Who Has the Most Toys?, Part 2

Sometimes we mistakenly assume that materialism is unique to our culture. But in reality, people have struggled with greed since the beginning of time. Craving wealth is woven into our sin nature, and all of us are prone to see money as the key to our happiness. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll proves the timeless nature of this malady by taking us back to the first century.

We're looking at a passage in Matthew chapter 19, when Jesus encountered a rich young ruler. Before we start the message, Chuck leads us in prayer. Thank you, Lord, for your grace.

It's just so constant. When we learn of it, we realize that we've gained half our education and all of life. When we realize what it means, we're suddenly delivered from shame and the constancy of having to prove ourselves, and the insecurity of wondering what we're going to face when we wake up tomorrow morning, or how we're going to make it or how we're going to make it through death when we stand before you, truly is amazing. And Lord, today there are a thousand stories sitting under this roof, even more. And were it not for your grace, they would all have sad endings. There would be a lot more shame, there would be a lot more discouragement, a lot more selfishness, a lot more one-upmanship, but your grace puts us at ease because Jesus paid it all, all to Him we owe. And so we thank you, Father, for doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Teach us truth through the lives of these little children in this setting and this man who came to your son with all the wrong motives, and thank you for the way Jesus addressed the things that he really needed to hear, which we need to hear. Minister to us during this time of offering, we often think of it as our time to give to you. I pray that you'd give to us during this time of quietness. Give us a reminder of of your pleasure in our lives, lived in Christ. Remind us as we sit in this room, it's one of the few places on earth that we as believers are in the majority. Remind us that in this journey, we're not alone. Remind us what a pleasure it is to have a church like this, surrounded by people like these, worshiping your son.

There's no one else like him. And for that reason, we give gratefully. Lord, I pray for those who wear the uniform today.

Thank you for each one, equally important for those family members, just as involved as they. Give us all hearts of compassion and mercy. Deliver us from ourselves, Lord, in a selfish era so that we can represent your son who is touched with the feelings of infirmities. These offerings are yours and we give them gratefully because of your amazing grace. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Everyone say, Amen.

You're listening to Insight for Living. To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, to study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck that he titled, Who Has the Most Toys? Now, there was a man who saw this. He's not named here or in Mount Mark or in Luke, the other two accounts that cover the story. He's an unnamed man. All three of them reveal him as being young. Don't know how young. But he walked right up eyeball to eyeball to Jesus and he shot him a question.

Stop. What else do we know about him? We know nothing of his background. It's unusual that he's young and also Luke's words, very rich. And Luke calls him a leader or a ruler. He sees in Jesus something he does not have in himself. He identifies it as eternal life. He just knows, as he's listened to Jesus teach, how long, we're not told, or where, I have no idea. But he walks up to Jesus and he addresses him with a respectful title, teacher. What good thing must I do to get what you've got?

How can I get what you're talking about? Called eternal life. Jesus responds, why ask me about what's good? There's only one who is good, but to answer your question, if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.

So most likely he's Jewish, because he asked, well, which ones? If he were not Jewish, he may not even know about the commandments. Watch what Jesus says. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not lie. Honor your father, your mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Stop. Ever looked at the list of Ten Commandments lately? Read Exodus 19 and 20.

You'll see the list. These are all from the last part of the list. These are all the horizontal commandments. The first ones are all about a relationship with God.

These are all about relationship with others. Verse 20 is the most significant verse in the whole biography. He has the audacity to say to Jesus, I am not a Jew, I am a Jew, I am not a Jew, I am not a Jew, I am not a Jew. He has the audacity to say to Jesus, I've obeyed all of those. I've obeyed all these commandments, the young man replied.

What else? He says, I've kept them all, and I want to say, yeah, right. I've never seen anybody in my life, including me, who's done all of those things, and that's just half of them.

Especially the way Jesus describes them in the Sermon on the Mount, where he talks about the heart. I mean, who hasn't despised someone enough to want to pick him off? Don't answer out loud. And how about committing adultery? Who hasn't undressed somebody else in their mind, or entertained the thought of of sex with them, or going further than we should with someone outside our marriage? It's a shameful thought, but it's true. It's part of the depravity in us. Who hasn't stolen anything, even a piece of paper from the office or a paper clip?

You've never taken anything? Well, how about lying? There's no person on earth that went through childhood without lying. A lie is a very present help in time of need. You do it.

You do it. Some of you lie regularly to your married partner. You just lie. You act like, if you don't say it, you act like, if you don't say it, you act like, and the acting like is a lie. You stay silent, which is a lie, because if you spoke, you'd have to tell the truth. So your silence allows you to lie. We've all lied, but you know what's interesting about this?

I don't want you to miss this. He pulls one out of order. You think Jesus knew the order of the commandments? He wrote the commandments. Honoring your father and mother is out of order. I wonder why he did that.

I think it has something to do with the young man and his father and mother. You're taking really good care of your mom and dad, now that you're loaded, and they're in need in their older age. Really? Are you claiming that Corban nonsense, where it's all given to God, which is nothing more than a Pharisaical rationalization, and loving your neighbor as yourself? Anybody in this room a perfect neighbor? Never met one.

I've never met a perfect neighbor. We all break them. And the guy has the audacity to say, I've kept them all.

Give me one that I've not done. Isn't it gracious of Jesus not to look him in the eye and say to him, you blind fool. You are so important to you, you don't even know what you have failed to do with your life. So Jesus decides to put his finger on the one issue that would touch him at the deepest. So he says to the young man, if you want to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. You will have treasure in heaven.

Then come follow me. Now there are some people who go there and they pull it out of context and they say, Jesus taught that to have anything is wrong. And until you sell everything and get rid of everything and live on food stamps, you're not really spiritual. That's pulling it out of context, making something of this it was never meant to say.

Always integrate a passage with its context. This is a man who lives for his toys. When you're young and rich, that happens. Jesus knows that. So he says, get everything in proper order. Get rid of the stuff that you worship and worship me.

Come to the living God with your whole heart and soul. And you will notice the young man when he heard this, verse 22, went away sad because he had many possessions. Now that's just implying something very important, and he's not willing to get rid of any of them. Remember years ago, traveling in Newport Beach following a Ferrari, I think it was a Porsche, and it had the little license border. He who dies with the most toys wins. I wish that license read stupid. It's the most stupid statement you could believe.

People believe it. You got all the toys. What does that mean? Well, you drive a Porsche that's not good enough, so you got to have a Ferrari. So you get a Ferrari and that's not enough, so you need two Ferraris.

You get two Ferraris, you got to have a car garage that'll park four cars, so you need a bigger house. And that's not enough, so you need another house. And that's not an on and on and on and on and on and on.

Enough is never enough because you don't own these things, they own you. And that's where this man is. So that's why he's walking away sad. It isn't that he doesn't understand. It is that he doesn't want to put first things first.

What a tragic addiction. That path is strewn with the litter of people who have nothing but their toys. He's got more toys than all those other children put together, and he doesn't want to be rid of any one of them. Well, we've seen the children, we've seen the man, and we've let our imagination run free enough to put ourselves in his sandals. We see him walking in a just into a way.

By the way, Jesus doesn't quickly follow him, begging him to rethink it. You make your choices. You live with it.

You're grown up, aren't you? That's the way life is. How wonderful when we're small and and uncomplicated. We are, think about it, we're not self-conscious.

Basically, we're not that competitive. We love people, and we have things, and we use things. When we grow up, it gets reversed. We love things, and we use people. And we're driven by our own agenda. Life gets in reverse. And the Lord calls us into account in moments like this. I had a man say to me, following the first morning service, if there's ever a message I needed to hear, it was this, this, this, this, here, it was this one today, right now, and he walked away.

Don't have any idea what he meant, but you may be in those shoes. I wouldn't be surprised that many of you are because we live in a very materialistic region of the country. Oh, I love it here.

I love living where we live and being with the people I'm with, but I see it around me all the time, and I have to deliberately fight it. And I know you do too. My heart goes out to those who have given up the fight, and enough is never enough. So I think about our agenda, and I ask, do I really have first things first? Have I really made Jesus Christ and his life and his cross and his will preeminent in my life? Because if I have not, I'll never find happiness. And when death comes near, I certainly won't feel comfortable. Speaking of that, I got an email this week from a dear friend I've known for decades.

Been married not quite 50 years. He wrote it from a room at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, as he's sitting along his wife with brain cancer, as the cancer has now invaded her lungs. And he writes the most thoughtful email you could read, and he sums life up into four statements. It's beautiful. Part of the reason it's beautiful is because it's so real.

It's so real. You could just see his wife lying there, and he's writing this to a group of friends. Number one, life is hard.

By the way, this man happens to love Jesus Christ, and she does with their whole heart. Life is hard. Number two, we are not in control. Number three, it's not about us.

Number four, we will all die. That's a message from a room at MD Anderson Hospital. Written by a husband who, unless God intervenes, will soon, probably soon, bury his wife. Not a hint of bitterness, not a blame, not a regret. In fact, only gratitude for the almost 50 years they've shared life together and shared Christ with the people of the United States.

50 years they've shared life together and shared Christ with the people around them. But now it's all coming down to death. Trust me, when he leaves, he will not be sad. He'll be filled with joy.

He and his wife, whatever toys they've got, are in the right place. It's amazing what death does to reshape values. There was an event that occurred in 1912 that captured everybody's attention. It was April the 14th, when the Unsinkable hit an iceberg. And early in the morning on the 15th, that Titanic went to the bottom of the North Atlantic. About 1,500 perished. About 700 survived. That news made the news around the world and we're still returning to it. But there's one story I've never read in any news column. It's the story of a woman who left her first-class cabin and raced down the deck that was already tilting to a lifeboat and got in a boat, was fortunate enough to get a place in a lifeboat.

They were about to lower it into the North Atlantic in the darkness of night. She suddenly, without saying a word, jumped out of that boat and ran back up the deck of that ship, ran into, across the gambling room, into her suite, her room, pushed aside the decklaces and the diamond rings and the things that she'd left on the shelf and grabbed three small oranges and raced back to the boat. It seems incredible that she would do such a thing, this wealthy lady. But you see, death had now boarded the Titanic and one blast of his awful breath had transformed all values. Now priceless things seem worthless and worthless things seem priceless.

And she would rather have three small oranges than a a crate of diamonds. You don't need any toys when death comes. You need only what will help you survive. And that is Jesus Christ.

Please bow your heads. If I speak to you who are building your list of toys, I urge you to stop. Take a long look at your short life and realize that it is an endless, bottomless pit. You'll never have enough to satisfy and you'll never find enough to get you through the throes of death.

I urge you right now to turn your life over to the only one who has been there and come back to tell the story. He alone can give you the kind of peace that you need to set your priorities straight to rearrange the affairs of your life so that you can own a few toys without turning, getting your head turned, but they will never own you because a man's or woman's life does not consist in the abundance of the things which we possess. Right now, right now, trust in Jesus Christ. Lord, in this quiet moment, we are thinking perhaps more clearly than we have this entire week. Keep these thoughts on our minds.

Make us restless. If I find ourselves in the shoes of this young man, so full of ourselves that we don't even realize how blind we are, and enable us to come to an end of ourselves, to come afresh before you at the cross, to turn our lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ. Begin today, Father, helping us to rebuild a life that's far proof that will last throughout time and eternity. In the name of Christ, I pray, and everyone said, amen.

Spending a lifetime acquiring more possessions will do nothing to advance our happiness, nor will it improve our position with God. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. Now, to discover the resources we have available for today's topic, please visit us online at insightworld.org. Well, today Chuck addressed a very serious issue, and we know that our audience deeply appreciates hearing the truth and the way Insight for Living refuses to dodge the pressing problems of life. One of your fellow listeners recently used the word authenticity and expressed his gratitude. He said, Chuck, you taught me that it's okay to be human and make mistakes. In fact, you taught me that humor as a Christian is quite okay.

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