Message by Pastor John Culp : August 10, 2008
“Rocky – Part 10”
Text – Matthew 19:23-30
As you know, there are whole genres of jokes. You know the most common: You’ve got your riddles and puns; your knock-knock jokes and light bulb jokes; doctor jokes and - of course! – the perennially-popular lawyer jokes. Then there’s another whole stock class of humor: The good news-bad news joke.
Many of these have something of a medical flavor. For example, the gallery owner says to the starving artist, “I have some good news and I have some bad news.”
Starving Artist: “Well, give me the good news first.”
Gallery owner: “OK, a guy came by here yesterday and asked if I thought your paintings would appreciate a lot in value after you died. And when I told him I felt sure they would, he bought every one of your pieces.”
“That’s great! What’s the bad news?”
“He was your doctor.”
Here’s another: “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that the DNA tests showed that it was your blood they found all over the crime scene.”
“Oh, no – I’m ruined! What’s the good news?”
“The good news is your cholesterol’s down to 130.”
There’s even a sub-category just for preachers. The good news is that your church’s women’s softball team finally won a game. The bad news is that they beat your men’s team.
The good news is that the Youth Group stopped by your house last night for a surprise visit. The bad news is that they came at midnight, armed with toilet paper, shaving crème and five dozen eggs.
The good news is that worship attendance was up dramatically the last three weeks. The bad news is that it was while you were on vacation.
You may know that the very word Gospel means ‘good news.’ But the fact is that that very best of all good news the world has ever heard is meaningless unless it’s viewed against the backdrop of some really bad news.
“Rocky,” the apostle Simon Peter, knew lot about both good news and bad news. As you know, life was much harder in his day than in our own. For starters, he and his fellow Jews lived out their whole lives under the harsh oppression of a conquering foreign power. At the same time, nobody lived the Gospel up closer and more personally than did Jesus’ dear friend Peter.
As we’ve seen before in other circumstances, on this occasion ‘Rocky’s question prompted his Master to proclaim truth that is as fundamental as it is life-changing:
The bad news is real, but so is the good;
the bad news is powerful,
but the Good News of Jesus Christ is infinitely more so.
Let’s sit at Jesus’ feet with our old friend ‘Rocky,’ and invite our Lord to turn our lives around.
Today’s text starts with some bad news, news that should make every last one of us sit up and take notice. Jesus lays out in no uncertain terms here the very real danger of riches.
When the Rich Young Man rejects Christ’s call on his life, Jesus notes for those who have witnessed the exchange how difficult it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23). In fact, it’s not just difficult, Jesus says – it’s impossible!
New we should recognize that Jesus is clearly using some heavenly hyperbole here, to make a vital point. But we dare not soften that point! Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe you’ve heard over the years the explanation that there was a short gate in the wall of the ancient city of Jerusalem, a gate that was so low that a camel could get through it only if the driver could manage to persuade the animal to get down on its knees, in effect to ‘crawl’ through the opening. There are just two problems with that explanation. In the first place, there is no historical evidence that such a gate ever existed. But more importantly, even if it did, that explanation misses the whole point of Jesus’ image. He is not trying to say here that riches make it merely difficult for one who possess them to enter the kingdom. No, He says flat out that, humanly speaking, it is impossible for any rich person to come into the kingdom (19:26).
Matthew tells us that the disciples were astonished to hear this (19:25). That’s because first-century Jews often saw material wealth as a definite sign that God was blessing the faithfulness of the one who had them. And certainly they had some biblical warrant for such a view.
But the Bible always recognized that wealth is a two-edged sword. We see that in the Proverbs that were our Old Testament lesson this morning. On one hand, “The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself” (11:25 NKJV).
But at the same time, “A gracious woman retains honor, But ruthless men retain riches,” and “He who trusts in his riches will fall, But the righteous will flourish like foliage” (11:16, 28).
Why do you suppose riches – though clearly a blessing from our loving heavenly Father! – also pose such a grave risk for the one who would serve the very God who gives them? It shouldn’t be too hard to see the answer. The more possessions you have, the more they can distract your attention from the things of the kingdom of heaven. Wealthy people can become selfish, though that certainly doesn’t always happen.
But the most fundamental reason is this. Arguably the most critical value in the Christian faith is our awareness of own need before a holy God. Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). If I’m wealthy, it is just perilously easy for me to believe that I can really take care of all of my own requirements. Who needs God? And that (of course) is the very thing I must never believe if I would enter the kingdom of heaven!
Now I would guess that you may well not think of yourself as rich. In fact, it’s entirely possible that not a single one of us would describe ourselves as wealthy. And it’s easy to see why. Pick up a magazine or turn on a TV, and right away you’ll see images of any number of folks who really do have far more than any of us.
But you know well as I that for every Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Oprah Winfrey in the world, there are multiplied millions who struggle every day just to put a roof over their heads and keep the demons of hunger at bay. By any reasonable standard – considering a majority of the world’s people today, let alone the standard of the ancient world – every last one of us really is materially rich!
Willaim Boyce offers this prayer: Dear Lord, I have been re-reading the record of the Rich Young Ruler and his obviously wrong choice. But it has set me thinking. No matter how much wealth he had, he could not ride in a car, have any surgery, turn on a light, buy penicillin, hear a pipe organ, watch TV, wash dishes in running water, type a letter, mow a lawn, fly in an airplane, sleep on an innerspring mattress, or talk on the phone. If he was rich, then what am I? (The Christian Standard. Quoted in Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 4.)
Here’s the question: Are riches standing in the way of your participation in the kingdom? The fact is that you and I – we are wealthy. And there can be no question that that wealth comes to us as a real blessing from God! But that blessing also carries with it a grave risk. Material wealth brings us face to face even with a matter of life and death. And that, dear friends, is clearly some very bad news!
But this brief story also includes good news aplenty.
All this talk about wealth leads Peter to ask what reward he and his fellow disciples might expect in Christ’s kingdom. After all, they’ve left everything to follow Him (19:27). And we really can’t accuse our friend Rocky of melodramatic exaggeration here. Think of what he almost certainly did give up to follow Jesus. In the Gospels we certainly don’t ever get the impression that Peter had been wealthy in his former life. But he had an apparently successful fishing business by which (no doubt through much hard work) he managed to support himself and his family.
Once he started following Jesus, however, all that ended. From then on he had to depend on the generosity of those who gave their hard-earned money to support this traveling Rabbi and His disciples. Who knows what happened to Peter’s family and their material needs? And all that was really nothing compared to fact that we’re told Peter would one day lay down his very life for his witness to Christ. He may well have had an inkling of all that already by this time.
I have no doubt that if I had been Peter, I probably would have asked long before this, “By the way, Master, what really is in this for me?”
In the midst of our comfortable worship service, our comfortable Bible studies, our comfortable lives, we may tend to look a bit askance at Peter for asking such a clearly self-centered, even a pedestrian question.
But Jesus knows more, Jesus loves better than we do. Clearly He saw the genuine concern on His friend’s face. And He didn’t rebuke Rocky for his question. Rather Jesus responded with some good news to beat any bad news Peter may have been feeling. He told him that a great reversal was coming, when the last would be first and the first last (19:30). In fact, Jesus even said that in His eternal kingdom, the twelve disciples would even rule with Him, governing the twelve tribes of Israel.
All this rests securely on the strong foundation of the very heart of the Good News: With God, all things are possible (19:26)!
Humanly speaking, it really is impossible for a rich person – that’s you and that’s me, remember! – it’s impossible for us to enter the kingdom of heaven. You may be convinced that it is impossible for you to learn to love some especially difficult person in your life. But with God, all things are possible. You may feel certain that you could never forgive that one who has wronged you so painfully. But with God, all things are possible. You may just know that you will never overcome that weakness . . . that bad habit . . . that sin that’s plagued you for so long. But with God, all things are possible. Think of any one of a dozen problems you may face these days, ones that you’ve just become resigned to living with the rest of your life. Never forget: with God, all things are possible.
Croft M. Pentz has a real gift for expressing the truths of the kingdom in catchy, memorable packages. I love his way of putting all this: “God has no problems – He has only solutions.” (The Complete Book of Zingers [Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1990])
So the next time the devil is screaming bad news in your face (or whispering some in your ear); any time he tries to convince you that you’re clueless or hopeless or worthless, you just remember, Jesus has promised you Good News that can and will defeat any weapons the enemy has in his arsenal. You remember, with God, all things are possible!
Ignace Jan Paderewski was not only a brilliant pianist and composer, but also a diplomat who for a time even served as Prime Minister of his native Poland. Of course a lot of folklore grows up around stories of the life of such a towering figure. I’d like to believe this one is true.
On one occasion a mother, wishing to encourage her young son’s progress at the piano, bought tickets for a recital by Paderewski. When the big night finally arrived, they found their seats near the front of the concert hall and eyed the majestic Steinway waiting on stage. Soon the mother found a friend to talk to, and the boy slipped away. She didn’t even notice he was gone.
Not until eight o’clock arrived and the house lights dimmed did the mother panic to realize her son was not sitting beside her. Suddenly the spotlights came on and the audience was amused – but the distraught mother horrified! – to see that somehow her little boy had found his way onto the stage, and was seated at the massive piano. He began innocently picking out one of the few tunes he had learned so far, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
His mother gasped, but before she knew what to do, the master appeared on the stage and quickly moved to the keyboard. “Don’t quit – keep playing,” he whispered to the boy.
Leaning over, Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began to support the simple melody with a sturdy bass line. Soon his right arm reached around the other side of the boy, and he added a delightful running obbligato. Together, the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized for what surely proved to be one of the most memorable openings ever to any of his hundreds of concerts.
(told by Darrel L. Anderson in Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 2.)
Friend, you and I, at times we’re far less – far worse than novices. We have all the ineptitude of a beginner, without any of the charm or innocence!
But as we stumble through our days, Christ our great Master comes alongside us and whispers in our ears, “Don’t quit – keep playing.”
And if by God’s grace we have the wisdom to obey, He takes our meager efforts and undergirds them with the firm foundation of His almighty strength. He adds to our simple melodies the sparkle of His dazzling brilliance. And he makes of us something truly beautiful.
The bad news is real and it is powerful. But never forget: The Good News that we know in Jesus Christ is always mightier. With God, all things are possible.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You and we thank You for all that You do in our lives through Your precious Son. You know, dear Lord, how often we may be tempted to give up in the face of all the bad news that attacks us day after day. Please remind us moment by moment that Your almighty power and unfailing love for us in Jesus are always greater than anything that can stand against us. Help us to know throughout our days that Your Good News will finally prevail, and that with You, all things truly are possible – that we might serve You with confidence and joy, even until You call us home. We pray in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.