In today’s world there is a lot talked on richness and blessing . Many preachers focus on richness and how God will make us rich. Many times we understand God’s blessing to us in the world is to become more rich and wealthy and forget the righteousness which he truly calls us to be. So richness in world and righteousness, can they coexist together ?
When I meditated God’s word on Matt 19:16 to 26, I did get a different perspective from God. I wanted to share what I learnt from this encounter of Richness and Righteousness.
So let’s read this passage in two parts, first part of passage where a rich man comes to Jesus and asks the question “What should he do to get eternal life?”, We will learn more on his response in a bit. Second part is Jesus talking to his disciples and explaining the reply he gave to the rich man. We will look at both of them and understand what we should learn spiritually.
Part 1 - Jesus response to Man
[Mat 19:16-22 NIV] 16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" 17 "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments." 18 "Which ones?" he inquired. Jesus replied, " 'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honour your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbour as yourself.'" 20 "All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?" 21 Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." 22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
There are many things to learn from Jesus response to the man
Jesus reply to the man “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments” , here he did not say one commandment alone, he emphasises on commandments , which means we have to keep all the commandments to get the righteousness from God.
The man responds to Jesus "Which ones?" ….."All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?", from his worldly eyes, he feels he has kept all of them to make him earn righteousness from God.
Jesus’s response was something he never expected "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
If you sit and think deep its quite opposite to what we are being taught in Christendom today.
Jesus says “…. Then come, follow me.”, It’s the same of “Follow Me” that Jesus made to the disciples, is being told the same.
When Jesus used similar language “Follow Me” in calling many of his disciples (Matthew 4:19-20), they left all they had and immediately followed him Matt 4:20 [Mat 4:19-20 NIV] 19 "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will send you out to fish for people." 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.
· We read this man was wealthy and rich person “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth”, he turned away because his heart was set on the richness of world
Part 2 - Jesus response to the disciples
[Mat 19:23-26 NIV] 23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" 26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
So, this comes back to the question of richness and righteousness which disciples confront and Jesus explains this with an analogy in verse 23 - "Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." , Jesus says it’s hard for rich to enter the kingdom and he compares them to a camel which is tall and it entering a needle, it’s not the literal meaning, he makes us think how hard it’s for us to enter into the righteousness of God , it’s impossible to do this act with man’s dependence of Money / Wealth.
Like all of us, without understanding the analogy of camel explanation, the disciples also ask the same question “Who then can be saved?"
Jesus’ response the question of richness and righteousness is summed in “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
From this reading of Mat 19: 16-26, This promoted me many questions which we as believers of Christ would have had some point in time we may never dare to ask our pastors or anyone on this.
I did ask God these questions and the holy spirit taught me something we all can learn from.
Does this mean does Jesus hates all the Rich people?
God does not hate any of the rich people, if that’s true all the true spiritual Christians should be poor, we have the examples of people like Zacchaeus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Barnabas, all these people were rich.
Once you are rich and wealthy, man gets the pride and arrogance from Satan, it’s the pride that God hates from the rich / wealthy person [James 4:6 NIV] 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble."
Why did Jesus ask the man to sell his riches and follow him?
The call to forsake the wealth / richness he had and follow Jesus is a call to put God first in all things. Due to his wealth, he had his 1st priority of life over wealth / money and God as secondary. Yes, we are also like this most of the time.
It’s also to call for full obedience to the first table of the law [Exodus 20:3 NIV] 3 "You shall have no other gods before me. He had his attention to his wealth as primary and he violated God’s command. Yes, we are also like this most of the time.
When you are rich and wealthy the dependence of God is secondary, there is an attitude in us that Satan brings to say, with money I can solve or conquer all, it also makes us depend on God at the last when money cannot solve the issue for us. Whereas Jesus expects us to be dependent on him first. Yes, many of us have this attitude when we have money.
When you are rich, you tend get busy and run after the riches of the world instead of spending time with God or meditating on his Word. We have the “want more” attitude. Matt 6:21 explains clearly [Mat 6:21 NIV] 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
For us to be Righteous to God he expects our Heart / Mind / soul to be aligned to Jesus. Mind and soul alone are aligned with Jesus and our Heart looking toward money / wealth. God cannot dwell inside in that place, Matt 6:24 explains clearly [Mat 6:24 NIV] 24 "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Is Jesus asking us to sell everything and come to him?
Jesus is expecting the attitude to keep him first, surrender all the wealth / money you have to him.
For Example, you have 1 lakh in bank account, and you say God I surrender to you, he expects that you surrender from your heart, The attitude towards money is, father you gave me this money and it belongs to you, it’s for God to use it according to his needs. If God calls to give this money to someone in need you will not give with doubleminded heart, you will give joyfully, as its God’s call to use his money for his will. He will bless you more than what you can imagine as his promise is true as we read, [Proverbs 3:9-10 NIV] 9 Honour the LORD with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
Once you have this attitude, you will thank God for the grace he gave you to earn this money, the grace from all Satan’s struggles and the wisdom in the world to get this money.
Remember we came naked, and we leave naked from this world. All the riches in the world are from him, you’re just a manager to manage his blessings or think like how a worker caretaker his bosses’ money that’s what you are. Whatever wealth you have is not yours it’s from your Father God’s mercy.
Sometime as we have the attitude to say this is your money, I surrender. The holy spirit may test you to see what you say is true by asking to give a portion or full to his work, that’s where many of us fail as we feel it’s our own money and it’s not God’s money, we are just a manager here in world as custodians of his wealth. Satan tries to deceive us tricking that it’s our money and making us keep our affection to wealth 1st and Jesus’ 2nd.
Jesus knows we need money to live in the world to do our daily needs, he will not want his children look like beggars in the world, he has all the wealth he does not need your money to build his kingdom.
Remember God will never be in Debt to you, if you Give to God, God will pay back more than what you gave, he is true to his promise.
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