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Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Dear saints, a rich young man came to Jesus. We heard about it last week. And Jesus, looking at him, loving him, says to him, “Give up all. Sell it and give it to the poor, and come follow me.” And he went away from Jesus sad because he was rich. And Jesus, still looking at him with love, now turns to His disciples to explain what just happened. We should especially remember that, as far as the Pharisees were concerned, riches were an indication of God’s blessings, but Jesus is going to turn all of that on its head. This is why they were so amazed and astonished at His words. Jesus says, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
Now we want to pursue this morning a divine wisdom concerning money and wealth. There’s plenty, plenty of earthly wisdom, and that’s good. We should make ourselves—avail ourselves of that. You know, read all the books about finances, listen to the podcasts. You know, you can go get a degree, an advanced degree in economics, and you can read the Wall Street Journal, and there are whole TV channels and everything devoted to earthly wealth. And mostly those channels are about how to get it and how to keep it. I think the best earthly wisdom, by the way, in regards to wealth—the best earthly wisdom has to do with letting our wealth serve us rather than we serving wealth.
But we want to rejoice in the Lord’s wisdom, which sets all of this on its head. It turns it all upside down. It gives us a completely different perspective on wealth and what it means. In fact, the Lord is warning us constantly of the dangers of riches. So let’s take a look. Let’s half-step back, and then we’ll get a running start at it. The commandment, the text that governs how we are to think about money is the seventh commandment, “You shall not steal,” which means that we should fear and love God, so that we do not take our neighbor’s money or possessions or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income. The seventh commandment forbids the Christian from being both lazy and greedy. Those are the twin vices that are condemned by the seventh commandment. And it puts before us the twin virtues of hard work and generosity.
Now that, just that, should indicate to us that money itself is not a bad thing. In fact, money is just a store of value. It’s an important part of this life here below. So it’s not a bad thing at all. Remember this most misquoted Bible passage that says, “The money is the root of all evil”? No. Remember, it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil. But money is, in fact, dangerous if it’s used in the wrong way. One of the reasons why is because money is so easy to love, and it’s so easy to trust in, and poverty and loss is so easy to be afraid of.
I dug out yesterday all the times that the Greek word that’s used in the text describing the rich man here—it’s plousios—it’s 28 times in the New Testament, that Greek word which means riches or rich man or rich person that’s there. And I was looking at all 28 of these verses, and I thought, that’s just too much to put into one sermon. That doesn’t mean— that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. We’re going to see how much we can get in there, but just in case we don’t make it, there’s a handout for your homework in the Narthex that has all of those verses. I really would commend it to you because the Bible has a lot of wisdom on this topic of wealth.
And I’m now preaching to you and to your flesh as either a rich person or as a person who wants to be a rich person. I’m preaching to myself too. First, we see in the Gospels that the rich people are almost always the bad guys. Now, not always, but almost always. For example, Mark chapter 12, verse 41 and following, Jesus is sitting down in the temple and He’s watching people come into the treasury and give their money. And it says that many rich people put in large sums, but a poor widow comes and gives her mite, and Jesus calls His disciples together and commends her.
Or, listen to this, Luke chapter 6, verse 24, Jesus is preaching and He says, “Woe to you who are rich. You have received your consolation.” Or the parable of the rich fool, Luke chapter 12, verse 16. Jesus told them a parable saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I don’t have anywhere to store all my crops.’ I know what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns. I’ll build bigger ones, and there I’ll store my grain and my goods, and I’ll say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.'” But God said to him, “Fool, this night your soul is required of you. What of all these things you’ve prepared? Whose will they be? So it is with one who lays treasure for himself on this life and is not rich toward God.”
Or famously, the rich man and Lazarus. Luke 16. We don’t even know the rich man’s name. He’s just a rich man. There was a rich man who clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day, who desired to be fed with what fell, and then there was Lazarus outside who desired to be fed from what fell from the rich man’s table. Lazarus dies and goes to paradise. The rich man dies and is buried and goes to hell. Or Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who was exceedingly rich.
Now, not every wealthy or rich person is a bad guy. For example, we consider the rich young ruler who came to Jesus last week, and we hope and pray that He came to repentance, but His riches stood in the way. Or one of the other parables of Jesus is about a rich man—it’s the unjust steward, the rich man who has a manager who is cheating him, and he doesn’t seem like such a bad guy. Or we read in Matthew 27, when it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was a disciple of Jesus.
So wealth in and of itself is not bad, but it is dangerous. We should just know that. It should be part of our Christian wisdom that wealth is a danger for us. It is more difficult for a rich man to be saved. It is more difficult for a rich person to come to salvation. That’s what Jesus says. And why? Why is that? Why do riches stand in the way of salvation? We can consider a couple of verses. James, especially the epistle of James, has a lot to say about wealth and about riches. I’m going to pull out three points from James.
First, from chapter 2, listen, this is James 2, verse 5: “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court?”
So riches tempt us toward oppression, toward litigation, toward trying to squeeze things out of everyone else so that we can gather it up to ourselves. The greedy are the ones who have, and yet, strangely enough, James points out this thing which our flesh does, which my flesh does, and that is it instinctively gives more honor to a person depending on how much money they have. This is strange. It shouldn’t be this way. It should not be this way with Christians, that when someone has a lot, when someone is wealthy, we honor them; and when someone is poor, they’re in rags, they don’t have a place to live, then we dishonor them. God does it the opposite. He exalts the proud and He humbles the proud and He exalts the lowly. The Lord does not look on things like we do. It’s just the exact opposite of the way the Lord looks at things. He doesn’t see wealth as something honorable, but as something dangerous.
And poverty—now poverty without faith doesn’t benefit—but poverty is, in fact, closer to the kingdom. James is getting after the church here. You dishonor the poor. God does not do that. He honors the poor.
Or listen to this. This is James 5, starting with verse 1. We’ve got to be ready for this one. “Come now, you rich. Weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your heart in a day of slaughter. You’ve condemned and murdered the righteous person who does not resist you.”
The picture… I’m trying to get the right picture for this. Here’s how—this is as close as I can get right now, but ask me again in a couple of years. But here’s the picture. It’s almost like wealth on the day of judgment will burst into fire. We know that the world will burn. Everything will burn except for the Lord’s Word and the things upon which the Lord’s Word is written, but wealth and gold and silver and all this sort of stuff, on the day that Jesus comes back, it’ll just spontaneously combust. And the picture is of the rich man who’s buried himself in wealth, and on the judgment day it’ll burst into fire, and he’ll be burned with it. And the scars will be evidence of his own greed. That’s the preaching of James.
Listen to one more from James, chapter 1, verse 9 and following. “The sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass. Its flower falls. Its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of all his pursuits. Therefore, let the lowly brother exalt in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation.” This is an amazing thing, is that the Lord Jesus comes to each one of us, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a million dollars in the bank or if you owe a million dollars to someone on the street or whatever. It doesn’t matter. The Lord Jesus comes to each one of us, and He calls us to Himself to give us His gifts.
I think, by the way, that it is one of the most beautiful things about the Lord’s church is that right next to each other, kneeling right next to each other, we have the rich and poor of the world receiving together the same gifts. You know how, I mean, restaurants are. You have the fancy restaurants and the less fancy, and these kind of divide up like this. But not in the Lord’s house. We all share from the same table. It doesn’t matter. The Lord calls us all to be the beneficiaries of His banquets, to be welcomed at His table.
Now what does this mean? Just as far as a practical thing, what should we do in regard to wealth? The first thing is to know that this earthly wealth does not endure. You cannot take it with you. Everything that you work for stays here on earth. It does not matter in the heavenly court. This doesn’t mean that we should go and sell everything. I mean, maybe you should, but that’s not a universal command. Here is the universal command, and I think this is the key text for us to consider. It’s 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 17 and following, and this is Paul’s specific instructions to the rich. This is what Paul tells Timothy to tell the rich to do.
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hope on uncertain riches, but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” Now, that’s an important part, actually, that we have the things of this world so that we might enjoy them, but they come from God, and that’s where our hope is. Paul continues, “Tell them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be ready to distribute their wealth, willing to share, storing up treasures as a good foundation for the future, taking hold on that which is truly life.”
So Paul echoes the words of Jesus, that we would store up for ourselves treasures, not on this earth, but treasures in heaven. Treasures that last forever, that we would invest in eternal things, that we would give our life and our hope and our heart to the things that do not move, that we would recognize that earthly wealth is not true life, but that true life comes in Christ. When Jesus says that it’s more difficult for a rich man to enter into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, the disciples say, “Well, Lord, then who can possibly be saved?” And Jesus says, “God be praised! With man it’s impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
The salvation of all—the rich and the poor and everyone in between. The salvation of all is the work of God in Christ. One of the surprising things in the Gospel lesson is then Peter stands up, and it seems like he’s bragging, and Peter says, “Lord, we left all to follow you,” and I expect Jesus to turn and to rebuke Peter—to don’t be so proud, put him in His place—but He doesn’t. Jesus says this, “Truly, I say to you, there’s 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 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, but the many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Now what does Jesus mean with these words? Does he mean that if you lose your family because you follow Jesus, that if you lose your wealth and your lands and your everything else that the Lord will give you back multiple times a hundred amount of land that you gave up or that you now get a hundred mothers—which would be strange—or a hundred brothers, or what? Here’s my best shot at the text. When you lose all in this life, you gain the kingdom of God. And you do not lose your family, but in fact you get a bigger one.
If you want to know who your brothers and sisters are, just look around you. They’re here. And if you lose your home, you want to know what your new house looks like? Just look around you. It’s here. The Lord invites you into His kingdom. Now that does not come without persecution. That’s what Jesus says, with persecutions, but also—and here’s the kicker—in the age to come, eternal life. Jesus gives us the treasures that really matter: life eternal. And this is our hope.
And to kind of hammer it home, I just want to give you two more verses, because when I was looking at that word riches, there are two places that Paul uses it to describe not our riches, but rather God’s riches, and these are amazing texts. The first is Ephesians 2. Listen to these words. Ephesians 2, verse 4 and following, Paul writes, “But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, Jesus made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. And raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming age He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
In other words, God has already given you the riches of His kingdom. He’s already seated you with Jesus in heaven itself. You already have all of these treasures, and on the last day you’ll see it. And one more text, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Paul writes this. If I could carve these words on your hearts, I would do it. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, by his poverty, might become rich.”
I don’t know if you have a full or empty bank account, but I do know this: you have all of the righteousness of God in Christ. You have all of the love of the Son of God. You have a life that will never end. You have a place in heaven being prepared for you by none other than Jesus Himself. You have all the world and all the kingdoms of God. You have Jesus, and He has you. Your sins are forgiven, and your life will never end. May God, by His Holy Spirit, grant us this wisdom, grant us repentance and hope and confidence in His Word that we would store up treasures not on earth, but in heaven itself. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
