Lessons Learned from a Fat Camel, Part 2

In Matthew 19, the writer documented a puzzling statement from Jesus. He said to his disciples, I tell you the truth, it's very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And then Jesus added, in fact it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll helps us understand the context and the implications of this curious assertion.

Perhaps with tongue-in-cheek, Chuck titled today's message, Lessons Learned from a Fat Camel. The whole message of Christ is designed to teach us the importance of leaning. It is easy in life, as we become adults, even while teenagers, to become so self-sustaining that we look upon leaning on anyone or anything else as a mark of weakness, when in fact it is the secret of eternal life. And so as we grow, hopefully not only older but wiser, we realize the value of leaning and trusting another, since we are unable, in the final analysis, with eternal things in view, to take care of that ourselves. As Jesus puts it, that's humanly impossible. So today, hopefully that will come through loudly and clearly as we learn the value of leaning on the one who never fails us, for our help is from the Lord alone.

Bow with me, will you? Teach us that, our Father, teach us that message, that lesson, that valuable truth that does not come easily or naturally. We're so seldom told that truth.

We seldom see it illustrated in others, but we open your book and there it is over and over and over again. And even those who walked with your son had great difficulty understanding the source of life eternal and how to tap into it. And so Lord, in this short journey from earth to heaven, if nothing else, teach us that our help comes only from the Lord. In His name, we pray. Everyone said, Amen. You're listening to Insight for Living.

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, titled Lessons Learned from a Fat Camel. Riches do a number on one's soul. They make us resistant against humility and helpless dependence. Until something occurs that we cannot stop, like a terminal illness, all of a sudden the wealth loses its significance. Riches tend to make you selfish and stingy. That's what concerns Jesus. It's not that you can write a check for whatever you need.

It's that you're proud of the fact that you can. Now the disciples have some things to learn, and the thing I love about Peter is he just says it. So out it comes. And let's not be too hard on Peter. We often kind of beat up on him. And I want you to observe that Jesus does not reprove him or even correct him.

He reassures him. So Peter's words are not out of line. He says to Jesus, look at him for yourself, verse 27, we've given up everything to follow you. You know what he's saying in effect? Jesus, we've got a lot of struggles, we disciples, but one of them is not being too rich.

And you can identify with that. So what will we get? Before you criticize Peter for being presumptuous or maybe even a touch selfish, wait a minute.

It's a great question. Every student in seminary, any seminary, needs to be asking that. I've walked away from a lucrative career, and I'm on my way toward ministry.

What can I anticipate? Especially if you've got a lot of friends who have gone that route and they've moved into the world you could have occupied, but you're now moving into the world of the disciple of Jesus. So you want to know what's in it for us. And I think every disciple of Christ, and there are a number of you listening right now who fall in that category, many of you are following the call. You could have gone in one direction and you chose another deliberately, knowing that there would be sacrifices and never doubt it, there are. And so in answering the question, I love Jesus' reply.

First he reassures him. See that in verse 28? I reassure you that when the world is made new, so he races ahead to the days of the kingdom, when the fulfillment of the promise is made good, when there is the millennial era, when the reign of Christ occurs, and the Son of Man sits upon his glorious throne, you who have been my followers, look at it, will also sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. So Peter and Andrew and James and John and Matthew and the others of you, take note. What is now is marked by sacrifice, difficulty, hardship, misunderstanding, persecution, and for some of you, most of you, martyrdom, but ultimately you will live and you will reign. And then he goes on, and everyone, that's us, there we are, fellow believers in all the generations, everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, and he goes on with a list.

He could have named 20 other things because giving up is a part of taking on the call. Saying yes to Jesus is saying no to other things that are a lot more comfortable and a lot more self-satisfying. So he says, for my sake you've given those things up, but you will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life. In fact, he puts the whole value system on its head in light of today's times or any time on this earth. Many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.

Isn't that great? It's so satisfying, it's so reassuring. In fact, it takes away the blindness that wealth brings. It gives you eyes to see reality that by saying yes to the call of the Savior, you are now entering a world that will be marked by eternal rewards, that will be a hundred times beyond what he's named here. And it puts the greatest in a whole another category. Those who are now considered the least are in fact the greatest, and those who are called great in the eyes of the world are in fact in light of eternity of least importance. You get what Jesus is saying?

I think you do. There are sacrifices to be made. And I think I'm looking into the faces of some who have made a few of them.

In some cases, many of them. And my admiration for you knows no bounds. I commend you for taking the high road, following the call, because when you say yes to Christ and whatever his plan for you may be, you are also saying goodbye to situations that would be very self-satisfying and very enjoyable. Being willing to release your own desires, your own safety and security if necessary, giving up the luxurious that you might take on, a plan for his glory that goes far beyond what the world could ever offer. And you may have a child that's doing this, and you may be of the other frame of reference where you were raised. There's not much to get in life, so if you get a break so that you're able to get a lot, get a lot. And you've got a son or a daughter who's moving toward ministry, and I want to warn you about holding them back.

Watch your response to that. I love the old hymn, give of thy sons to bear the message glorious, give of thy wealth to speed them on their way, pour out thy soul for them in prayer victorious, and all thou spendest Jesus will repay. Encourage them, stand alongside them, tell them how proud of them you are. I remember how a Hendrick saying during my years at seminary and then beyond, how many people at the school sort of dry up for lack of encouragement from home.

How often I would hear words from fellow classmates saying things like, my parents still can't believe I'm a student at this school, wondering what in the world has gotten into me. Or whatever may be the realm of ministry you may go into. Margaret Clarkson put it like this, so send I you to labor unrewarded, to serve unloved, unsought, unknown, to bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing, so send I you to toil for me to toil for me alone.

Those who serve as our missionaries, those who are engaged in the work of Christ, wherever it may be and under whatever title it may be, take on that mantle and God says God says there will be great great rewards. How it happens is an amazing story. It's easy for me to set it up in this way and to leave the impression that it that it's all sort of sort of mysterious like a voice in the night that speaks and and and you sit up in bed and suddenly you're on your way to the mission field or or you're changing your course of study and and you're going towards seminary to prepare for the pastorate or whatever.

It doesn't always work like that. Sometime it is a back door delivery, I call it. Mine was a back door delivery. Let me take you back to when I was 22 years old.

Are you ready for that? That's a long ways back there. I was in the Marine Corps. I had gotten the greatest duty that you could be offered fresh out of my training. It was to go to San Francisco. Nobody else in my outfit went to San Francisco. They were all going to 29 Palms or ultimately they were going to wind up in Vietnam or some other place. Mine was San Francisco. Everybody wanted to know who I knew or who I paid to get that duty.

I it was completely surprising to me. I remember writing Cynthia telling her about it. I came home after my training. We packed up, got in our car and drove to San Francisco. She soon got a job. We found a little apartment in Daly City and here I am of all things trucking away in the hardship of San Francisco as a young Marine and she's got a great job and I have got in mail one day.

We've been there about four months and I pull up in front of where she works sitting on a hill. Everything in San Francisco is on a hill and I'm facing down, got my wheels pulled in so I don't run into 28 other cars down below and I decided to open the letter which came directly from Dwight D. Eisenhower. I thought, how nice.

The President would write me, boy, and I suddenly turned it upside thinking maybe I'm reading it wrong when I read that I'm needed on Okinawa and now and I read it for the third or fourth time. Bear with me here. I'm going somewhere with this. Tears fill my eyes. I'm full of self-pity. I'm thinking this is not what I planned. It's not what the recruiting officer told me. Veterans are laughing right now, as I tell you that, and Cynthia gets in the car and before long I can't keep it from her any longer and we don't sleep much that night.

Within a matter of weeks after I finish a little liberty and time away from duty, I'm on my way to a ship that's going to take me 8,000 miles away from home and here 10,000 miles away from home and family. I don't want to go. I'm bitter. I resent it. I want nothing to do with this. This is not fair. This is not right.

What in the world can I add to Okinawa that isn't already there? They don't need me over there and I am really, really mentally angry. Not just mentally. I'm angry all over. So just before I take off for my final week before we're in the ship, I visit my older brother who's a missionary finishing his training here in the States to go to South America for 30 plus years. Anyway, he says to me, as he noticed when he's around me that I'm pretty bitter, he said, here's a book. It was this book right here.

Here's a book. I said, I don't want a book. He said, you need to read this book. I said, I don't want to read. And he said, you really do need to read this book.

It's about people who gave their lives on the mission. I said, I don't need a missionary book. Or I really said it louder, but I just tried to hold back there and telling you. And he says to me very calmly, you need to read this book.

And what I said then I will not share with anyone else. And hopefully he's forgotten because he talked me into it and I shoved it in my duffel bag and put the bag above me on the bus and on the way to Camp Pendleton. And I'm riding along in the rain and I'm thinking, well, there's nothing else I've got here, so I'll turn the light on and I'll open the book, which is titled Through Gates of Splendor by Elizabeth Elliott, whoever she is. And then I start to read about five young men, just a little older than I, and their wives who are committed to reaching the Alca Indians in Ecuador. And in the process, all five are martyred. Here's a picture of five wives when they first hear the news that their husbands are dead.

Picture taken right there. There's Mary Lou McCully, wife of Ed, now dead. Barbara Yoderian, wife of Roger Yoderian, now dead. Marge Sainte, wife of Nate Sainte, the pilot, now dead. Olive Fleming, wife of Pete Fleming, now dead.

Elizabeth Elliott, wife of Jim, now dead. I couldn't put the book down. I read it through the rest of the bus ride.

I got to the base. I read it sitting in the head, in the bathroom and only place where the lights were on all night. And I read it again on the ship and I read it again when I was overseas. And I thought, could it be that I'm in this book somehow?

Maybe my brother had foresight that I certainly didn't have. And here I was struggling, but now beginning to think, maybe it isn't about me. Maybe it isn't about Cynthia and me, always being together physically and always in the comfort of what a nice job would provide.

Maybe it's, well, I'll cut to the chase. While I'm there in Okinawa, I realize I'm called to I'm called to serve Christ, of all things. To you, that's not a surprise.

To me, it was a total, absolute, complete 180 degree change, 180 degree. And my wife, who had always wanted to marry a preacher, was thrilled when I wrote her and said, you'll never believe what the Lord is doing in my heart. On Okinawa was one man who was committed to building into the lives of young men and Bob Newkirk built into my life. And I said to Bob one day, he's with the Navigators, I'm thinking maybe the Lord might be calling me into ministry. And he goes, you think? And I go, yeah, I just wonder.

Maybe he goes, absolutely, this is fabulous. What do you think Cynthia will say? I said, well, she'll dance a jig. I'd love to be there to watch her dancing a jig, but I'll just send her a note and I think she danced a jig. Long story short, hang on to the end of this.

It's not an end, it's really the beginning. Years later, an American lady named Jewel went to the very place where Marge Saint and Elizabeth Elliott had returned to help evangelize the tribe. By the way, they did that. The whole tribe is now evangelized. And she was there.

That lady later married an American publisher in Beijing, China. Having visited Marge and Elizabeth, she continues the mission of that vision where by the end of this year, Insight for Living Ministries will be delivering the Mandarin translation of the message of Christ to all Chinese speakers anywhere on the planet. One guy, one book, one mentor, one call, doors opening through our Insight for Living Ministry. And would you look, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of benefits come in the thousands as those who have never heard the name of Christ will trust in Him.

How good is that? And to think I was ready to take a job in that crummy little place in Houston, Texas, where I was going to make $2.43 an hour. Man, that was big pay back then.

You know what happened? What happened was I got to where I didn't even care what I was paid, because I realized this is a calling. And God's work is involved. And I have the privilege of going and doing where He is sending me to go. And here I am at this age, 60 years later, probably loving it now more than ever.

The stories like that go on and on. Bow your heads with me, will you please? If you will somehow guard yourself from greed, if you will allow the message that you have heard to come through in such a way that the stuff of life will no longer turn your head, and you will be willing to say, whatever, Lord, wherever, whenever, however, my answer is yes, you will discover the most unbelievable series of events that you couldn't have imagined had you tried to dream them up. Remember, the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then. But if you don't learn the lessons from the camel, it'll all be theory, and it'll never make any difference. If the Lord is leading you today to trust in His Son, that's the greatest decision you can make.

Make sure you've taken care of that. And once you have trusted in Him, remember the word, yes, go there often, because He will then have a plan for you that will just boggle your mind. Thank you, Father, for sending us to where you want us to go, and thank you for turning us away from things that we've always wanted to hang on to so that we might be able to grasp what's valuable and pass by what is expensive. Show us all the truth of this as we live our lives next door to the five-billion-dollar mile. In the name of Jesus, I pray.

Everybody sit. Amen. Who knew that a book written by Elizabeth Elliot would inspire a 22-year-old Marine to see the world in an entirely different way? And yet God spoke through Elizabeth, and her compassion for lost souls and people from every nation motivates Chuck Swindoll to this day.

You're listening to Insight for Living. Chuck titled this study in Matthew 19, Lessons Learned from a Fat Camel. To learn more about Chuck Swindoll and this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. Maybe today's teaching has inspired you to dig deeper into the book of Matthew on your own. Let me point you to the Searching the Scriptures studies that are easily accessed online. In fact, feel free to print out the PDF and use the notes in your personal quiet times. And pastors and leaders can use these notes for teaching a class or preparing a message. One of your fellow listeners left a comment that said, Thank you for letting us download the lesson on our computers so that when I study, I have great tools. I've been listening for three years and I have fallen in love with God's Word.

Well, to access the Searching the Scriptures guide for Chuck's daily teaching, go to insight.org slash studies. And as we conclude today's program, I'm inviting you to become one of our monthly companions. The steady financial support of our monthly companions has accelerated our pursuit of an audacious God-sized dream, and that is to bring insight for living to all 195 countries of the world.

We refer to this mission as Vision 195. Perhaps today's the day you'll become a monthly companion as a personal way to participate in Vision 195. To sign up right now, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888. You can also go to insight.org slash monthly companion. Or to give a one-time donation today, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., again, our phone number, 1-800-772-8888. I'm Dave Spiker, inviting you to join us again Tuesday when Chuck Swindoll delivers a clarifying message on the justice of God, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Lessons Learned from a Fat Camel, was copyrighted in 2017 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles Parsewindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.