says well you know what the commandments are well which ones, well you know these, don’t commit adultery don’t steal, don’t murder, all that And he says, oh, good, I’ve done all of that. I’ve kept all that really well. I’ve been a good boy.

Because he had followed these big commandments outwardly, he thought he was a good person. He seems to have missed what Jesus said before about no man being good. But because he had kept these big commandments outwardly, he thought he was a good person.

And we see a lot of that today, too. We think that because, well, I don’t steal and I don’t kill people and I go to church on Sunday and I keep my nose clean, I must be a good person. That’s not God’s standard of what’s a good person.

And he was only looking at the outward behavior, ignoring the fact that nobody can live up to God’s standards. Sometimes, he’s just like us, sometimes we think that our goodness is good enough, and God’s word is abundantly clear that it’s not. So now let’s look at verse 22.

Did I get the wrong verse? No, verse 22. Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing, Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.

And come, follow me. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful, for he was rich. He was very rich.

And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, that’s my mascot this morning. I know y’all think he’s adorable, but I can’t remember where I was when he’s up here. I’m wondering what he’s doing.

Moving into verse 23. Thank you, my lovely assistant, ladies and gentlemen. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful, for he was very rich.

And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. All right, this is not an alternate plan of salvation.

You need to understand this. This is not an alternate plan of salvation that he’s presenting here where we can buy our way to heaven. The plan of salvation is not go give all your money to the poor or go sell all your stuff and give the money to the poor and go to heaven.

Because he calls the man to give up his stuff and follow Jesus. This conversation, the whole point of this conversation, is that it was designed to show the man that he wasn’t nearly as godly as he thought he was. I need that to be very clear.

Don’t walk out of here this morning thinking, if I just give all my money to the poor, or if I give more money to the church, then I’ll get into heaven. No, the point of that conversation is to let the man know, is to lead the man to the point of realization that he is not nearly as godly as he thinks he is. And Jesus pointed out the great imperfection that he had.

I’m sure it wasn’t his only sin, but Jesus pointed out the big problem at this point. This man loved his money too much. He loved his money too much.

And now you and I might think that that’s no big deal. As far as our hierarchy of sins go, that’s a pretty small one. You don’t hear many messages from preachers about people loving their money too much unless the preacher is saying, so you need to show that you don’t and give more to the church. That’s not where this message is going this morning either.

That’s not one of the big sins, is it? I mean, there’s murder, there’s adultery, there’s all these other things. Loving your money too much, we don’t hear, we don’t, you know, there’s not much of a social stigma attached to that.

And so we think it’s not a big sin, but it was a big enough sin that it kept this man from reaching God’s standard of absolute perfection. God’s standard is absolute sinless perfection, and 99. 9% good doesn’t cut it.

I remember a man giving an illustration one time in a lesson he was teaching to some teenagers, where he talked about fixing somebody their favorite dinner. You know, I think in his example, it was a roast chicken, and there were green beans, and mashed potatoes and salad and all the fixings. It was just beautiful.

And about somebody wanting to eat that. Okay, imagine somebody fixing your favorite dinner and they’ve just done it to perfection. And you would just sit down and be so hungry and ready to eat that.

And then he gave the example of taking, you know, one of those little quarter teaspoon measuring cups or measuring spoons and going into the garbage disposal, scooping out just a little bit of that, whatever’s down there, I don’t want to know. But whatever’s down there, and just sprinkling that little bit on the plate. You’re done, aren’t you?

Some of y’all look like you’re not even going to want to eat lunch now. I can preach all afternoon, I guess. Nobody wants to eat that, but it’s still 99% the good food.

It doesn’t matter. There’s that little bit of ick there, and it spoils the whole plate. And that’s how God’s standard is with us.

It doesn’t matter if we’re 99% righteous. That little 1% of sin, might as well throw the whole thing out. And not that God does throw us all out, but it means as far as living up to God’s standards, we just can’t.

And so this man, he might have thought it was not a big sin. We might even think it’s not a big sin. He loves his money too much.

But it showed that he had a heart problem and that he was not as godly as he thought he was. Because he loved his money, first of all, more than his neighbor. He wasn’t willing to go help the poor with his money.

He loved his money more than his neighbor. where he’s fallen short of the second greatest commandment there. And he also loved his money more than God, because Jesus told him, make your treasure be in heaven, and come follow me.

And he wasn’t willing to do those things. So he was not loving the Lord as God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, was he? No, because there was too much of an attachment to that money.

His money was an idol. His money had become an idol for him. And he knew that no matter how good he appeared to be, that that idol, that money, kept him from loving God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and his neighbor as himself.

And for us, it may be a different issue. If Jesus were to have this conversation with us, he might not say, give up all your money and give it to the poor, but he might say, he might name something else. See, anything can be an idol.

An idol is not a statue necessarily, as we tend to think of it. An idol is anything we love so much that it causes us to neglect the two greatest commandments. It’s anything that we love so much that it detracts from our love for God and our love for the people that God loves.

An idol can be anything that does that. And so this man went away sad because he was unwilling to give up his riches for any reason. Even for his love for God, he was unwilling to give up his riches for any reason.

And his unwillingness that Jesus had so skillfully He pulled back the mask and he had exposed this unwillingness that dwelt in this man’s heart. It showed the man something he didn’t like about himself. It revealed something in the man’s heart that he didn’t like.

And that was the fact that he obviously did not meet God’s standards. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

And he told Jesus then, because the man went away sad, Jesus told his disciples that it’s hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Those who are unwilling, they have so much that they’re unwilling to detach from their own idols and their own self-worth and their own self-righteousness and admit their need for God. Now Jesus is talking about somebody who’s rich in possessions, but we can be rich in other things that will keep us from admitting our need for God.

We can be rich in our own self-righteousness. And there was some of that with this man too. He thought he was good enough.

Sometimes the people who behave the best have the hardest time admitting their need for a Savior. Sometimes the ones who behave the best are the ones who are most resistant to the gospel because we think, I’ve got this. Surely God must love me because I behave.

I do the right thing all the time. And I want to be very clear on this too. Not only is this passage not saying that we get to heaven by giving our money, that that’s some alternate plan of salvation.

The passage is also not saying, you know what, try harder. Do better. Be a better person.

Keep the commandments. Then God will love you and He’ll let you into heaven. That is not what this passage is saying.

This passage is teaching us that we can’t. That when we get that thought in mind that, hey, if I can just be better, if I can just work harder, if I can just do the right thing, that somehow God will love me. If that’s the standard you’re trying to use to get into heaven, if that’s the basis of your hope, You’ve got to understand that on that basis, none of us measure up because God’s standard is not just harder and better and good enough.

God’s standard is absolute 100% sinless perfection. And none of us measure up to that. I don’t measure up to it and you don’t.

So we look at verse 26 because if we just left it off here, it seems kind of hopeless. How none of us measure up. But his disciples asked a second question.

You get a two for one today on these questions for Jesus. His disciples seeing all this, and Jesus said, you know, it’s so hard for them to, and I could spend time talking about the camel going through the eye of the needle. That’s incredible.

But Jesus is saying it’s basically impossible for somebody with so much, with these idols, it’s basically impossible for somebody to enter the kingdom because they will never measure up. And they don’t even recognize that they don’t measure up. And so the disciples see this, and I think they got a little worried.

And so in verse 26, we see that they asked, it says, and they that heard it said, who then can be saved? See, they’re looking at the man who came to Jesus and looked the part. He looked like somebody that would be going to heaven.

He acted like somebody who would be going to heaven. And they see that he’s walked away and he’s not in the kingdom. And they say, wait a minute, if he can’t be saved, how can anyone be saved?

And that’s the second question. How can any of us be saved? the disciples wondered if a man like that who’s moral who’s upstanding he’s a pillar of the community type if he can’t be saved what chance do any of us have and the answer is it’s impossible see some things you look at it and you say well he can’t do it then it’s impossible for me a few years ago I had a I had an old zero turn riding lawnmower I think it’s one of the first ones they ever made and it came over either on the mayflower or the ark I see brother ken smiling because he remembers this lawnmower.

It was so old that the steering mechanism had some kind of weird disc thing underneath it that looked like it was carved out of stone, like you’ve seen the Easter Island statues. And these weird discs, and I had taken it to Brother Ken once because it was only, you know, it’s just making one big circle counterclockwise. I said, okay, something needs to be tightened up.

And I had taken it to him and he had tightened it up and it went for, you know, six months or more after that. And I started noticing it was getting really hard to turn certain directions. I said, it must need to be tightened up again, but I don’t want to bother Brother Ken every time I have an issue with this lawnmower because it is, you know, 1,400 years old at this point.

It’s going to have problems. I need to learn to do some of this myself. So I took it over to him and I said, can you show me how to tighten this up? Now, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know if you describe yourself this way, but as far as I’m concerned, Brother Ken is an expert on things like this.

Some of you are shaking your heads. I’m not alone in this thought. He’s an expert.

So I take this to him, and he’s going to show me, and we get in there, and these things are so old, and they’re just wearing out. There’s no fixing them, unless I’m just going to take the whole thing apart, and I’m going to put new ones, and they don’t even make new ones. They haven’t made new of whatever this thing is since the 70s.

and I’m looking at it and saying, so do you think you can do anything with it? And he said, well, I really don’t think so. And I thought, I wanted him to show me so that I could do this, but if he can’t do it, if Ken Jackson can’t fix this thing, what hope do I have?

Because I barely, I mean, I mess with cars and I work on my car, but I’m really just feeling my way around blindly. if he can’t do it what hope do I have and I had to acknowledge that the answer was it’s impossible it’s impossible for me to fix this thing so I gave it away to somebody who thought he could mess with it and maybe he did but it was impossible for me and that’s sort of where they were where I was looking at Ken and saying my goodness he knows more about this than I’ll learn in six lifetimes and he can’t do it, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do this. They were looking at the rich young ruler the same way and saying, if this guy who’s so moral and so upstanding, he’s a pillar of the community, he’s got his whole life together, if he’s not good enough to get into the kingdom, what hope do we have?

What hope do us little people have? And so they asked Jesus, how can anybody be saved? Verse 27, and he said, the things which are impossible with men.

Keep that word in impossible, it’s impossible for us to be good enough to get into the kingdom. He said, the things which are impossible with men are possible with God. The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.

The answer here is that noneof us can save ourselves. It’s impossible. You and I cannot be good enough to get into to the kingdom.

You and I cannot keep enough commandments to get into the kingdom. You and I cannot do so much good that we’re going to be ushered into the kingdom on the basis of our own goodness. The best people that we know do not measure up.

And I’m sure we’ve all met people that we’ve thought, you know, if God was going to let somebody in for being good and being sweet and being a good Christian, they’d be in for sure. Even they don’t measure up. Ms.

Kay, you’re one of the sweetest people I know. I know you told me last week, oh, I’m so impatient. I’ve never seen that.

I know this doesn’t hurt your feelings to tell you, or I hope it doesn’t, but you don’t measure up, even as sweet as you are. Madeline, you’re a sweet little girl. You don’t measure up to God’s standard of perfection, though.

I think about some of the little old ladies that I’ve pastored over the years that have been so sweet and just prayer warriors and just so spiritual, and they don’t measure up. And I watch of the old videos of Billy Graham, and we think, man, that guy was just right here close to God. He didn’t measure up.

None of us measure up. The best people we know don’t measure up. It is impossible for us to live up to God’s standards.

And so the question is, if the most righteous among us cannot measure up, how can any of us be saved? What hope do the rest of us have? It’s impossible for us to save ourselves.

But there at the end of verse 27, Jesus points out the hope that we have. The things that are impossible with men are possible with God. See, this whole exercise, this whole lesson that the man was supposed to understand and the disciples were supposed to understand was that he could not be good enough to save himself.

It was impossible, but God could do the saving. God can do the saving. It’s impossible for you to save yourself this morning.

It’s impossible for you to earn your way into the kingdom this morning, but it’s entirely possible for God to do the saving. It’s entirely possible for God to bring you into the kingdom. Now, how does that happen?

It happens because Jesus purchased our way in. You and I don’t have enough righteousness on our own, and we have too much sin. But Jesus paid for our sin in full, and he imparts his righteousness to us.

See, Jesus died on the cross. He was nailed there, taking responsibility for our sins. And he shed his blood, taking responsibility for our sins.

And h