Encounter with the Self-Satisfied

My daughter in law Lindsay sent me these pictures of what happens when women drive.

I don’t know anything about the women who were driving these cars, but I guarantee one thing: none of them anticipated ending up the way they did.

How did these accidents happen? Did they get distracted? A moment of inattention at the wheel? One minute they were driving along and everything was normal, and then all of a sudden disaster struck? I don’t know.

But I do know that complacency is often the precursor to catastrophe. And that is certainly true in the spiritual realm.

Over recent weeks, we have been loooking at a series of encounters that Jesus had with various kinds of people. We have seen him interact with people who were

seekers
sinners
sufferers
saints
skeptics

And now we come to an encounter he had with a man who seemingly had everything. He was rich, he was religious, he was a good man; a leader in his community. Success seemed to be his middle name. He took life seriously and wanted to be diligent with his responsibilities. And he was certainly interested in what Jesus had to say.

But at the end of the day, he decided not to follow Jesus. He turned away, because he felt that what he had was better than what Jesus had to offer. Let’s look at him in Luke 18.

Context – preceding passages:

parable of the Pharisee and tax collector – told “to some who were confident of their own righteousness” (v. 9)
people bringing babies to Jesus, Jesus called the little children to him: “Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
Point that Jesus is making is that in order to enter the kingdom, we have to recognize

our own spiritual need as someone unworthy before God
our utter dependence on God to do anything about that need

We cannot expect to enter the kingdom of God from a position of strength and independence and self-reliance. Now Jesus encounters a man who illustrates that very lesson.

18 ¶ A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

He is described here as a ruler, which means that he was one of the leaders in his local synagogue – we might say that he was the chairman of the elders board, or the president of congregation. In other words, he was a religious man, and a man of some position and influence in his community in order for him to have been selected, or elected, to that position.

We learn in verse 23 that he was also a wealthy man. And Matthew, describing the same encounter says that he was a young man – perhaps in his mid-twenties or early thirties. He wasn’t an elder statesman – he had achieved this position of prominence and success relatively early in life.

At any rate, he came to Jesus – Mark says that he actually ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees before Jesus – a rather striking detail, because in those days, to run was not something that a man of dignity and prominence was supposed to do. Running was for servants. So there was an urgency about this man’s desire to meet with Jesus. He seems to have been sincere – not a cynic or a skeptic like most of the Pharisees.

He asks Jesus a question: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

nb – what must I do
perhaps he was thinking that obtaining eternal life was a do-it-yourself project. As a man of power and wealth and influence, he was certainly a doer. He was a “rain-maker” – a man who knew how to get things done. When he wanted something to happen, he knew how to make it happen. This was the mindset that he brought to his spiritual relationship with God. “How can I make this happen?”
(Interestingly, the fact that he is even asking the question – and asking it with some urgency – indicates that, for all of his power and wealth and position, he senses in his heart that it hasn’t happened yet. So he want to get it nailed down.
to inherit – the word means to obtain something by virtue of your legal position. e.g. if you are a legal heir, you inherit the estate – it comes by dint of your legal position.
- the man’s question: What must I do to put myself in a position to inherit eternal life?

He wants to be sure of being in right standing with God, and he wants to know what he has to do in order to get there. So Jesus answers him, and his answer is sort of “off-putting”.

19 ¶ “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good — except God alone.

Jesus is saying “Be careful how you use the word “good”; don’t use it glibly – it’s a word that fits God only. No one is good except God alone. And perhaps that was an indirect way of letting this man know who he was addressing. He was talking to God even though he didn’t realize that.

And furthermore, I believe that Jesus was trying to gently get this man to reassess his own character – if no one was good except God, then neither was this rich young ruler. And therefore, he was incapable of doing anything to inherit eternal life.

Jesus continues in verse 20…

20 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

Jesus summarizes 5 out of the 10 commandments (7,6,8,9,5). And they are the ones that deal with our relationship with our fellow man. Commandments 1-4 deal with our devotion to God. And that’s hard to measure, because it’s inward – it’s from the heart. But commandments 5-10 reveal what’s happening in our hearts in our relationship with God, because they deal with how we conduct our relationships on the horizontal plane with people. And that’s more obvious.

Now the man answers Jesus, and his answer is very revealing…

21 ¶ “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

We say, is this true? Did he really keep all these commandments since he was a boy? Well maybe he did – outwardly. He probably hadn’t committed adultery, he probably hadn’t committed murder, he probably hadn’t stolen anything, he may not have ever told a lie, and he probably had honored his parents. He was a good man.

But the thing we need to understand about the law is that it doesn’t just address our outward behaviour – it addresses our inner attitudes as well. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said that the point of the Law was not simply to regulate our outward conduct (which was the popular view of the religious people of his day – and of our day today); it was to reveal the inner condition of our hearts which leads to our outward conduct.

Jesus said it’s not enough just to refrain from committing adultery outwardly; if we want to be true to God’s law, we mustn’t even think adulterous thoughts. It’s not enough just to refrain from murdering people; if we want to be true to God’s law, we mustn’t even think hateful thoughts.

You see, this business of keeping the law is a lot deeper than we realize. It goes down to the very thoughts and attitudes of our hearts. And that’s where the law reveals how desperately out of sync with God’s character we are. The fact that we struggle with inner desires to want to do the very kinds of things that the law prohibits is evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong between ourselves and the God who wrote that law.

Paul describes precisely this struggle in Romans 7. He says “I know that the law tells me to do what is right. But I find raging within myself a contrary law that makes me want to do what is wrong.”

I can carry out the letter of the law in my outward conduct. And the religious Pharisees of which Paul was one tried very hard to do that. But about this inner compulsion to disregard the law, to flaunt the law, to go against the law, that is constantly raging in my heart. Doesn’t that reveal my true condition as a sinner more than my outward conduct does.

The rich young ruler obviously had not come to grips with that truth about himself. He was like the man who looked in the mirror and didn’t see himself as he truly was. Outwardly he had kept the law, but inwardly – as the next verse reveals – there was a lack of true compassion for his fellow man, and a lack of true devotion to God.

22 ¶ When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

This man had obeyed the law outwardly – he had not lied, he had not stolen, he had not cheated on his wife, he had not dishonored his parents. But the fact is, deep down in his heart, he had no real concern for the plight of his fellow man, particularly for those who were less fortunate than himself. He lacked love, which is the very foundation and basis for the law of God.

James 2:8-10 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

Romans 13:9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

23 ¶ When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.

Mark, in his Gospel, says the man’s “face fell and he went away grieved.” He was grieved because he could not accept the conditions for obtaining eternal life. When he heard what the Master had to offer; when he looked at this divine bargain, and when he compared it with what he already had – He couldn’t bear the thought of parting with his riches.

What he had, his wealth and the posiition it entailed, was, in a stubborn way, “satisfying” to him; it was what he had built his life around. And when Jesus said “Give it up for me” he couldn’t do it.

Matthew & Mark say that he went away sad – he left. He could not follow Jesus under those conditions. And significantly, Jesus didn’t go after him. He didn’t “soften” the offer; he didn’t sweeten the pot.

24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!

It’s hard for the rich, because their “riches” – whatever they may be – have become the foundation on which they have built their lives. They have sought to find a sense of security and satisfaction and completeness from that. And Jesus comes along and says “Guess what. You’ve built your life on the wrong foundation.” And that is very difficult for a such a person to accept.

When we talk about riches, we’re talking about more than just money. We can regard ourselves as “rich” in any number of ways that have nothing to do with our bank balance.

We can regard ourselves as rich…

religiously – we belong to the right church; we believe the right things
relationally – we have a great family; we have wonderful friends
reputationally – we are well-regarded in our community; we have a good name
lifestyle – we are comfortable, we enjoy our “station in life” – we look around ourselves and say “This isn’t a bad place to be”.

And we somehow begin to derive our sense of well-being and satisfaction from those things. And when we get to that place, we are in mortal spiritual danger.

Because Jesus has nothing to say to a person who is basically satisfied with the way things are.

Look at who responds to Jesus’ invitation to come into his kingdom. It wasn’t the people who were satisfied. It wasn’t the people who had other things preoccupying their minds – the people who had family priorities (let me first go and bury my father), or economic things to take care of (I need to buy a cow today; maybe I’ll come tomorrow).

No, it was those who were hungry. Those who were thirsty. Those were laboring and heavy laden. Those who were blind and wanted to see, those who were lame and wanted desperately to walk, those who were sick and needed healing, those who were sinners and needed forgiving. Those were the people who responded to Jesus because those were the people who weren’t satisfied with the way they were.

The real barrier to eternal life isn’t sin, it’s apathy. God can cure sin but he can’t cure complacency.

I have to tell you that I worry about us becoming complacent as a church. We have had a couple of good years as a church. And those good years have been so welcome and so refreshing because we went through a bunch of bad years before that.

But with the blessing has come a danger. A danger of sitting back and saying “Now we are all that we should be. Erindale is a good church. Good things are happening.” And we become satisfied, complacent. And like the church at Laodicea, we lose sight of the fact that we are still wretched, poor, naked, and blind.

Have you ever wakened suddenly in the night with the awareness of having heard a sound. But even as you come to consciousness, that sound, or the echo of it is just gone. And you can’t get it back. And you wonder if it was real, or you just imagined it.

Have you ever seen a beautiful sunrise? In the freshness of morning, the sky begins to lighten to a deep rosy peach color that is simply indescribable. And it is so gorgeous that you want to tell somebody about it – you want to wake up your wife or your husband or your kids and say “Look at this – share this with me.” But by the time you do, it’s over; it’s gone. Robert Frost wrote…

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

That is the way it is with the presence and blessing of God. No sooner do we realize that he’s here with us, that he’s visiting us with his awesome power and majesty, than he’s gone – he’s moved on. He’s elusive that way. Some have spoken of him as being shy.

And the mistake we make is that we think we can capture him as though we were putting a firefly in a bottle. And we go our merry way, and do our busy thing, assuming we have him with us, only to wake up one day to discover that he’s gone. He’s not here anymore.

Tonight we’re going to have our Annual General Meeting. And in that meeting, we’re going to take a look back on the blessing of the past year. Everyone is going to receive a copy of our annual report – a report in which we try to enumerate and put down in black and white in words and numbers and statistics the way God has blessed us, the way God has been with us.

And the fatal mistake we can make in doing all that is assuming that we’ve got God “in a bottle”. We’ve captured him; harnessed him.

When a church is going wrong, it’s quite obvious to everybody involved. And there’s lots to pray about. But when a church is going right, there’s a whole different set of spiritual problems.

It’s possible for a church that is successful to build up a head of steam; a sort of “institutional momentum”. And everybody becomes caught up in keeping the machinery of ministry oiled and running smoothly. And the church is like a great train rolling down the tracks, faster and faster, and we all congratulate one another with the progress we’re making.

And yet, if we become spiritually complacent, we become like that train in Egypt this past week, where the engineer had the throttle full forward, blithely unaware that the passenger cars were on fire and people were perishing and dying and leaping off. It’s not a pretty picture.

Over the past number of weeks, our attendance has dropped. I’m not sure if there is spiritual significance to that. I have had one or two people say to me that they have felt a sense of spiritual constraint.

I know in my own life, I have been struggling with that. I have often succumbed to a sense of complacency, and I believe that my ministry has been less effective – I have not been the kind of pastor you need me to be.

I have felt myself becoming more critical and less caring, more project oriented than people oriented, more fatigued than fresh and creative in my ministry.

And I’m struggling to right that. And I need your prayers. If Satan regards the church as a target, then the leadership is the bullseye.

I don’t want to be a complacent Christian. I don’t want be satisfied with the way things are. And I don’t want our church to be that way either.

Can we have a time of prayer right now – prayer for the church.