Matthew-073

We don’t like Jesus’ answer to “How do I inherit eternal life?”

In this camp, we have to deal with something very important: How do we inherit eternal life? I don’t think we can think of a more important question than that, and the Lord Jesus gives us a very important answer. The problem is, as we will see, we might like the question but we don’t like the answer. If you don’t think so, you might have changed your mind by the end of this message. The Word of God is like a two-edged sword that cuts into the heart. Sometimes, I don’t like the job I have to do, because maybe you are all friends with me now, but by the end of the message, no one wants to talk to me anymore! I have the unique capacity of preaching the Word of God as I trust it is meant to be preached, but in such a way that it tends to hurt and offend many people. It’s so much nicer to be a politician and win more votes.

Yesterday, I bought an Australian newspaper to read, and inside is a weekend magazine. The opening article there concerns the Vice President elect of the United States, by the name of Quale. The article begins with the words: “The making of a non-entity.” In fact, I’m sure that before Quale was nominated as Vice-presidential candidate, no one ever heard of him, like me. The article was highly critical of him. He was about the worst student in his school. Out of a class of 25, only 2 people failed and he was one of the two. In fact, it tells us that he knows nothing about nothing. So how did he end up being the Vice-Presidential candidate? As a matter of fact, now that Bush is elected, he will be the next Vice President. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know anything, because he looks very handsome, he is so friendly, and he knows how to be popular. Who cares if he doesn’t know anything just so long as all the women look at him and vote for him? It doesn’t matter if there is nothing inside; it’s the outside that matters. Actually, he was selected because they could not find an­other candidate at the time. They thought that half of America being women, would vote for this nice face, and they were right! Bush and Quale won. Maybe most of us would like to be popular like Quale: just smile and say nice things. So it doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything, as long as everyone likes you.

Unfortunately, my task is not to win votes but to speak the truth even though no one even wants to smile at me anymore at the end of it. I often notice that here, people walk around me, trying to keep as far away as possible. Well, I’m not sure whether I have leprosy or they have, but one of us must have some problem! Sometimes, in order to say hello, I have to make sure I have my glasses on because I cannot see that far away.

The rich young ruler asked the most important question. It is so important that out of the four Gospels, the first three all record the incident about this rich young ruler. But the Lord Jesus gave him an exceedingly important and difficult answer. Did he like the Lord Jesus’ answer? No, he was very unhappy with it. He expected some­thing more moderate, but not the answer that he got. What about you and me? When you read this passage, look at your own reaction, and you will notice that you probably have the same feeling as the rich young ruler. We cannot take this kind of answer. The Lord Jesus could not mean what he said. Let me ask you one more time: Do you like the answer to that question? We like the question: How do I inherit eternal life? But the answer sticks in our throat like a fishbone. The Word of God is like a sword cutting into our hearts, and we don’t like that. I have the feeling that the rich young ruler wished that he never asked the question.

If you don’t like the answer don’t worry, the whole Christian church doesn’t like the answer either! Most Christians will assure you they believe every word in the Bible, but they would like to change this answer. After all, Jesus is a very reasonable man, not like this guy, Eric Chang, who is very unreasonable. And so, very many interesting things start happening. For one, they don’t touch this passage at all. I think the camp organizers were very brave to choose this passage because most preachers do not even want to touch the passage.

Look at this beautiful church that we have rented! If the rich people did not give money, how would it be possible to build it? If you tell the rich man, “It is harder for you to get into the kingdom of God than for the camel to go through the eye of the needle,” then you will have no money to build a church! You will have to have your meeting in a tent! Let’s ask our friends in this church, who is on their Board of Trustees? You will discover that one is the manager or owner of the supermarket, the other owns a big company or department store. If you tell all these rich, important people, “You can’t get into the kingdom of God,” they will say, “Bye-bye!”

Change the Lord Jesus’ answer

Do you like this answer? No, so what can we do? You will find that preachers change the whole passage! We change this passage because we have already decided that Jesus is a very reasonable person, not like me. We toy with our thinking: “Jesus never said, or maybe he didn’t say, maybe he did but most likely, Jesus did not say that it is a camel that goes through the eye of a needle. Actually, it’s just a rope which is a bit difficult to get through the needle, but it’s much smaller than a camel. At least there’s a better chance of a rope getting through the needle.”

There is another way to solve the problem. There is another preacher who tells us that the needle is actually not a needle. It’s supposed to be the gate in a city called “the Needle.” Of course, I don’t know where you can find this city with this gate called “Needle.”

In the end, we have different interpretations: the needle is not a needle, the camel is not a camel, “sell” doesn’t mean sell, and nothing means anything. Even better, this passage refers only to a very, very rich man. So thanks be to God, Jesus’ answer has nothing to do with me because I’m not extremely rich, so I have the right to change the answer! Now if the answer doesn’t apply to me why does the question apply to me? Oh, we are so clever! We really understand the Bible!

How does Jesus’ answer apply to us? There is still one way to apply. After all, the Bible is supposed to speak to everybody, not just to the extremely rich. The answer is reasonable: You can keep all your possessions as long as you have the right attitude. Of course, my attitude is quite perfect and my chance of getting into the kingdom is quite good! So what is the right attitude? For example, my three houses and my attitude are all God’s. I live in all three houses, but they are all God’s! I’m not extremely rich. I have $50,000 in the bank, but the fellow down the road has $500,000, and the one further down has 5 million. I only have $50,000 and my attitude is right! We have to be reasonable. “Rich” is a relative term. As far as a man in Africa who earns $5 for a whole month is concerned, you are extremely rich if you have $5,000. But as long as I compare myself with a millionaire, then I am always poor, therefore I am all right for the kingdom of God.

Ask God to help you discern what is partially true

This message that I am preaching today is addressed primarily to Christians, because unless Christians can be honest with the Word of God, how can the non-Christian even come near to the kingdom of God? Whenever the sword of the Spirit begins to approach my heart and yours, do we begin to retreat and say, “No, don’t let it touch me”? Today, we want to look at what this passage in the Word of God really says to us without messing around. I have to say that these instances that I have mentioned about a camel not being a camel, and a needle not being a needle, is absolute nonsense from the New Testament point of view. It shows how desperately preachers have tried to make this difficult-to-accept teaching easier to accept. Let’s be honest. How can we enter the kingdom of God if we mess around with the Word of God?

There are no cheap solutions to the question: How do I enter the kingdom? Cheap solutions only include partial answers. When you listen to the Word of God, I only ask you to ask God to help you to discern whether what I say is the truth or not. I don’t want you to accept anything I say. If what I say is not the truth, don’t listen to it. Also, ask God to help you discern the more complicated, whether the answer is partially true and partially false. When we say that the Lord Jesus’ answer to the rich man has to do with an attitude, it is partly true and partly false. That is what makes it difficult to detect.

The rich young ruler did not inherit eternal life as he loved riches more

The rich man did not inherit eternal life. He heard the answer and he didn’t like it. Like many people today, they hear the answer, and walk away. I beg of you to think of one thing: Where is this rich young man today? He died a long time ago. What happened to his riches that he didn’t want to give up? Where are they? He didn’t learn the lesson that Job learned a long time ago. Job said, “Naked I came into this world, and naked I will leave this world.” You will not take with you one cent of all the money you have inherited or earned. Not one cent!

Furthermore, will the money you leave behind for your sons and daughters be a blessing to them? How many sons and daughters have been corrupted by the riches they inherited? How many cases there are of the father who worked so hard, but the son became a playboy, went into drugs and committed suicide? Do you think that you have done them a favor by keeping it and giving it to them? Look at the Chinese history books and you will know what happens. The first emperor of every dynasty is a great man, capable, trained in hardship. But what is his son like? He never had to fight, he was brought up as the English say, “with a silver spoon in his mouth.” So the second generation is already going down. You need not go on to read about the last emperor of every dynasty – someone has to blow his nose for him because he doesn’t know how to blow his nose anymore! That is the situation.

What happened to this rich young ruler? He turned away from the answer that the Lord gave him and now he has nothing! He doesn’t have eternal life and he doesn’t have his riches. What did the Lord Jesus say to the rich young ruler? “Come, follow me.” What does “follow the Lord Jesus” mean? The lyrics of the following song explain that to follow him means to live as he lived.

I love God and his righteousness, so there is peace in my heart

I used to know Sister Margaret in London days, and I know it’s no accident that we can serve God together on this platform today. While I was in London, I was staying in an apartment with two other students. During the summer holidays, students from other parts of England come to London, and they need accommodation, so our apartment gets quite full. In those days, I used to travel around in London on a motorcycle because it’s very convenient, especially through heavy traffic. If there is a long queue, you can just veer all the way to the front. And also as you know, a motorcycle uses much less gas than a car and so it’s quite cheap to ride. A fellow student at the Bible Institute was going out to Japan as a missionary, so he wanted to sell his motorcycle. Although it was quite an old motor­cycle, it still cost me an arm and a leg. I had to pay this brother in installments as I could not pay him all at once.

One late night, after a time of fellowship with an American-born Chinese brother, who was sharing my room, we decided it was time to go to bed. So I made myself comfortable on the floor to get ready to sleep. I was just about to doze off when I heard a click. I don’t know whether this is due to kungfu training when I was younger, but in spite of a lot of noise from the traffic, and I was about to fall asleep on the third floor, I heard a “click” sound. I jumped up immediately because I recognized it was the stand of my motorcycle going up! I rushed to the window and looked down and I saw two people getting on to my motorcycle. So I rushed down three floors on the stairs, as quickly as my feet could carry me, and just as I got to the motorcycle, the man in front managed to kick start it. And just as I was going to grab the fellow by the back of his neck, the motorcycle started and “zoom” it went off! So I looked on as my motorcycle disappeared down the road. All my investment was going down the road! In the meantime, this American Chinese brother heard me rushing down the stairs, so he also came running down. He also saw my motorcycle gone into the distance.

What else could I do but call the police to report that my motorcycle is stolen? When they arrived, they said that thousands of motor­cycles are stolen in London, and told me to write down my name and phone number. And that was it! I went upstairs and just committed the matter to God, and went to sleep. My most valuable possession is gone. In fact, I owned nothing of value apart from that motorcycle and a watch that my mother had given me. I had a very good sleep.

The next day, the American brother was looking at me very carefully at breakfast. He said, “I’m very surprised. You seem to be smiling. You’re very relaxed. What’s the matter?”

I said, “Is there something the matter?”

He said, “Last night, you had your motorcycle stolen. You’ve lost your most valuable piece of property. How can you sit smiling and looking relaxed?”

I said, “What does it matter? It’s only a motorcycle. I leave it in God’s hands. If he wants me to have a motorcycle, I will have one. If he doesn’t want me to have a motorcycle, I’ll just walk. I can always go with my BMW.” In Canada we have a local joke. When I ask someone, “How are you going home?” He says, “Oh, in my BMW” So I said, “Do you have a BMW?” He said, “BMW is: Bus, Metro (subway) and Walk. Very simple!” So after I lost my motorcycle, I went in my BMW.

I have to say the remarkable thing is that my friend could not understand why I was so full of peace. He said to me, “If I lost my motorcycle, I’d be jumping up and down by now.” Then I thought: “He has a point. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I am so peace­ful.” I wasn’t even aware that my friend was so astonished by this peacefulness. Then Philippians 4:7 came to my mind, where the apostle Paul says, “Commit everything to the Lord in prayer and then the peace of God which is beyond human understanding will guard your hearts and minds.” It is wonderful! I wasn’t even aware of it until he mentioned it. Indeed, I was so peaceful. It didn’t bother me.

Present eternal life is qualities of God’s life: righteousness, peace, joy

You will ask, “What’s this got to do with our message?” I am trying to help you understand what eternal life is. What is eternal life? There are two phases of eternal life: one is now in the present, and one is in the future. How do I know I have eternal life? I know because I already experience the character of eternal life now. What is the character of eternal life in the present? The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 14:17,

These three qualities characterize eternal life as it is now. Eternal life is God’s life. If God’s life is in you now, you will have three qualities that mark your life. It is God’s righteousness, God’s peace (we have such a peace that we are not even aware of), and an indescribable joy.

In other words, eternal life is not just that you live for ever and ever and ever. Some people don’t want to live forever. Today, people are committing suicide. They don’t want to live because the quality of the life they live is unbearable. But when eternal life, God’s life comes into your soul, something amazing happens quite unconsciously. You are not even aware of it working with power in your life. You find that before, you loved to be selfish, you loved to be greedy, you loved to hurt people, you loved to annoy people, but now you love righteousness.

Someone in the camp said to me almost apologizing, “I’m not yet a Christian.” I said, “You don’t have to worry, I was also not a Christian once. If you knew what I was like at the time, you may not want to know me. But when God gave his life to me by his Spirit, I couldn’t understand why I don’t like the things I loved before anymore. Now, I love righteousness, and with that, I discovered this peace.” I just shared with you one example of this amazing peace in my heart.

If you think you have gone through troubles, I have been through even more troubles in my time. I have been through tremendous financial difficulties because when I came out of China, our family lost everything. I had nothing. And I had to live in utter poverty, not for one or two years, but for ten years or more. For me, it was a daily experience that I didn’t know when I would get my next meal. For many people, it would be enough to drive them into panic, not to say mental breakdown. But my heart was so peaceful. I said, “Father, you are my Father remember? Here is your little child. Your child is hungry now, can you provide me with something to eat?” You would say, “You must be joking. God is spiritual. Food is material.” You haven’t known my Father yet. God is so practical. He knows when his child is hungry. He will give you what you need to eat. Jesus says, “Do the birds of the air sow? No, but God feeds them. He will feed you.” I put that into practice not once, not one week, but for years and years and years, and God never failed! People ask me, “How do you know God is real?” I say, “Walk with me, and you’ll know whether God is real.”

My first experience as a Christian was a joy beyond understanding

We have the quality of eternal life in this present time. I’m not talking about when you die some time. I am talking about now. The Bible says, “The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy.”

When I became a Christian, the first experience I had was an unbelievable joy that was beyond understanding. I was arrested by the Communists, and I was waiting for them to decide whether they would shoot me, or whether they would be so kind as to put me in hard labor for the rest of my life. Why? They had caught me at the border of Shenzhen, on the other side of Hong Kong, without a permit. They considered me to be an anti-revolutionary because only this kind of people wants to run away from the new China. I was waiting either to die or to go to hard labor, and that was when I met with God. As I sat in that prison courtyard, under the nose of a machine gun, there came upon me a joy that I never experienced before! You have to experience this to understand it. I have no way to describe this to you. This is not some natural joy like that of a little boy when he sees an ice-cream cone, his heart races, and his face brightens up! I have never seen anyone filled with joy when a machine gun is pointing at him. I was filled with unspeakable joy! This is something really amazing! It is not from man; it is something that God does.

Let me ask you, if you think you have eternal life, have you expe­rienced any of these things? Otherwise, we are talking about some “eternal life” theoretically. Paul knows about this eternal life, and that is why he says in Romans 14:17, “The kingdom of God is not food and drink and all these external, material things. It is righteous­ness, peace, joy by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Eternal life and the kingdom of God are synonyms

Some of you will remind me that I have just been talking about the kingdom of God being righteousness, peace and joy. And the ques­tion the rich young ruler asked is, “How do I inherit eternal life?” He did not mention the kingdom of God. If you thought of this point, you are quite sharp. But if you think that I seem to have wandered a little bit from the point, I will show you that I have not. As a matter of fact, the kingdom of God and eternal life in the New Testament are synonyms.

The rich young ruler asks about inheriting eternal life in Luke 18:18, and the Lord Jesus’ answer is about the kingdom of God. In Luke 18:18, he says, “What do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”

The Lord’s answer in verses 24-25 is, “How hard it is for those who are rich to enter the kingdom of God. For 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.”

As you look through the New Testament, you will find again and again that the kingdom of God and eternal life are inseparably linked. For example, in Mark 9:43, 45, Jesus says, “It is better for you to enter into life with one hand or one foot than to be thrown into hell with two hands and two feet.”

Verse 47 says, “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.”

The same point is seen when the Lord Jesus talks about seeing the kingdom in John 3:3, and about entering the kingdom in verse 5, whereas verses 15-16 is about believing in him to have eternal life. So the kingdom and eternal life are again spoken of as the same thing. The link between eternal life (God’s life) and the kingdom of God is very important.

The kingdom of God is: God rules your life as king every day

What does the kingdom of God mean? It means the kingship of God, that God rules as king. You are in the kingdom of God if God rules in your heart. Put in another way, there is no way you are going to enjoy eternal life in the present with its righteousness, peace and joy unless you live under God’s kingship first. It means that God rules your life every day.

Why didn’t I worry about my motorcycle when it was stolen? Because God is king in my life, and he is also king over all the earth. He will have the matter worked out as he chooses. If he thinks I should have my motorcycle, he will get it back for me. He is the King. If he thinks I don’t need this motorcycle as it may be dangerous for my life, he doesn’t have to give it back to me. As a matter of fact, I was nearly killed or seriously injured three times while riding my motorcycle. So if God, my king decides that I should not ride this motorcycle anymore, and he doesn’t give it back to me, it’s all right too. However, as a matter of fact, a few days later, I received a phone call from the police saying, “Your motorcycle has been found. Come and collect it.” So I thanked God because I used that motorcycle to conduct an evangelistic tour in Ireland. You cannot live in the fullness of eternal life now unless you live under his kingship now.

Are you living under his kingship? It’s useless to say, “Yes, I do.” Anyone can say, “Yes, I do.” Are you willing not to run away from his words like the rich young ruler, but say, “God, I will do what you command because you are my King”? Only then can you begin to enjoy the reality of eternal life now. Besides, if you don’t enjoy eternal life now, how do you know there is eternal life in the future? Maybe it is just a wild dream, airy-fairy nonsense.

Here comes the difficult part. Let us see what God’s kingship translates into. In Matthew 19:24, when the rich young man turned away from the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus said to his disciples in verses 23-24:

Let me summarize the Lord Jesus’ teaching in three points.

1. Any person, rich or poor, is saved only by God’s grace

Firstly, if the rich man can only be saved when God performs a miracle, like a camel getting through the eye of a needle, does it mean that a poor man can get through the eye of a needle without God’s help? It’s impossible for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, but can a mouse? What about a fly? They also cannot get through the eye of a needle. In other words, the difference between the rich man and the poor man is only a relative difference, not an absolute difference. That is to say, it’s exactly the same for the rich man and the poor man. The difference is only quantitative, not qualitative. Neither the rich man nor the poor man can get into the kingdom except by the power of God. We also cannot get into the kingdom except by the power of God. Therefore, it is utter foolishness to suggest that it is only the rich man who cannot get into the kingdom but we can. That is why the Word of God tells us that we are saved by grace alone. None of us, or the poor man can save himself by being poor. It is utter nonsense that the rich man has to be saved by God, whereas the poor can save himself! So the first point is: all, rich or poor or any person, are saved only by the grace, the power of God.

2. Choose riches or the kingdom of God

It is very important to understand the second point of the Lord Jesus’ teaching: Riches and the kingdom of God are incompatible. Put in another way, the material and the spiritual cannot be made to come together. The Lord Jesus is saying to the rich man and to us as well, “You either choose riches or eternal life, but you can’t have both.” That is the fishbone that sticks in our throats. That is the part that the rich young man could not take. And that is the part that the church also cannot take. And that is also the part that you and I don’t like. “Why can’t I have both? I can have eternal life and riches.” You can if you want to, but you won’t get into the kingdom. It is as plain as that. If you can show me that the Lord Jesus means something different, then please teach me.

The Lord Jesus said these words to the rich young ruler, but he says the same to everyone. In Luke 12:33, he is not talking to rich young rulers, but to all those who follow him. He says to his little flock, “Sell all that you have and follow me.” These are exactly the same words that he said to the rich young ruler. We wish that these words were not in the Bible, but I don’t have the right to twist them around and make it mean something different. I am sorry to say I don’t have the daring that some preachers have to twist the Word of God. So this second principle is: We must choose one or the other but you cannot have both.

3. Life does not consist in the things that you possess

The third thing the Lord Jesus tells us is: Life does not consist in the things that you possess. You can see this in Luke 12:15, just a few verses before verse 33 that we just referred to. If you think that your life cannot be pleasant unless you possess a lot of things, you have not yet understood eternal life. The Scriptural teaching is clearly stated in 1Timothy 6:8 where the apostle Paul says, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.” Why do we seek riches? We are not content. We don’t just want food and clothing but more food, more clothing, more houses, more cars, more everything! In other words, we want to be rich! The apostle Paul says in verse 10 that those who love money will not have peace, joy and righteous­ness, but their hearts will be pierced through with many sorrows.

What is your attitude? What do you think about life? Be truthful. For you, what does life consist of? Are you content with food and clothing? Or do you want a lot more than food and clothing? If you say, “No, these things don’t interest me,” and you are not deceiving yourself, then do you dare to sell what you have and give to the poor?

Choose: The kingship of God or living for yourself

The Bible tells us that the material and the spiritual will be constantly fighting each other. You cannot choose both, I beg of you to understand. If you have already chosen both, like this rich young man, the Lord Jesus says, “You cannot choose both. Go and undo it.” There is the sword stabbing into the heart.

If you don’t undo it, you will discover that you don’t have joy, you don’t have peace, you don’t have righteousness, and then you will find the Christian life doesn’t work! When you try to pray, does God answer you? When you want to commune with God, do you find him there? Do you find you are walking daily in the joy and peace that comes from God? No, it doesn’t work if you try to grab the world with one hand and the kingdom of God with the other. Think about it, and decide whether the words of the Lord Jesus are true, and whether I have spoken the truth. Do we still want to live for ourselves?