Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Today, we're beginning a brand new never before aired teaching series titled Whatever It Takes. We're starting in the Gospel of Luke as Pastor J.D. walks us through the story of a man who missed out on an enormous, actually an eternal opportunity, all because he was too afraid to take a risk. Thinking only of what he would lose in following Jesus, he never considered what he would gain. It was the biggest mistake of his life.
And if we're not careful, it will be the biggest regret of ours too. So you've joined us at the perfect time today. Grab your Bible and let's listen in together.
Here's Pastor J.D. Here's the question. Do you know what this is?
You know what that is? That is the infamous flux capacitor that allowed Michael J. Fox to travel from 1985 back to 1955 and then back again to the future. This is a real one, so I have to be careful not to touch it or I might suddenly disappear off the stage.
Here's my question. If you stumbled onto an actual one of these, like a for real one that worked, and I know it's all made up, but just pretend and you could travel back to any one point in your life, what year would you choose? I think, I think, I was thinking about this, I might choose 1997. July, 1997, I just met Veronica and she was hopelessly in love with me and she had commenced her desperate quest of locking me down.
I would love to relive some of those incredible moments. 1997 was also the year that I left for Southeast Asia to serve as a missionary. And there are so many things I would love to tell young 24 year old JD.
One small piece of advice that I would give to him is I would encourage him to make a small investment in a relatively new company. 24 year old JD did not have much excess money, but with the little that he did have, he was desperately trying to scrounge up enough to buy a DVD player. By the way, do you know what the two hottest selling items were in 1997?
One was the DVD player, the other was the Nintendo 64. And so if you had an extra thousand dollars in your bank account and you were a guy, that's what you were trying to buy. But 1997 was also the year that a little company called Amazon went public. You could buy one share for $18. Had you done so, each of those shares today would be worth roughly about $2,000. If I'd spent my thousand dollars on that instead of a DVD player, I would be a fairly wealthy man right now. If only, if only I could have known. Had I been able to see the future, y'all feel like it would have been a problem for me that I didn't have a DVD player like all my friends at?
Probably not. I mean, sure, there'd be some nights I'd miss out on the joy of playing Super Mario Bros until 3 a.m., but I would gladly, my guess is forego some of those precious moments with Mario and Luigi if I knew it meant inheriting a fortune later. I share that because today in Luke chapter 18, you're gonna see a guy walk away from an even greater opportunity and one where the stakes are so much higher. And you're gonna find yourself wanting to say to this guy, don't you realize what you're walking away from? Luke 18, if you got your Bibles today, and I certainly hope that you do, what Luke is going to show us is that following Jesus is not just adding a little religion to your life.
It's not just making a few moral tweaks. Following Jesus means turning your back on all that makes you feel secure so that you can put your lot in entirely with him. He offers you a future inheritance 10 billion, trillion times more valuable than Amazon stock. The question is, do you actually believe him? Do you actually believe him?
Do you really actually believe that he's worth it? If so, you will say whatever it takes. Here we go, Luke chapter 18, verse 18, and a ruler, by the way, the Greek word there implies a religious ruler. A ruler, a religious ruler asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Now we all know the answer there, right? Jesus should have said, trust in me as your savior. Put faith in me as your sin bearer. Whoever believes in me has everlasting life, but Jesus doesn't say that.
Why not? It's because he wants to reveal something to this guy about his heart. And so he begins to ask him some diagnostic questions. Verse 19, and Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Now let me just pause and say that Jesus' statement right there has troubled some people because it sounds like Jesus might be implying that he's not really God.
As if he is saying, as if he's saying, why are you calling me good? There's only one good and that's God. So don't call me that, but that's not what Jesus is saying. I mean, first, if there is one verdict that the New Testament consistently gives about Jesus, it's that he's good. So if it is true that there's only one who is truly good, God, then of course Jesus would have to be him. But more importantly, Jesus is challenging this guy's superficial view of goodness.
This guy thinks he's a good guy. Jesus is good. I'm good.
You're good. We're all good. Jesus says, do you really think, do you really think that you are good enough for God? Do you really think you are good enough to inherit eternal life or that you could be good enough? But this guy doesn't pick up on what Jesus is laying down. So Jesus presses the point a bit further. He says, verse 20, well, you know the commandments. You're a religious ruler. What are the commandments? Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness.
Honor your father and mother. In the Bible, the universal standard for goodness is the 10 commandments. So Jesus says, how are you doing keeping those?
Now, y'all, that should have been enough to give this guy serious pause. Just think about the ones that Jesus named, especially when you consider that obedience to these commands is really a heart thing. Do not commit adultery. That's the first one. You say, well, lots of men are faithful to their wives.
Yeah, but not so fast. Jesus taught in Matthew five that fantasizing about sex with somebody you're not married to is like breaking this commandment because it is the desire of your heart that counts with God. If outwardly I conform my behavior while inwardly I yearn to break the commandment, God sees the heart. It'd be kind of like if my wife knew that outwardly I was a dutiful husband while inwardly I was in love with another woman. That would not be pleasing to her. It's the same with the commandments. Jesus says just because you've never had the courage or opportunity to act on those internal desires, well, that doesn't mean that those desires aren't down deep in you and don't surge in you and don't define you.
It's gonna be the same with the next one. Do not murder. Do not murder.
Same deal. You think, well, lots of people never murder anybody, but Jesus taught that in God's eyes hating somebody and wishing their harm was the spirit of murder. A truly good person would never desire the harm of somebody else.
If you've ever been so angry at somebody that you wanted to harm them in some way, then you possess the spirit of murder, even if you haven't been courageous enough to act on it. Do not bear false witness. Who is there in here that can say all my life in every situation, I've always told the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. I've never bent the truth to get out of a bad situation. I have never stretched the truth to make myself look better.
I've never shaded the truth to slander somebody I didn't like. Anybody in here brave enough to say they fully kept that one in the last 24 hours. Honor your father and mother. This command is really about submission to authority. Any authority God has placed in your life, that occurs first with our parents, but later on, it includes anybody that God puts in authority over us.
Teachers, the police, our coaches, our bosses, the IRS, our government. Who is there that's going to say, yeah, that's always been super instinctive to me. I've always had the best attitude under authority. I've always been humble and submissive toward my parents. Whatever rightful authorities are in my life, I obey them joyfully.
I never complain about them behind their backs. Anybody here want to venture a, yeah, I do pretty well with that one too. At this point, any honest person would realize they're in trouble. But look at what this guy says, verse 21. He said, yeah, all these things I've kept from my youth. Now you got to admit that takes some real hutzpah, doesn't it? To say to Jesus, yeah, I'm as clean as a whistle on these.
Are you starting to see the problem? This guy has no concept of how not good he is. He has no idea how insufficient his goodness is for earning God's favor. So having now tried twice to help this guy see the depravity of his heart, to no avail, Jesus makes one more attempt. Verse 22, when Jesus heard this, he said to him, one thing you still like, go and sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor and then you will have treasure in heaven.
And then come and follow me. Verse 23, when the man had heard these things, he became very sad for he was extremely rich. Jesus seeing that he had become sad, said how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into God's kingdom. Verse 26, when they heard that, those who heard it looked around at each other and said, well, then who can be saved? Jesus, hearing what they said, said to them with what is impossible with man is possible with God. And Peter said, look, Jesus, we have left our homes and followed you.
And Jesus said to them, truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. All right, here's our outline for today. In this passage, Jesus teaches us, number one, the way of salvation. Number two, he's gonna teach us the particular challenge that's presented by money. Number three, he is going to show us the essential question, which is lordship. And then number four, he's going to show us the value of Jesus, his own value.
There we go. Number one, the way of salvation. Jesus' main goal in this conversation is to drive this guy to the point of despair so that he would quit looking to his own goodness for salvation and he would start looking outside of himself to God, which is why Jesus makes that very confusing statement in verse 25. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of God. That's the kind of statement y'all that Bible scholars love to obsess over. In fact, some have got some really creative explanations. For example, they say that the eye of the needle was the nickname of a small after hours gate in the wall of Jerusalem. And the only way a camel could have gone through that gate, because it's only about that high, was by getting down on his knees. That's a picture of what Jesus is telling this guy that he's got to do here. Yeah, that's ingenious. It's creative. But honestly, I think the likely explanation is much simpler. Jesus is using hyperbole, which he often did what he taught.
A camel was the largest animal they were familiar with. The eye of the needle was about the tiniest space that they could conceive of. Jesus was using hyperbole, over-speak, to drive home a point. It would be like us saying that something has a snowball's chance in hell. So is he saying that rich people only have a snowball's chance in hell of going to heaven, and that none of them are actually going to make it? Well, he couldn't have met that.
I mean, think about it. Lots of rich people in the Bible went to heaven. In fact, some of the godliest people in the Bible were also the richest. Abraham was rich. King David was rich. Joseph was rich. Job was rich. In the New Testament, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both of whom become commendable disciples of Jesus, they were both rich. Several of the leading Christians that are referred to in the book of Acts were rich, and some of them, astoundingly so. So clearly, a lot of rich people go to heaven.
So why would Jesus say that then? Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. We'll get back to today's teaching in just a second. But first, I wanted to make sure that you're in the loop about all of the resources we make available to you at jdgreer.com completely free of charge. At our website, you can access our entire library of Summit Life broadcasts, as well as our preaching catalog of full sermons with a transcript for each. You'll also find Pastor J.D.
's blog with an archive of more than 10 years of content for you to learn from. You can also find links to Pastor J.D. 's podcast, his social media accounts, and you can sign up for our daily devotionals all for free. And while you're on our website, be sure to check out jdgreer.com slash donate to learn more about how you can be a part of helping this ministry grow and thrive so that we're able to reach more people with the gospel of Jesus. Remember, we are a listener supported ministry, so we rely on the goodness of God's people to partner with us in this endeavor. So would you consider joining with us today?
You can get all the details at our website, jdgreer.com. So now let's get back to today's teaching on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Well, to really get at the meaning here, you got to understand how that original audience would have viewed rich people, particularly rich religious people, because it's the opposite of how many of us see rich people today. Today, you and I have been conditioned to see rich people as inherently immoral. If somebody's rich, we tend to assume that it's probably because they or somebody in their family exploited the system. At least they were part of an oppressive capitalistic system they took advantage of. They leaned into their privilege, and now that they got money, they can't help but be proud and greedy and oppressive. I'm not saying that's fair.
I'm just saying that is what we have been conditioned to believe now. Jesus' original audience thought differently. They thought of riches as a sign of God's blessing. You see, they were steeped in the book of Proverbs, which says that the wise man is usually a wealthy man. The wealthy get wealthy, Proverbs 23 says, because in part they know how to control their appetites.
They work hard. They invest, and they save, Proverbs 30. They don't give themselves to alcohol, Proverbs 20, verse 1. They don't throw away money foolishly, Proverbs 21, 5.
They don't lay in bed all day. They get up and they work, Proverbs 12, 24. They choose wise friends, Proverbs 12, 11. Proverbs 3, 10 tells us that wealth is often a sign of God's favor.
Now, to be completely frank, their worldview is more biblical than ours. Proverbs does indeed teach that wise living often leads to wealth. Of course, there are exceptions. Ecclesiastes talks about the hardworking man who is poor, and it talks about the lazy immoral man who gets wealthy. And of course, there are systemic dynamics at play in our society that lead to generational disparities in wealth that we cannot ignore. That'd be a different sermon for a different day. But generally speaking, proverbially speaking, wisdom, blessing, and wealth go together. Which is why, follow this, when Jesus says, hey, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. When he says that, they respond by saying, verse 26, well, then who could be saved? They don't say, well, of course, those greedy capitalists are going down.
Stick it to the man. No, they say with genuine bewilderment, well, if the righteous people, if the religious people blessed by God with wealth, if they can't be saved, well, then who could be? Jesus answered, verse 27, what's impossible with man is possible with God. Salvation comes differently, he's saying. You can never be wise enough, good enough, righteous enough, or blessed enough to earn eternal life. No, salvation is a gift that God gives to those humble enough to admit they are hopeless without it.
It's a gift that he gives to those who recognize that before God, they are as poor as the most destitute beggar ever to walk the face of the earth. It's to those who recognize they have no righteous claim by which to merit acceptance with God to them and them alone, God gives the righteousness of Christ. God only saves bad people because that's the only kind of people that there are. Measure yourself against the 10 commandments and you'll see there is none righteous. There's none righteous, not even one. Salvation is a gift for those who recognize that. To those who attempt no claim on eternal life because of their supposed goodness or the way Sally Lloyd-Jones says it in the Jesus Storybook Bible. To get Jesus, all you need is need.
And need is the one thing that this guy did not have. You know, I loved Pastor Joby's story last weekend of the thief on the cross. I always get a little teary anytime I hear that story.
It's recorded just a couple of pages later here in the Gospel of Luke. Here you got a man who's literally thrown away his life. He's lived a life of time.
He's alienated his family. He's now rightfully, Luke 23, an outcast from society. He is dying alone as a condemned man and yet there at the end of his life hanging on that cross he recognizes who Jesus is and he asks him for mercy. All he says, it's not even a very eloquent prayer, all he says is, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. He knows hardly no theology. He has no time to make up for all of his bad deeds and yet Jesus says to him, today, today you will be with me in paradise.
I mean, friend, think about it. That very night he sat in the presence of God with Abraham and Moses and Ruth and Samuel and David and Esther and all the other great saints of the Bible. He had no stories of great things that he'd done that he could compare with them. No Goliaths that he'd defeated. No bold sermons that he'd preached. No generous sacrifices that he'd made. His whole life had been nothing but bad works. He was as spiritually poor as one could be, but that very night he entered heaven with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And he said to Abraham, Moses, Ruth, and David, he's like, I'm not here because anything I've done, because I didn't do anything. I'm here because of what he has done and what he promised me. People sometimes will ask me and they'll say, well, JD, does that mean you can live a life of sin and pray some little prayer right at the end and then just go to heaven?
And I always say to them, well, that depends on what you mean by that. If you mean, can you just throw up a Hail Mary, like a coverall sacrament at the end of your life or utter some words you think qualify as a get out of hell free card? No, but at any point, if you truly repent, that means truly turn from your sin, have a change of heart about your sin and you cast yourself on his mercy, he can and will save you. That thief had he somehow lived through the crucifixion and escaped it, he would have been a different man the next day. His was not a cheap little prayer. It was true repentance. The point is that eternal life is something he didn't need to earn. It was something he could not have earned had he been given 10,000 years to earn it. It was only something that he could receive.
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. And there may I, the vile as he, wash all my sin away. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stay. To come to Jesus, all you need is need. Y'all need is the one thing this guy did not have, which leads me to the second thing that Jesus taught through this encounter. Number two, the particular problem of money. Not only did Jesus overturn the idea that somebody can be good enough to be accepted by God.
By the way, don't stare at this too long, you actually might get zapped through time, right? He not only challenged the idea that you can be good enough to be accepted by God, he also challenged the worldview even further. He said that riches can actually hinder somebody's ability to enter the kingdom of God. Now, real quick before I go any further, I know many of you are sitting right here saying, well, this doesn't apply to me. I'm not rich. Y'all ever notice in America, nobody ever thinks they're rich. Wherever you sit on this socioeconomic scale, rich people are always the ones in the class just above you. Newsflash, if you know where your next meal is coming from, historically and globally, you're in the category of the rich. If you got a savings account by the standards, particularly of these people, you are rich. We got more conveniences, more disposable income and more flexibility than 99% of the people Jesus talked to ever dreamed of having. They had no AC, no running water, no electricity.
Most had never traveled more than 60 miles away from their homes. So globally and historically speaking, almost everybody in here would be in the category of the rich. Second thing to realize here is that money is not the only thing you can be rich in. You can be rich in looks, rich in talent, rich in potential, rich in reputation, rich on your resume, rich in your family identity. Any area that you feel good about yourself compared to others, anything that makes you feel secure and competent as you stare into the future, that would be an area you're rich in. So even if you got no money at all, what Jesus says here applies to you.
Okay. Here's why Jesus says that money riches, money riches, financial wealth, why it particularly is a spiritual liability. Here's why. Money is a form of power that quickly replaces our sense of need for God. Money offers you like nothing else, a sense of control. When you got money, you can do things you want to do. You can avoid things you want to avoid. You can get done what you want done in the world, even when others don't want that thing to happen.
That's power. It's like that great philosopher, Chris Rock. Wealth isn't about having a lot of money. It's about having a lot of options. That insight really smacks you in the face, doesn't it?
All right. Money promises you, control promises you security. Tells you there's no tragedy that tomorrow might bring that you can't handle today.
The proof is right there in your balance sheet. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Join us each weekday at this time. And if you ever miss any of Pastor J.D.
's teaching, you can download the audio files and even find transcripts online at jdgreer.com. Okay, J.D., it's back again. It's time for our annual day planner. You know, there's nothing particularly magical about the new year, but I feel like every year it gives me a moment to just sit back and ask, you know, hey, what's going on? What about what is God doing? What what what goals do I have for this coming year? What do I want to see changed? Maybe you've been hoping to become more consistent, regular to go deeper in your daily Bible study.
Maybe you've you felt the call to invest more of your time in ministry, whatever it is that's stirring in your heart. We are excited to introduce a tool for you that can help you ask these questions, set these goals to hold yourself accountable on this journey God has you on. So it's our special planner. We do this year by year. It's one of our most popular things that we put out there. You say, well, J.D., how do I get my hands on this fantastic resource?
Great question. Head over to jdgreer.com right now. There you'll see how to get this planner with the Bible reading plan inside and you'll be better equipped for a year. I mean, 20, 25, a year of growth for you. So don't miss out. Let's make the most of this new season together. Ask for a copy of the 2025 Summit Life Planner when you give a one time donation today of forty five dollars or more.
And don't forget about becoming a monthly gospel partner as well. We welcome you to the team. Call us today at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow as we continue our teaching on the rich young ruler. See you Tuesday right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
