Matthew-076

Today, we continue our exposition in the Word of God in Mark 10:21. Last Sunday, we were studying the case of the rich, young man who came to the Lord Jesus to inquire about eternal life: “What must I do that I may have eternal life?” And we saw the answer of the Lord Jesus. I shall run through the eight points that the Lord Jesus has to say about money or riches generally in the previous message:

Firstly, Riches stand in antagonism to the kingdom of God, and antagonism that is reflected in the antagonism between flesh and Spirit. Riches is in the realm of flesh and the kingdom of God is in the realm of Spirit.

Secondly, this antagonism is seen in that riches or money competes for the love of our hearts – “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Thirdly, money also competes with God for the lordship of our hearts. So, the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 that we cannot serve God and mammon. The two cannot both be lords of our lives at the same time because money competes for the lordship of our hearts.

The fourth is that wealth competes against God to be the object of our faith and for allegiance of our hearts. We saw that mammon in the Aramaic has the meaning, that in which one puts one’s trust. In other words, we cannot both trust in God and in mammon at the same time. They both compete to become the object of our faith.

Fifthly, mammon or wealth leads to covetousness. And we saw that the word, “covetousness” means something that we want more and more of. Riches like drugs, is addictive.

Sixthly, mammon is called the “mammon of unrighteousness” not because money itself can be righteous or unrighteous, since it’s only a thing not a person. Persons can be righteous or unrighteous by way of a moral decision. But wealth is called the “mammon of unright­eousness” because in order to get it, it leads to unrighteousness, as people go into crime in order to secure the money to get drugs to meet their addiction. We also mentioned how, in a television inter­view, one of the drug addicts said that he needed US$400 a day to satisfy the drug needs of his daily addiction, and when he was asked how he could get his $400 a day, he said quite frankly that he stole the money. We resort to lying, slander, stealing, robbery, murder if necessary, in order to get money. “Mammon of unrighteousness” leads us into unrighteousness. Hence Paul said that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Seventhly, the Greek word adikos is translated as “dishonest” or “unrighteous” in Luke 16:10, and as “unrighteous” in verse 11. But in the context of verse 10, adikos can be more appropriately trans­lated as “unfaithful.” The Lord Jesus speaks of “unfaithful” mammon not because mammon itself is unfaithful as though it were some kind of person, but it cannot be trusted. Those who put their trust in money are quickly disappointed. For example, those who have put their trust in stocks have quickly discovered how untrustworthy mammon can be. One day, the stock market is shooting up and you are making a lot of money, and the next day, it goes down and all your shares are worth nothing, and you are broke! How many people have been reduced from being a millionaire one day to a beggar the next? Mammon is utterly untrustworthy. If you put your trust in it, you are going to be painfully disappointed.

The eighth point concerning the nature and character of wealth is that it is transient, and because it is transient, it can never be truly your own. Money is simply something that passes through your hands. You just cannot hang on to it. You go to the bank to withdraw money one day, and the next day, you will discover that all that money is gone, spent on necessities of one sort or the other! It is something that passes through your hands and you are a steward, a minister; it simply never becomes truly your own. The moment you try to make it truly your own, all you end up with is a piece of worthless paper.

So the Lord Jesus said, “If you cannot be trusted to be a good steward of what is not your own, how can you be trusted with what is truly going to be your own?” The only thing that can be truly your own is what becomes part of your character; it’s not material. Godliness, holiness, purity, righteousness become your own because they become part of you. Your money and possessions may be truly your own, but you can still have them stolen from you, or you can lose them. They can never become part of you. Nevertheless, righteous­ness which leads to eternal life, is built gradually into our character by the work of God’s Holy Spirit, and becomes truly our own in a sense which wealth and possessions can never be truly part of us, truly our own.

This is what we saw concerning the nature of riches.

As Christians, how shall we deal with our spiritual enemy, mammon?

Today, we need to deal with the question which the Lord Jesus addresses to the rich man here, “Seeing that wealth, “the mammon of unrighteousness” is our spiritual enemy, because if we are not careful, money will lead us into unrighteousness, how then shall we deal with this matter?

As you know, we live in a world in which we cannot get away from the use of money. So on the one hand, we need to have money. For example, without money, you wouldn’t have anything to pay for your bus or metro fare to get here. Without money, you wouldn’t have lunch unless you have a very generous friend. And even though you have a generous friend, without money, he wouldn’t be able to provide you with lunch. Yet, on the other hand, we also realize that money, like drugs, can become extremely dangerous to our spiritual life. We seem to be caught at an impasse. We cannot do without money and yet we must be on our guard against money. What shall we do about this difficult situation as Christians?

I tend to think of it rather like fat in the body. You know very well that fat can be very dangerous to you. Fat in excess in your body, especially in your blood vessels, can clog up your blood vessels and kill you. That is why many people want to exercise and go on a diet to keep the fat or cholesterol level down in your blood.

Yet, the body needs fat or cholesterol too. So we are caught in the same impasse much like money. If you don’t eat any fat, you will simply die. In fact, in all the food that you eat, there is some propor­tion of fat. Some have a very high proportion of fat, others have a very low proportion of fat, but there is fat in the food that you eat. There is oil or fat even in chocolate. Or if you eat meat, there is fat in that. Vegetables also have some proportion of fat. Nuts especially, have a very high proportion of fats or vegetable oils. So you need to eat fat in order to live, but if you eat too much of it, or the wrong kinds of it, you begin to store up the fat in your system. Or if your body doesn’t metabolize fat, oils or lipids very well, then you are going to have a great build up of this dangerous but necessary sub­stance. Notice the same parallel: it’s both necessary and dangerous. It becomes dangerous when there’s a build up of it. When you begin to get fatter and fatter with these thick fat layers stored up in your body, you become a good candidate for heart attacks and perhaps other diseases as well.

Money is much the same thing. On the one hand, we cannot live without money anymore than the body can live without fats. Yet, on the other hand, if you store up money, that money will destroy you spiritually at some stage or other. It’s not that we can do without money, but the Lord Jesus’ warning is that we don’t store up riches on earth. We must be careful about the way we handle these riches. So today, we need to look at how to deal with this problem.

You don’t become rich unless you store up riches

The Lord Jesus gives his instructions to the rich, young ruler. The only way you can be rich is to store up. You don’t get rich by spending all your money. If you spend your money, you remain poor. No matter how big is your income, whether it is $20,000, $30,000, or $70,000 a year, if you keep spending everything in luxurious living, you are going to be poor because you cannot store anything up. Whereas, the poor man may earn a relatively low income, but he stores up, so in due time, he might even become rich.

I was amazed that the newspaper reported that at his death, a porter—a man who transports your baggage on a cart—had stored away for himself some 30,000 English pounds! I gulped at the figure. He put away whatever the amount of tips he received for moving some luggage. He was very thrifty. Yet, what is the point of saving up 30,000 pounds only to hand it over to the tax office when he died? So you don’t become rich unless you store up riches.

Now you may eat a lot of fat, but you won’t become fat if you keep burning up the fat through exercise. An athlete who is burning up a lot of calories may eat a lot of butter, milk and fat foods, much more than you and I, but he doesn’t get fat. Why? His body is burning it up without storing it, so he doesn’t grow fat. Your body only builds up fat when your intake exceeds your output, in the same way as your bank account does.

Whoever accumulates wealth will not be able to enter the kingdom

This is what happened to the rich young ruler. We don’t know how he became rich. He may have inherited a lot of money or a very big business from his family, or he may have been very hardworking. His income was far greater than his expenditure, so he had built up a very big account. In fact, Luke says he had become very heavily loaded with wealth, living in a spiritual state of obesity. The Lord Jesus warned that if you allow yourself to become spiritually obese, you are not going to make it into the kingdom of God any more than a camel will get through the eye of a needle.

I need to remind you again, that contrary to what some preachers might have said, the words spoken to the rich young ruler are not at all only for the rich young ruler, as though he was the only person, or one of the few people who love money. We can see that this is not true at all on three points.

The Lord Jesus means this as a general application, that anyone who is rich, who accumulates wealth will not be able to enter the kingdom. He says so in the general statement in Mark 10:23:

He did not say how hard it is for this particular rich man to get into the kingdom. He is saying how hard it is for any rich man to enter the kingdom.

Secondly, in Luke 12:32-34, the Lord Jesus speaks to his disciples generally saying,

This is an important connection to the passage in Mark, as the words the Lord Jesus said to all his disciples in verse 33 are the same as what he said to the rich, young ruler in Mark 10:21, “Sell all your possessions and give to the poor.”

The third point is in Mark 10:28, where Peter reminds the Lord Jesus that the disciples have already done what he teaches: “See, we have left everything and followed you.” So, it is exegetically wrong to say that the Lord Jesus addressed these words only to the rich, young man. To do so is simply to escape the force of the words of the Lord Jesus and its general application. Of course, we are not dependent only on these three points.

Why are riches so dangerous? Right at the beginning of today’s message, we have already summarized why wealth is so dangerous, so addictive, and how it leads to unrighteousness, so that those who cling to it cannot cling to God.

How to deal with this problem of stored up riches?

Notice the next thing that the Lord says to the rich, young man is, how to deal with this problem of stored up riches? The Lord’s solu­tion is very simple but very drastic in verse 21:

1. “Go” remove obstacles between you and the kingdom, then “come”

There are two things: First you go and then you come. You cannot come before you go. Now this is very important to understand for salvation. You cannot come to God through the Lord Jesus if there are certain obstacles which stand between you and the kingdom. The Lord Jesus doesn’t simply say, “Come,” because you cannot do it. He says, “First, go, and when you have put things right, then you come.”

You have “go” and “come” again in Matthew 5:24. Let me read to you Matthew 5:23-24.

You simply cannot come to the Lord Jesus until certain things have been put right. The Lord Jesus says, “First, you have to go, repent of your sins, be reconciled to your brother. Get rid of the excess fat in your life. If you truly do these things, you can come and follow me.” Many people make the mistake of thinking that it’s only a matter of coming whenever they like. The Lord Jesus says, “No, first go.”

We find the things that the Lord Jesus asks us to do difficult because they are often so contrary to our nature. For example, in Matthew 5:24, he tells us to go and repent of our sins and be reconciled to our brother; but to say sorry to someone when we have done wrong is so difficult for us. We cannot swallow our pride. The Lord Jesus says, “If you cannot humble yourself and put right the wrong that you have done against your brother, or brothers, or against the church, don’t come. Until you go and straighten the matter, you cannot come.” Or we hang on to our riches and possessions which are so dear to us. But the Lord Jesus says to the rich, young man, “Go and sell them,” and he can’t stand it! He goes away with a long face; he is depressed. So he just keeps going and never comes. The Lord Jesus knows that but he doesn’t say, “I’ll lower the conditions. You don’t have to go. You can come anyway.” No, the Lord Jesus always says, “Go, and after that you can come.”

The Lord Jesus’ conditions are so contrary to our nature that it makes it necessary for us to be transformed first. We must be changed in the sense that we repent before we can come. The word “repent” means a change of mind. We must be changed to be willing to let go of the things that hinder our entrance into the kingdom. If you don’t want to repent, if you don’t want to change your mind, if you don’t want to let go of the things that prevent you from coming into the kingdom of God, then you will keep going and never come. Again, I remind you, the Lord Jesus doesn’t lower his requirements simply to make it easy for us to come. No, those conditions must be met. We must first go before we can come.

2. “Sell”, “give” — do not store up riches

Next, notice the beauty of the Lord Jesus’ parable in verse 25:

A camel, a huge animal, going through the eye of a needle! There is no evidence for the statement that “the eye of a needle” is the name of some small gate in the city wall. It must be some piece of juggling again, by some preacher. An eye of a needle is simply an eye of a nee­dle. The Lord Jesus is simply using his usual kind of parabolic speech such as, “You swallow a camel and you strain out a mosquito.” Here he is talking of a camel going through the eye of a needle. He says it would be easier for the camel to get through the needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom. Foolish is the man who doesn’t take the words of the Lord Jesus seriously, because there is no one else who knows the path to eternal life as he does.

The parable of a camel who stores up food and water in its humps

Notice the beauty of the parable of a camel. How many of you have seen, touched, or have witnessed the behavior of a camel? Some of my first contacts with camels were in Egypt and Israel. A camel is a very interesting animal and note how appropriate is the picture the Lord Jesus uses. A camel is the one animal in the world that stores up, isn’t it? Other animals eat and they have to look for food again pretty soon, but the camel is a remarkable animal which can go through the desert for days and days and days without water and food. It doesn’t have to eat or drink because it has stored up in its great big humps. It’s a very, very interesting animal! No other animal can do this. Hence how appropriate is the picture the Lord Jesus uses. The rich or all of us like to store up for a rainy day.

The camel is: the unregenerate man, who has no place in the church

What is more, if you have ever seen a camel, you will understand that it is a very bad-tempered animal. Have you ever known a camel? It never ceases to grumble, snarl, murmur, complain, or groan. When you try to make it go on its knees, it protests, screeching, groaning, grumbling non-stop all through this process. The only way to get it down is by yanking and whipping. The whole process repeats when you want it to stand up again. It is baring its teeth, screeching, mumbling, groaning, making all kinds of noises. That’s the camel! We are told by animal experts that it is the most bad-natured animal in the world. It never ceases to groan and grumble. So it has to be whipped, dragged, pushed, kicked, whatever is necessary, to get it to do anything. It’s a beast of burden, but whether it has burden or no burden, it is grumbling and moaning the whole time. How appro­priate is this picture of the natural man in his bad-natured, bad-tempered, mumbling, murmuring, complaining character! I hope that every time you see a Christmas card with camels bearing some magi with gifts, or standing by themselves, you will remember that the camel is the picture of the natural man, who is bad-natured and bad-tempered.

I take this opportunity to say that camels have no place in the sheepfold. Camels are parked outside the sheepfold. And yet, inside the sheepfold of the church, we also have “camels” who are com­plaining, grumbling, murmuring and criticizing. I want to say very frankly and straightforwardly to those, who behave in this camel fashion, who conduct themselves with criticisms against the church, against brothers and sisters, against the Training Team, must reckon with the discipline of the church because they are doing a work which is very damaging to the life and the harmony of the church. No church is perfect, and if you want to criticize, there will never be a lack of things to criticize. But if you mean to air your opinions and suggestions not to damage the church, but for the upbuilding and edification, there are proper ways to do it. I must warn the camel-like natured people within the church that they must either seek their place elsewhere outside the fold, or reckon with the discipline of the church.

If you want to be constructive, you don’t do things behind the backs of brothers and sisters, because that is slander. If you would like to consider improving the life of the church, or you see problems concerning the church as a whole, then it is important to speak to me. If you have something against the Training Team, do not speak behind their backs, but speak to the Training Team and not to other people. Otherwise, you simply damage the relationship between the Training Team and the church, or between one brother against the other, or one sister against the other. This will inevitably call for disciplinary action. I want every person to understand that any person who comes to this church will be safe from people whose conduct is not acceptable.

As I said, camels are a very complaining type of creature, and they are never satisfied, no matter what you do for them. They are always bad-natured. And if you have a camel-like nature, then you need to understand that it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for you to get into the kingdom of heaven. I want to emphasize again, no church is perfect. There will never be lack of faults to find for those who want to find faults. If I wanted to find fault with you, I would have no trouble whatsoever drawing up a list with anyone. If you wanted to find fault with me, you should have no trouble finding a whole list of things to find fault with. But that is not the nature and purpose of a church. We are not a group of camels grumbling at each other.

No, for all our faults, by the grace of God, we are sheep within the fold. You will notice that sheep are without horns, so they don’t attack, bite or kick one another. They are simply sheep who mix with one another and behave in a sheep-like fashion. Let us take to heart this very important lesson because our salvation depends upon it. As an under-shepherd of God, it is my task to see to the welfare of this flock that he entrusts to my care.

What is more, camels can get very aggressive. Not only do they store up riches, not only are they bad-natured, but their bad nature also goes so far to become very aggressive. It is well known that from time to time, a camel will even bite off the arm of its attendant. It literally bites off the hand that feeds it! If you come too close to a camel’s sharp teeth, you might find yourself missing a hand or an arm! It can be as aggressive as that. So let us take note of these characteristics and see how appropriate is the picture that the Lord Jesus uses here.

We need to be transformed from camel to sheep

All this means is that we need to be transformed if we are to get into the kingdom. We are all bad-tempered like camels by nature. We are all mumbling, groaning in some way or another, and very aggressive. But God has to change our character. And so the Lord Jesus says here in verse 27,

No man can enter into the kingdom of God by his own effort, but God can transform our camel-like nature into a sheep-like nature, into the kind of animal that is well-pleasing to him, that doesn’t live like a camel.

The camel lives in the desert. In fact, they are so at home in the spiritual wilderness that it doesn’t seem to bother them too much how long they spend in that wilderness, just like so many Christians, who spend all their lives living in a spiritual desert. But sheep cannot survive in spiritual wilderness. They speedily die there. They need the green pastures and the living waters in order to survive. They are not camels. Do you feel at home in the spiritual wilderness? Does your weak and pitiful spiritual state disturb you, or doesn’t it? Or maybe you feel very at home living in the spiritual wilderness of the world. That in itself is very dangerous. It doesn’t even disturb some people that they are camels. They don’t mind if there isn’t much green grass around. Let us consider this parable of the camel and pray that God will so transform us that we are not at home in spiritual wildernesses, but rather, seek the green pastures that he will lead us into.

Repent and be transformed in the desire to store up riches

Let us return to consider what the Lord Jesus is saying to this rich young man. He is saying there is no way this rich, young man can enter the kingdom because of both his desire to store up riches and his unregenerate condition. God has to thoroughly, completely transform his nature before he can enter the kingdom. So drastic action has to be taken in order to bring about this transformation.

But the rich young man has to do something first before God can do anything. This is the point of the “go” and the “come.” God cannot repent on your behalf. You have to repent. God cannot detach you from the love of the world. You must be willing to change, to detach yourself from the love of the world.

How will you deal with riches when you follow Jesus?

Supposing this rich, young man is now willing to follow the Lord Jesus to become a disciple. Supposing that unlike the rich young man, you listen to these words of the Lord Jesus and say to him, “Yes Lord, I will gladly dispose of my stored-up fat. I will gladly dispose of my wealth that by your God and Father’s grace, I may enter his kingdom.”

What shall we do in dealing with riches? Will you and I rush out and immediately dispose of such riches as we have, whether it be $500, or $5,000, or whatever amount it may be? I would like to draw to your attention that in dealing with riches, we are in a difficult position. Why?

In order to convey this point to you, let us look carefully because accurate and proper exegesis is very important. How shall we deal with riches? You may have worked for many years and you may have accumulated some money, therefore, should you immediately dispose of such assets as say, your RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Pension), which is after all a form of storing? You might have bought a few equities, and should you immediately dispose of all these? Would this be the correct exposition of this passage? I fear not. Let us examine carefully the situation here. What would have happened if the rich young man had followed the Lord Jesus’ instructions and sold all his possessions and given them to the poor, and come to follow the Lord Jesus?

Jesus and his disciples had a common fund, as did the Early Church

So often, in expounding the Bible, you must get the entire picture of the situation. First, when you look at the life of the disciples, you will notice that they and the Lord Jesus had a common fund, rather like those who are in training now. They had all things in common. This means that if the rich young man had disposed of all his goods and joined the Lord Jesus’ disciples, what would have happened? He would have become part of the group of disciples with a common fund. Now this point is very important to bear in mind because this means that although he has now disposed of all his possessions, he might have given some part to the common fund, and he would himself be part of this common fund. Since the disciples had left everything to follow the Lord Jesus, there were no poorer people than they themselves. It’s very important to understand this point.

We also see in the Scriptural teaching that there was this kind of common fund in the Early Church. In Acts Chapter 2 we see that the Early Church shared their possessions. There was a common fund. We see also in Acts Chapter 6 that the widows were being provided for in their food and clothing, their daily needs out of this common fund. Without a common fund, the church could never provide for the widows. The Pauline churches also had to have a common fund in order to provide for the poor and the widows. We see this in detail in 1 Timothy 5:3-16.

What is more, not only did those within the household churches have a common fund among themselves, but each household church was also prepared to support another household church in the same city or another country that was in need. These household churches supported each other. This is a very beautiful picture! For example, when the household churches in Jerusalem were experiencing a period of famine in the land and were having hardship, the household churches in Macedonia sent contributions to support the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. You read that for example, in Romans 15:26, Galatians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 16:1. So in the Early Church, there was a system of communal possessions. Without this very important understanding, we would misinterpret the passage.

We cannot say to a man today, “Go and sell your possessions, dispose of your equities, dispose of your bank accounts.” That would be irresponsible because he has no common fund to join. He has no margin of reserve. Supposing one of you is relatively rich and you came to me and asked the way to eternal life, I am obliged to give you the same answer as the Lord Jesus gave. I would have to say to you, “You need to dispose of your riches because that hinders you from entering the kingdom.” But if I said that to you who haven’t got a common fund to enter into, I would be utterly irresponsible. Why?

Supposing you disposed of your possessions and then some member of your family became seriously ill so that he needed medical attention, maybe he needs an operation that comes out to a very big medical bill running into thousands of dollars, you have no way to cover the expense because you have given it away. What happens is you would go into debt, and being in debt itself is a violation of Scriptural teaching as Paul says in Romans 13:8, “Owe no man anything except to love each other.” So by trying to follow the Lord Jesus’ teaching in one area, you end up violating his teaching in another area because you don’t have the church system of communal possessions.

Take another example. You discover there is wood rot in the roof of your house, so that a new roof has to be put up. This costs several thousand dollars, and you don’t have the money because you have given it all away in obedience to the Lord Jesus’ teaching. Your children and your family are going to freeze in the house because there is no roof over their heads. But Paul used very strong words to tell us in 1 Timothy 5:8-9 that a Christian who does not provide for his wife and children has “denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” You must be responsible towards those whom God has entrusted to your care.

Church disobedience makes Jesus’ teaching of common fund impossible

However, given the situation today, the church itself is not obedient to the Lord Jesus’ teaching, we cannot make the individual do what the church itself fails to do. We can only begin to implement the Lord Jesus’ teaching here when certain people within the church begin to be moved by his teaching, and say to one another, “Let us implement the Lord Jesus’ teaching and have a common fund. We will give what is in excess to our needs to the poor, or we will help those who are serving the Lord, or we will help missionary work. There must al­ways be a common fund which serves as a margin, so that if someone is desperately ill, they can be supported from the common fund. Or if there are great additional expenses to any member of the common fund, then money can be brought out from the fund in order to help that person.

Until that time, you simply cannot tell a person who is wealthy, “Go and dispose of all your riches” because the Lord Jesus did not say, “Go and sell your possessions” and finish there. He went on to say, “Go and sell your possessions and come, follow me. Be with me.” Then you will be part of the team of disciples and you will benefit inevitably from the common fund, which we saw that the twelve disciples had. And you need only look at the Gospels that not only the twelve disciples, but also the large group of disciples only one or two years later, right until the time of the Early Church in Acts, all had a common fund. I shall not go into the details and the evidence of the matter now.

The important point that we learn from this passage is this: until the church begins to live collectively as the Lord Jesus meant us to live, there are certain parts of his teaching which applies to individuals that we cannot yet implement. This is a great tragedy. This means to say that the disobedience of the church makes it impossible for individuals to implement the Lord Jesus’ teaching in certain areas such as dealing with riches.

Therefore, I say to you, it is important to accurately expound the Bible. Any preacher who goes to one extreme and says that this teaching doesn’t apply to the church generally, is being dishonest to the Word of God. But he who goes to the other extreme and simply says, “Go and sell your possessions if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven” is being equally irresponsible, because the person who sells his possessions has no group of disciples to join, which the rich, young ruler could have done. He could have been in the group of disciples following the Lord Jesus.

1. A community of goods must be voluntary

So in order to deal with the problem of riches, what are the mecha­nics of such a community of goods? First, I have stressed that it must be voluntary as in Acts, and everywhere in Scripture. The church cannot make a law which says, “Everyone must amalgamate their riches.” That wouldn’t be right. That would be legalism of the worst kind. It has to be the Spirit of God working in our hearts as he did in the Early Church, to detach us from the love of our possessions, beginning with a number of people within the church. God will move various people, and it has to be his moving, not church laws laying down this requirement, so that these people will pool their funds and say, “Let us function together.” In this way, no particular indivi­dual will have to store up his riches to take care of his retirement for example. What will happen if you don’t store up anything? Who is going to support you when you retire?

I have known faithful Christian workers who have ended up in a government old people’s home, completely neglected by the church. I say that is a disgrace to the name of God in this generation! The church is a disgrace if we let the servants of God who have labored a life-time end up alone and forsaken in a state institution for old people! How can we say that we love one another to the extent that we are willing to lay down our lives for one another when we are not willing to lay down our possessions for one another? We are proved to be utterly hypocritical in our attitudes. No, we must move forward if God so permits in the days to come, towards implementing the Lord Jesus’ teaching step by step without an unbalanced fanaticism.

2. A household church of 100 persons can practice a community of goods

Secondly, we also notice an interesting saying. Let us read Mark 10:29-30, a foundation passage for the Lord Jesus’ teaching on the community of goods:

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is 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.”

Notice, these words of the Lord Jesus would be utterly meaningless unless he is speaking about a community of goods. You can see this is the foundational passage for the Early Church’s practice of the community of goods. When I have given up my excess, how can I still have a hundred fold of houses and lands? Of course, I do if there is a community of goods, because all our possessions are in common. Then the possession of this brother’s house is also my house. My house is also your house. Everyone’s house is everyone else’s house. If there are 100 people in the group, you have 100 houses, 100 pieces of land, 100 brothers, 100 sisters because there is a community of possessions. It’s not that by giving up all, nobody has anything. No, it is that we now have all in common, hence the 100 fold.

And the 100 fold is also particularly interesting. The Lord Jesus could easily have said 1,000 fold. Because he knew that the gospel would be preached to the ends of the earth. He could have said 10,000 fold or 100,000 fold. There are more than 100,000 Christians in the world. But he did not say that. He said 100 fold, not because there are no words in Greek to say 1,000 fold or 100,000 fold. There is a very interesting point here. It seemed that the Lord Jesus indicated that the unit of the common fund, the community of goods should not be in excess of 100 people. You will notice that if the numbers are very great, the financial problems associated with administering so large a group of people’s finances become far too complicated to manage. You would need to have financial experts to run the whole business! But if it is kept within 100 people, only some 10 or 15 or at the maximum 20 families are involved. This is a very manageable unit hence the 100 fold. Even here, we see that the Lord Jesus has a very specific plan. He is not saying that 10,000 Christians in Montreal all have one common fund. That is virtually unworkable. The mechanics of trying to manage the finances of so large a group would lead to all kinds of problems and dangers.

What the Lord Jesus wants is one family unit, one household church not in excess of 100 persons. In this way, no one in this household church has to worry when anyone gets sick and they have no money to pay the bills, because there is a common fund. Any person within this household church does not have to worry whether he has to lay aside money to take care of his retirement because there is a common fund. All the excess does not have to be tied up in the banks. Rather, it will be used in God’s work if only we knew how to implement the Lord Jesus’ teaching. How wonderful it will be!

We have to leave the matter here for today, as we pray that God’s Holy Spirit will revive his church in these days, to bring us back to the time of the Early Church, and to his own plan of how his church was meant to function. Then you and I don’t all have to store up, but together, we can function in true love, in true commitment and true caring for one another. Until then, the rich young rulers of today cannot dispose of their possessions for they have no common fund, no team of disciples to be with. So let us pray that God will begin first by doing wonderful things in his church today, that all men might recognize that we are Christ’s disciples, because we love one another. And we prove our love for one another not just with words but with our commitment to one another.

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.