A Test for Hidden Idols

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I’ve been hearing some of our students here at the church talk about taking their ACTs. I don’t know who has or when or if they still are going to, but I know that it’s been a topic of discussion, and it made me think about taking my ACTs years and years ago, years ago, more years than I realized until my wife reminded me yesterday of how old I was. But I thought I was so prepared for these tests.

We would take practice tests at school, and I would think, I am ready. And I don’t remember if it was the ACT or the SAT. I took them both.

But one of them, I walked in and I was super confident about how I was going to do on this test. And I think we did the English part first, and I nailed it. I think I missed, when I got the results back, I missed one thing on the whole test in the English part. But you come to the math portion of the book, and I thought, I’ve done okay in math, and I open it up and there is stuff that I have never seen before, let alone studied.

There was stuff with triangles, and I thought, well, I did well in geometry. They’re telling me to solve for the tangent, and what, like a fruit? What is that?

Tangerine, that’s a joke. I know it’s not actually a fruit, but I thought, what is this stuff? There was stuff in there that I could not decipher.

And by the way, I’ve seen studies that say most people’s brains are not well enough developed to do higher level math until they’re in their 30s. So I’m not sure why we’re teaching it in high school. But I’ve seen scientific studies on this, and I thought, well, that made perfect sense because when I became a teacher, I got hired on to teach French and Bible, and they said, oh yeah, you’re going to teach math too.

What? And some of this stuff, I looked at it as the first time in my whole life it ever made sense. I was in my 30s.

But I walked into this test thinking I was going to ace this test and saw stuff I had never seen before. And that is not the time in your life where you want to see stuff for the first time, is when you’re taking the ACT or SAT. And I’m sorry to say that my math grade dragged that number down.

Imagine now an even greater test an even more important test than that. A test that deals with your standing with God. What your relationship with God is and is going to be.

And imagine walking into that test thinking that you’re prepared to ace it. You’re just going to knock it out of the park. Everything’s going to be great.

And then realizing there is stuff on the test that you have not prepared for. You have never seen this. You’ve never understood this.

And imagine the feeling of sitting there knowing you are failing this test as it’s going on. There’s a young man that we’re going to look at a story about him talking to Jesus who was in this situation where he comes up to Jesus and talks to Jesus and Jesus gives him a test that is going to determine or at least is going to diagnose where he stands with God. And he comes in so very confident only to walk away defeated because he failed the test. And I believe the reason why this story is in the New Testament for us is to help us prepare so that we don’t make the same mistakes that he made and so that we don’t fail the test in the same way.

So we’re going to be in Mark chapter 10 to look at this story tonight. Mark chapter 10, Jesus encounters a man who’s confident he’s going to pass and realizes he’s completely unprepared. If you haven’t already, turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 10.

If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find it, it’ll be on the screen. Making sure I actually got it up there for you. It’ll be on the screen, and if you’re able to, if you’d stand as we read from God’s Word together.

We’re going to start in verse 17 tonight and go through verse 27. Here’s what he says. Now as he was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before him, and asked him, Good teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is God. And I’ll explain that in just a moment.

Some people get hung up on that verse. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery.

Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud.

Honor your father and your mother. And he answered and said to him, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, One thing you lack.

Go your way. Sell whatever you have and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven.

And come, take up the cross and follow me. But he was sad at this word and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How hard is it for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God?

And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, Children, how hard is it for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were greatly astonished, saying among themselves, who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said, with men it is impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are possible. And you may be seated.

The first thing we need to understand from this passage is actually what we see toward the end of the passage, and that is that it is impossible to get to heaven on our own. That’s ultimately what we learn from the story of Jesus’ encounter with this man. We call him the rich young ruler.

We know some of the Gospels describe him as a ruler. Some of them describe him as young. They all say that he had a great number of possessions, and so we’ve put it together over the years and call him the rich young ruler.

As Jesus deals with him, he explains so this man can understand and explains to his disciples from this story that it is impossible to get to heaven on our own. If we look at verses 23 and 24, where Jesus said, how hard is it for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were astonished at his words.

If you understand why they’re astonished, the rest of this story makes more sense. The disciples were shocked because in their culture, riches were seen as a sign of God’s favor. It was assumed that if you were rich, you must be right with God.

Now in our culture, everybody wants to be rich, but the culture as a whole has kind of demonized the rich. That’s why a lot of our villains in our stories are these super rich guys. Somebody’s super rich, we think, who did they step on?

Who did they kill to get there? In their society, it wasn’t that way, although a lot of these guys may have been into some shady dealings. It was assumed that if you were rich, that meant God had blessed you.

It meant God had prospered you. And because of their interpretations of the Old Testament law, if God had prospered you in material things, it must mean you were highly favored of God, that somehow you were more right with God than the one who was poor. And so when this man comes to Jesus with all these possessions, they would look at it as he’s got it all together.

He must have this connection with God because look at how God has blessed him. And so when Jesus said somebody with these kind of riches, how hard it is for him to enter the kingdom of God, it says they were astonished and no wonder. And so Jesus had taken what the culture said about what it means to be right with God and he flipped it upside down.

By the way, being poor doesn’t get you right with God either. But he was taking their assumption that if you were rich, you must be right with God. And he turned that upside down.

And if we had something along those lines, well, we might say, if you’re a really moral person, oh, he must be right with God. Or he goes to church every week, he must be right with God. If Jesus were having this conversation with somebody today, he might say, how hard is it for a moral person to get to heaven?

And by the way, there’s some truth in that statement. If you have morality separated from the gospel, sometimes if a man is living a life that’s upright from an outward perspective, it’s that much harder to get him to see his sin and his need for Christ. So Jesus says it’s hard for them to enter the kingdom, a man like this who’s rich. But we move to verse 24.

It says, but Jesus answered again and said to them, this is after they’re shocked, they’re astonished at his words. He answered again and says to them the same thing, only he clarifies it a little bit. What he’s doing here is making sure they understand, hey, I didn’t just blurt that out.

I meant what I said. But also he gives them a little more information because he’s not just saying, how hard is it for a rich man to get into heaven? He says, how hard is it for those who trust in riches?

There’s a little bit extra to the puzzle. It’s not because they’re rich that it’s hard for them to get into heaven. It’s because when they have lots of stuff, they tend to trust in that lots of stuff instead of relying on God.

He’s clarifying why it was difficult. It’s not that God hates the rich. It’s not that wealth in and of itself is evil.

By the way, that gets misquoted from the Scriptures quite often. Money is not the root of all evil. What is?

The love of money. It’s not that he had riches. It’s that he was trusting in those riches.

His heart was attached to those riches. People who have a lot of stuff are more likely to trust in their stuff. And when somebody trusts in his stuff, it’s hard to convince him to move his faith elsewhere.

You know, if you’ve got everything you need, you think, materially, and somebody comes along telling you about the one who can meet your greatest need, you tend to think, but I don’t need anything. And therein lies the problem. So he says in verse 25, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Now, people have spilled or maybe wasted a lot of ink over the centuries trying to explain this verse. I have seen reports where people have talked about, well, there was a gate in Jerusalem called the Needle’s Eye, and to get through you had to kneel, and so Jesus is talking about repentance or humility. That’s a good story, but I’ve not found any historical evidence of any such gate.

Plus, humility doesn’t get us to heaven, right? It’s a step in the right direction as far as bringing us to a place of being willing to trust in Christ, But humility in and of itself doesn’t get us there. I went and looked at some of what they call the early church fathers.

And there was probably a time in my life where if a preacher had stood up and said, you know, I was reading Origen and Tertullian, I would have looked at him sideways. Wait, the Catholics read those things, and that’s where they get some of their conclusions from. As I was working on my dissertation on the resurrection, I started looking at the early church fathers and have gotten really fascinated with them from a historical standpoint.

I look at them and they’re not any more authoritative than anybody else. You know, just because, like, I read John MacArthur doesn’t mean I have to agree with John MacArthur on everything. I can read Irenaeus and Tertullian and I might get some insight from them, but I don’t have to agree with them on everything.

My authority is right here. So, you know, these are just men, but still they have some interesting historical perspectives for us. Some of them on this verse, though, and I’m trying to remember who was who and all the things that I looked at, and some of the names escaped me, but one said, well, it was a misspelling.

It’s off by one word, the word for camel and the word for rope. So it’d be like a rope going through the eye of a needle. Theoretically possible, but really, really difficult.

I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s right. Somebody else said, and I get where he’s going, but I think he’s working too hard to get there, said, well, a camel, you know, is crooked and the eye of the needle is straight and it harkens back to what Jesus said about the straight and narrow way.

And once again, I get where he’s going, but I think he’s working too hard to force a meaning into it. I looked at what somebody else said and I thought, that’s dead on. I even came out of my office and asked Stella, I said, am I making this too easy?

Am I making this too simple, what he’s saying about the eye of the needle and the camel? Because I feel like Jesus gives us the explanation when he says it is impossible with man. From a human standpoint, it’s impossible.

And so when he says it is easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle, I think he’s talking about a camel going through the eye of a needle. You say, well, that doesn’t make sense. Exactly, it can’t happen.

And he goes on to say it’s impossible. So I said all that to say for years and years, I think people have worked really hard to make sense of what he’s saying with the camel in the eye of the needle, or the camel through the eye of the needle, but we’re missing it. It’s really simple and it’s right there in front of us.

He’s saying you can’t do it. You can’t get there. Might as well not even try.

Despite everything this rich man has to boast about, Jesus said it is impossible for him to enter the kingdom on his own. Try sometime getting a camel through the eye of a needle. not even picturing and not even thinking just about their size.

I’ve watched Magi. She’s a toddler, right? She throws tantrums and gives George fits.

It’d be like trying to shove a toddler through the eye of a needle, right? You can’t, you can’t do it. I can barely get thread through the eye of a needle.

He’s saying it’s impossible. And so they were greatly astonished in verse 26. They understood this.

He’s saying it’s impossible. And they’re looking at this saying, wait, Jesus, you just said some of the best people we know, some of the people that we are surest have God’s favor, they can’t get into heaven. So it says they’re astonished, greatly astonished, and saying among themselves, who then can be saved?

They’re looking around going, if that guy’s not getting in, what chance do we have? They understood this. If those who seem to have the favor of God, if those who have all the marks of being the right people can’t get in, what hope do Nobody’s like you and I have.

And that’s where Jesus looks at them in verse 27 and says, With men it is impossible, but not with God. For with God all things are possible. Only with God is our salvation possible.

Because you and I can’t get there on our own. We can’t get there by being good. We can’t get there by being religious.

We can’t get there by doing all the outward things that it looks like we should be doing. But the question that should come to our minds then is why? Why is it beyond our capabilities?

Why is this set up where it is impossible for us to get there? And the answer is that even at our best, even at our best, we cannot live up to God’s standards. We see this in verses 19 through 22.

The man came to Jesus asking about eternal life. And at first, it looks like Jesus is just telling him to be good. Mark skips ahead and says, you know the commandments.

Matthew, if you have your handout here, Matthew gives just a little bit more information. What we would see in Mark between 18 and 19, here in 17 and 18 in Matthew 19, he says, but if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. Now this is not saying do good, because his whole point here in everything he said up to now, or everything we’ve looked at at the end of this, is that you can’t be good enough.

Jesus is setting up a hypothetical here. Because this man has come in wanting to earn his way to heaven, what must I do? That was his question.

Do you realize that? That was his question. What must I do?

How can I earn this? And so Jesus sets up the hypothetical and says, okay, if you want to earn this, try keeping all the commandments. And it’s a hypothetical because we’re not ever able to do that.

But if his question is, what do I do to earn eternal life? His response tells us that if we plan to do it on our own, we have to be perfect. He says, if you’re trying to earn it, you have to earn it perfectly.

Keep the commandments. Keep all of them. And we like to compartmentalize them and say, well, I’ve kept this one really well.

Even if we just focus on the Ten Commandments. We say, well, I kept this one really well. I kept this one really well.

I’ve heard a preacher explain it this way, that we like to look at the Ten Commandments as this shelf with ten plates. And we might have broken one or two of them, but we look at the other eight or nine and say, but look how nice all these are. Which, by the way, even those aren’t all that nice.

But the New Testament teaches us that if we have failed in one point of the law, we’ve failed in the whole thing. It’s one big plate. And if we’ve chipped the plate anywhere, the whole plate is now chipped.

So his answer to the man is, if you want to earn it, you’ve got to keep the commandments. If you were going to do it, you would have to be perfect to do it. And Matthew 19.

18 tells us, the man asked, which ones? See, we want to reduce this to a behavioral checklist. We want to hear, oh, it’s the big commandments you’ve got to keep. You know, don’t murder anybody.

Yeah, I’ve never murdered anybody. Don’t commit adultery. Nope, haven’t done that one.

Haven’t stolen? Well, I mean, I’m sure I took something from somebody in kindergarten. But, you know, I’ve done a pretty good job since, I think.

We want to hear it’s the big ones. We want to reduce it to a checklist that we can keep. A checklist of behaviors.

The man asks, which ones? He’s still missing what Jesus is saying here. You’ve got to be perfect.

But how perfect? Like there’s some wiggle room in this, right? Which ones do I have to keep?

And so we go back to verse 19 here in Mark, and he says, you know the commandments. It kind of sounds to me like, why are you asking me that? You know what it says.

You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.

The man knew what God required. He knew what God’s law said, and he thought he lived up to that. You know, especially when we look at some of these that we think of as the big ones, we say, well, I’ve done a pretty good job.

You know, I have never cheated on my wife. Yet Jesus says there’s a higher standard because it’s not just the outward behavior, it’s the condition of the heart. And that’s where Jesus condemns lust. I have never murdered anybody.

But Jesus said if you’ve ever been angry with somebody unjustly, if you’ve ever hated someone in your heart, the condition of the heart is the same whether you pulled the trigger or not. And just like all the Pharisees, he thought he was doing a good job outwardly. Just like so many religious people today, he thought he was doing a good job outwardly and missed how he fell short even of the big commandments, let alone the little ones.

He thought he lived up to all that. And so he said in verse 20, he answered and said to him, Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. He said, from the time I was a little boy, I’ve done all these things.

I’ve done everything perfectly that the law requires. He thought he’d kept it because he was looking at the external behaviors that go along with holiness rather than looking at what holiness means on the inside. And so Jesus does something here to show him that his heart was wrong.

He took steps to show him here that his heart was actually full of idols, that he thought he’d kept all the commandments, but there were some commandments early on that deal with having no gods before him and not making any idols, and he hadn’t kept those because his heart was full of idols. And so he brings out the test that I talked about just a moment ago. Verse 21, then Jesus looking at him, loved him and said, and by the way, it’s important we understand Jesus is not trying to keep this man out of the kingdom.

He’s trying to show this man where he falls short because it says in verse 21, he loved him. Sometimes God’s answer is to love us enough to tell us the truth. Because if we don’t know the truth, if we don’t know where we stand with him, we’ll never experience the conviction needed to get right with him.

So Jesus looked at him and loved him and said, one thing you lack, go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come take up the cross and follow me. Now, the Bible does teach us to be generous. It does tell us to help the poor.

As far as I’ve found, there’s not a command elsewhere in Scripture that we’re supposed to sell everything we have. People did it, but there’s not a command that we have to be completely destitute. You say, well, it’s there right there.

It’s to him. This is not a command to every believer that we’re supposed to have nothing to our name, not even the clothes on our backs. It’s a test for this man.

It’s a test for this man. His point is, if you believe you are as right with God as you say you are, then let me pull back the curtain and show you the idols that are hiding there in your heart. For this man, it was his money.

See, because when he says, if you’re really as perfect and as right with God as you think you are, then it’ll be no problem for you to give up that money. And Jesus singled out money because he knew that’s where that man’s problem lay. His idol was money.

So what is it for us? And that’s not a question I’m asking you to answer out loud. It is a question we need to think about from time to time.

Anything that distracts us from God, anything that takes the devotion that we owe to him alone can be an idol. Even good things. I am very attached to my children and I can understand where there’s a line you can cross where your family can become an idol.

Now we’re supposed to love our families, right? We’re supposed to take care of our families, but we can’t give a level of devotion to them that belongs only to God. So my point in telling you that is even something good can be an idol.

Idols are bad things. Idols are good things. I mean, obviously it’s not good for them to be idols, but anything that we take and put in God’s place is an idol.

And Jesus’ goal here was, like I said, to pull back the curtain into the temple of this man’s heart and show him what was on the throne, what was seated there behind the curtain. And mission accomplished because verse 22 says, he was sad at this word and went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. It was clear from this encounter that this man loved his stuff more than he loved God.

No matter how moral we may look, no matter how religious we may look, no matter how upstanding we may look, our hearts can be full of sin and idolatry that pulls us away from God. And because he had that idolatry in his heart because he was worshiping things other than God, namely his money in this case. Again, he looked outwardly religious.

He looked like the right kind. He looked like what everybody in their culture wanted to be. And yet his heart was full of idols.

And so he went away sad. He wasn’t right with God. He wasn’t going to make it into the kingdom.

And the answer was right in front of him, though. The answer that was going to fix all of this was right in front of him. The And that’s that only Jesus can make us right with God and bring us into the kingdom.

See, the whole premise of his question was wrong to begin with. His entire premise was wrong. We do this sometimes when we’re debating with people.

We answer their questions and we answer their claims and we’re debating from the wrong premise because their premise is wrong. He’s coming to Jesus and saying, what do I have to do to earn eternal life? And Jesus is showing him the premise is wrong.

It’s not about what you can earn. You have earned hell. You have earned separation from God.

So the answer has to lie somewhere else. And so we have this exchange between the two of them. What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life after he called him good teacher?

What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good, but one, and that is God.

Some people have seized on this verse here, verse 18. Why do you call me good? There’s only one good, and that’s God.

They’ve seized on verse 18 to say, well, Jesus here is repudiating the idea that he’s God. He’s denying the suggestion that he’s God. He’s saying, don’t call me good because only God is good.

But here Jesus is not denying that he’s good, and he’s not denying that he’s God. Instead, he’s telling the man, you don’t even understand the implications of what you’re saying. You are using a word, a title for me that belongs to God, and you don’t realize how right you are.

You’re saying something to me that you don’t even understand. When we are measured by the standard that they were about to discuss, the standard of being perfect under the law, There is only one that’s good, and that’s God. And so Jesus’ question here doesn’t mean, why are you calling me good because I’m not God?

His question means, do you really understand what you’re saying about me? Do you really understand the implication of what you just said to me? Because the reality is that Jesus is the Son of God.

He’s God the Son, and He alone is good by that standard that He then talks to the rich young ruler about. That standard of perfection under the law, He is the only one that can fulfill that standard. he is the only one in human flesh that is good according to God’s standard and like the rich young ruler so many times we think it’s up to us to try to earn our way into the kingdom when only he is good enough and you could consult dozens of churches and dozens of religions and they’re all going to have their formula for how you get right with God they’re all going to have the steps you have to take you have to check all these boxes you have to go through all these rituals you have to do all these things in order to get right with God.

And Jesus has made it abundantly clear here that none of it means anything. And when you come here looking for, how do I get right with God? I don’t ever want us to put in front of people a checklist of things that they have to do.

When Jesus has made it so abundantly clear that he is the only one that can get us right with God. And the only thing we can do is respond to his offer. The only thing that we can do is either trust him or reject him.

And it is that simple. We either keep trying to earn our way in and always fall short, or we realize that it is hopeless for us. We realize that we are trying to shove the camel through the eye of the needle, trying to get into God’s good graces, or trying to get into the kingdom, trying to get into heaven, eternal life, whatever you call it, that we’re trying to shove the camel through the eye of the needle by trying to do it ourselves.

And we come to that realization that it is hopeless on our own and acknowledge we’re always going to fall short. Jesus alone fulfills the demands of God’s law. Jesus paid for our sins in full.

Jesus is the only way that we’re making it in, and we simply trust Him to be that Savior that He claimed to be. We can be like the rich young ruler, and we can try to take the test ourselves, but we’re going to fail every time, no matter how well prepared we think we are. The only way to pass the test is to let Jesus take it for us.