Deo Gloria
Sermon for October 17, 2021
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Mark 10:17-27
Theme: Who Then Can Be Saved?
- With man this is impossible.
- With God all things are possible.
Do you remember the old Mission Impossible TV show, you know the one with the tape that would self-destruct in 10 seconds? As I remember, the show always began in the same way: with Mr. Phelps listening to a pre-recorded message and looking through several pictures and assorted other documents from an envelope. “Your mission, Jim,” the voice on the tape would say, “should you choose to accept it is….” And then it would spell out some very difficult and dangerous mission for Jim to accomplish. Naturally, Jim would always accept the mission and the rest of the show we would watch (at times on the edge of our seats) as Jim accomplished that mission.
This morning in the gospel of Mark we hear about another “mission impossible.” The one thing different about this mission, though, is that it truly is impossible. Even if he were to accept it, Jim could not accomplish this mission. The only one who could is God himself, and he did at the cross. The mission I’m referring to, of course, is the mission of salvation, the saving of a person’s soul. As Jesus tells us in these verses, this is the ultimate mission impossible. With man this is impossible; but not with God. With God all things are possible.
As our story begins, we see a young man come running up to Jesus, fall on his knees in front of him and ask, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”(v. 17) What prompted this man’s question we don’t know. Mark doesn’t tell us; but we could guess. You see, when a person thinks that they can save themselves by their own efforts, by being good and doing good, there will always be a certain amount of doubt in their minds, because they can never be sure if they have done enough. Martin Luther found that out. Back in his day the church taught that if you wanted to go to heaven, you had to earn God’s favor by doing good works. And Luther tried. That’s why he entered the monastery and became a monk, so he could devote his life to serving God and doing good works. But no matter how hard he tried, his heart was still plagued with doubt. He described it like this:
I, too, wanted to be a holy, pious monk. With great devotion I prepared myself for Mass and prayer. But even when I was most devout, I approached the altar a doubter; a doubter I returned. After I had said my penance, I still doubted. If I did not say it, I doubted again; for we were dominated by the notion that we could not pray and would not be heard unless we were altogether pure and without sin, like the saints in heaven.
Perhaps that was the case with this man too. Though not a bad person, he still had doubts about his relationship with God. He still wasn’t sure that eternal life was his. And what better person to ask than Jesus: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In answering his question, Jesus referred this young man to the Law. How did his life compare with God’s law, the standard God has set for our lives? “You know the commandments,” Jesus answered: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother”(v. 19).
“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” the young man replied. His answer, however, is very telling. It reveals two misconceptions he had about God’s Law. The first is that he looked at God’s Law as a rule book or how-to manual for getting into heaven. Many people look at God’s Law that way. You see, they think that if there is something wrong in their relationship with God, they can fix it by themselves. If they messed up and made God angry by something they said or did, they think they can make God happy again by doing something good. And they think the 10 Commandments spell out for them the way to do that. The only problem is they don’t. God never intended his Law to be used for that purpose. The 10 Commandments do reveal God’s will. That much is true. They tell us what is pleasing in God’s sight and what is not. But they do not tell us what we need to do in order to win God’s favor and obtain eternal life—just the opposite, in fact. They tell us that we have sinned. As Paul states in Romans ch. 3: “Through the law we become conscious of sin”(v. 20).
The second misconception this young man had was that he felt God’s Law applied only to his outward actions. “Do not murder”? “Well, I’ve never killed anyone.” “Do not steal”? “I’ve never robbed a bank.” “Do not commit adultery”? “I’ve never slept with anyone except my wife.” “Honor your father and mother”? “Yeah, I do that, at least most of the time. Jesus, I’ve kept all these.”
What this young man failed to realize is that God looks at more than just our actions. He looks at our thoughts and our attitudes as well. No, I may have never gone to bed with another woman, but remember what Jesus said? “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”(Mt 5:28). No, I may never have killed anyone, but remember what John said in his first letter? “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him”(3:15). Outwardly, we may be able to keep God’s commands, as this man thought he had done. But inwardly, in our thoughts and our attitudes—not a chance! We break God’s commands every single day.
Jesus looked at this young man and loved him, Mark tells us. The guy was sincere. He had a sincere desire to be right with God; but he was sincerely wrong. He thought he had kept God’s commands perfectly, when he hadn’t. And rather than allow the man to continue fooling himself, in love Jesus exposed his failure: “One thing you still lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”(v. 21).
The young man’s silence was deafening—not a word in reply. “The man’s face fell,” Mark tells us. “He went away sad, because he had great wealth”(v. 22). “My money…I have to give up my money in order to have eternal life in heaven? But…but I can’t do that.” Although this young man thought he had kept all of God’s commandments, in reality he hadn’t even kept the first one. Yes, outwardly he had no other gods. He didn’t worship Zeus or Apollo or Hermes or one of those gods. But inwardly it was a different story. In his heart he did have another god, something he loved even more than God: his money. And now it really showed.
“How hard it is,” Jesus said, turning back to his disciples as the young man walked away—“How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”(v. 23) Notice Jesus does not say that it’s impossible. The Bible, in fact, contains many examples of rich people who did enter the kingdom of God. Abraham, Job and David are three examples. It is hard, though. What makes it so difficult is that it’s hard to keep money in its place. It’s so easy for money to become a person’s god, especially when you’ve been blessed with a lot of it. Rich people often feel as though they have life by the tail. They have everything they need and everything they want, so they feel no great need for God. Their money has given them everything they want—happiness, pleasure, security, status—so who needs God? People with lots of money also tend be consumed by their money, so consumed with making more money or preserving the fortune they already have that they have little or no time for God. “How hard it is…,” said Jesus. “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” Indeed, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”(v. 25).
At this the disciples were amazed, shocked almost. “Who then can be saved?” they said to one another. The disciples, you see, like many people back in their day looked at wealth as a sign of God’s blessing on a person’s life. If you were wealthy, they figured you must be right with God. You must be on God’s good side, otherwise he wouldn’t have given you so much. So when Jesus said that it is rather difficult for a rich person to enter into heaven, the disciples began to wonder if anyone could get into heaven. “Can anyone be saved?”
Jesus doesn’t leave them wondering. “With man this is impossible,” he replied, “but not with God; all things are possible with God”(v. 27). Here is our mission impossible: salvation. For us salvation is impossible. It’s beyond our reach, beyond our capability. Trying to save ourselves is like trying to jump across the Grand Canyon. Trying to save ourselves is like trying to swim across the Pacific Ocean, from California to Japan and back again. It isn’t possible. No matter how hard we tried, we could never do it. Why? Because God demands perfection, perfect obedience to all his commands. Keeping some of God’s commands doesn’t cut it. You have to keep all of them. And you have to keep them all the time—every single day, every single hour, every single minute, every single second. If you sin even one time, you don’t make it. You don’t get in. Imagine you had a teacher like that in school, a teacher who expected and demanded perfection. You had to get 100%, zero wrong on every single quiz and every single test. And if you didn’t, you failed. You got an “F.” That’s the way it is with God. You can’t get a “B” or “C” when it comes to obeying God’s commands. Either you get 100% or you fail.
And don’t forget, God isn’t concerned only about outward actions. He expects perfect obedience in our thoughts and our attitudes as well. If you ever hated someone, you have sinned. You have broken the 5th Commandment. If you ever had lustful thoughts about some other guy or some other gal, you have sinned. You have broken the 6th commandment. If you have ever loved anyone or anything more than God, you have sinned. You have broken the 1st Commandment. And can any of us say we have done that? Can any of us say we have loved God with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds all the time? I know I can’t. And I know you can’t either. Like the young man in this story, when we look honestly at our lives and what God demands in his law, we too have to hang our heads and walk away in sadness. We don’t measure up. We have sinned and fallen short. No matter how hard we try, we cannot do what it takes to inherit eternal life. No one can. With man this is impossible.
But not with God. With God all things are possible. What we could not do God did for us through his Son, Jesus. He sent his Son into the world to accomplish this impossible mission. As our Savior, Jesus lived a perfect life. He obeyed God’s law the way we should have. He never did anything wrong, never said anything wrong, never thought anything wrong. He always loved God more than anything else. And he always loved his neighbor as himself. Jesus received a perfect score in God’s grade book. And he did that for you and me. His perfect score God sees as our perfect score. His perfect life God sees our perfect life. As the Bible says, he is our righteousness.
And yet, in order to save us, Jesus had to do something else as well, something else we could never do. He had to take away our sins, and he did. As our Savior Jesus took all of our sins and all of our failures on himself and suffered the punishment for them on the cross. And when he cried out on the cross, “It is finished,” that’s exactly what he meant. The job was finished. The full payment for our sins had been made. The mission was completed. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that a wonderful and comforting truth? You and I don’t have wonder, as the young man did in this story, if we have done enough to inherit eternal life. It’s all been done for us. Likewise, we don’t have to wonder, as the disciples did, whether we or anyone else can possibly be saved. Our salvation is not an impossible mission. It’s an accomplished fact thanks to Jesus Christ our Savior.
Who then can be saved? You can. I can. Anyone can—rich or poor, young or old—anyone can be saved, provided they rely on Jesus and not on themselves. As Jesus teaches us in this story, getting into heaven is difficult, impossible if you rely on yourself. But what is impossible for us, is not too difficult for God. God’s love accomplished the impossible and provided salvation for us through his Son, Jesus. With God all things are possible. Amen.