Matthew Ch 19 Vs 16-26 - Did Jesus Contradict Himself. (Episode 495)

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Did Jesus Contradict Himself. (Matthew 19: 16-26).

Introduction.

16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” 17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ 19 ‘Honour your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ” 20 The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, 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.”25 When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?”26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”   (Matthew 19: 16-26)

The Rich Young Ruler.

What About the Commandments.

A Reality Check.

Summary

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:12 Introduction
• 6:48 The Rich Young Ruler.
• 11:11 What About the 10 Commandments.
• 21:40 Summary.
• 29:34 Farewell and Outro

Transcript

Did Jesus Contradict Himself. (Matthew 19: 16-26).

Introduction.

Under the cover of dark a guy called Nicodemus who was a high-ranking religious leader came to talk to Jesus. Without any stalling the Lord immediately told him that he had to be born again. First, he slightly scolded him for not knowing this already as he was meant to be a religious leader, he then told him in one of the most straight-forward passages in all of the Bible what you have to do to have eternal life by telling him he had to believe.

John three verse 15 says very clearly, “you must believe in order to have eternal life”. But if you turn the page in the gospel of John and leave chapter 3 and enter chapter 4, a few verses later there is another encounter that Jesus Christ had with an individual, this time it’s a woman, we don’t know her name, she is just called the woman at the well, because that’s where the Lord met her. Again, he talks about the living water and again she is someone who is puzzled the fact that is a Jew, talking to he, ar Samaritan, when those groups of people two didn’t have anything to do with each other and Jesus says to her. “If you knew the gift of God you would ask of me, and I would give you living water. Putting those two stories together it is very clear that Jesus Christ taught that salvation or eternal life is a gift of God, and it is received by faith. 

But now we see Jesus have a third conversation with someone designated as the rich young ruler who comes to him and asks him, what do I have to do to have eternal life, Jesus then entered also into a dialogue with him and along the way he says things like, you have to keep the commandments when have you, sell everything you have and give it to the poor.

Comparing and contrasting these three events you could easily be mistaken for believing that Jesus seems to be saying that you go to heaven and have eternal life, in some passages it is based upon good works, and on the other it just by faith. Did Jesus Christ contradict himself, that’s the question I’d like for us to address today. We will do that by beginning to look in more detail at this story of the rich young ruler in Matthew chapter 19.

16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” 17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ 19 ‘Honour your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ” 20 The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, 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.”25 When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?”26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19: 16-26)

If you look at this passage of scripture especially in light of what the rest of the New Testament says about eternal life and you have to scratch your head somewhat. Some hurry past this passage because they are worried, they will have to give up one of the tenants of their faith in order to embrace what Jesus says here.  Non- religious people also don’t like it either because they think that if you gave up everything you would end up with nothing and that it might be teaching that only homeless hermits go to heaven. What in the world is going on here, well let's start at the beginning and work our way through this to see if we can answer that question? 

The Rich Young Ruler.

Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?”

(Matthew 19: 16)

Matthew was calling attention that this individual is someone who we don’t even know his name, but we know a few extra things about this story as it is recorded in Matthew and Mark and in Luke, and by looking at the bits of information that they record individually and piecing them together we come up with the fact that this guy was young. As a matter of fact, we can put together that he was young, rich and had authority. We are told in verse 22 for he had great possessions and the other gospels tell us that he was a ruler. So, although we don’t know his name, we have a lot of other information about him. He is commonly referred to as the rich young ruler. Like the woman in chapter four of John is just called the woman at the well we don’t know his mane.

Being described as a ruler of that could be a reference to him having some kind of civic authority, or he could have been a ruler in the synagogue. We’re not sure there’s nothing in the text that leads us to what or which one he is. But he comes up with an important question, “what good thing must I do to have eternal life”. Note, he wanted to know what to do.

I think he reflects a popular idea today. I believe Most people today living in world think the same way. They seem to have the idea that God has a gigantic scale, and he puts all the good things that you do on one side of the scale and all the bad things you do on the other side, and we hope we can cram enough things on the good side of his scale to tip the balance in the right way. They think, if you don’t do enough good things to outweigh the bad things, you’re in trouble. So, he’s asking the simple question what I have to do to have eternal life. 

I mentioned he’s rich and he’s young and he has some kind of position most, people would look at that and say he has his life pretty sorted out. He has wealth and he is young enough to enjoy it, and he has power besides, and yet there’s something missing in his life in that is he doesn’t know about the next life. Somebody once said you are not really ready to live this life until you ready for the next life. 

Jesus answers the question in this passage, but this passage can be a little confusing to people who know that one of the key tenants of the Bible is that it teaches salvation is by grace through faith. It seems to me that when Jesus answers this question and he tells the rich young ruler three things.

Number one, he turns to him, and he says verse 17, “why do you call me good no one is good but God”. Jesus says, stop right there,  you called me good , there’s only one that’s really good and that’s God. Jesus says if you call me good, and the only one who is good is God so are you calling me God. So, Jesus asked him the question, why have you called me good? I don’t think he got it, so Jesus tries a second thing look at verse 17.

What About the 10 Commandments.

So, He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

(Matthew 19: 17)

This is the part of the passage that starts that starts to get tough for some, what do you mean keep the commandments, it gets worse, look at it the man’s response.

18 He said to Him, “Which ones?”

(Matthew 19: 18a)

 “Which ones,” not which one, he is already negotiating, but actually that’s a good question, remember he the beginning, he said, what one good thing (singular) must I do to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus replies, “‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,  ‘Honour your father and your mother,’ and, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ ”

(Matthew 19: 18b-19)

In the context of when he lived was this just an insightful question because we not only have all the commandments in the Old Testament that Moses gave but the addons of the rabbis which when counted up came to 612 instructions. And the Pharisees had also added even many more on top of that, so I can see where he might be confused. So, he says which one and this is when Jesus lists some.

Let me pause and ask a question how many comments are there, normally 10 rights,  how many commandments does he list.

1.      You shall not murder.

2.      You shall not commit adultery.

3.      You shall not steal.

4.      You shall not bear false witness.

5.      Honour your father and mother.

6.      Love your neighbour as yourself.

10 commandments, but why now only 6, this is very important.

The 10 commandments are divided into two parts. The first four deals with your relationship with God, they are.

1.      You shall have no other gods before me.

2.      You should have any graven images.

3.      You shall not take the name of God in vain. 

4.      Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

The second half of the commandments have to do with your relationship with other human beings. Jesus quotes the second series of commandments that have to do dealing with other people. What’s Jesus doing is he telling him he’s got to keep the commandment to go to heaven, but no one can keep the commandments. Therefore, the law doesn’t teach us to how to be save it defines the laws of God to demonstrate that we can’t keep therefore we are in need of salvation. The law is not meant to save people it is meant to hold up a mirror so you can see you are falling short.

Jesus is simply saying if you recognize who I am, and you want to have eternal life you got to realize who you are, and you are simply a person (a sinner) who unable to keep the law. The impossible path of righteousness was set before him, not that he might attempt to win eternal life, but that he might perceive his own shortcomings and so recognise his own weakness and look to God for salvation. What Jesus is doing he’s telling this guy is you’ve got to understand something we all need to understand. I wonder if he will get it. Next verse. The young man then said to Him, 

“All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?”

(Matthew 19: 20)

But look at how Jesus responds to that.

Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

(Matthew 19: 21)

Jesus is trying to just jerk him into reality, he believed that the commandments were all external, and because he was rich it was probably a sign of God’s blessing therefore he was exempt from the law. Maybe he thought he obeyed the law of not stealing by being rich and thereby not needing to steal. But now Jesus came along and said if you have hatred in your heart, you’ve committed murder already and that’s why he ends here. So, the young man asked what must I do to heavy eternal life and Jesus says.

1 You have to recognize who  I am. 

2 You have to realize you are a Sinner you’ve broken God’s law

This young man did not get it, he didn’t respond when Jesus asked him a question nor did he get it when Jesus said you’ve broken the commandments, he said no I haven’t, I’ve kept all those from my youth. What is Jesus going to do next to get through to this guy?

In verse 20, he says, “if you want to be perfect, go sell everything. Now the Greek word-perfect means to reach its end, for something to reach completion.  What it probably means here is if you want to reach the definitive understanding of gaining eternal life, for you it will mean going and selling what you have and giving it to the poor, and then you shall than have treasure in heaven, and then you are free to follow me.

That’s probably the most difficult verse in the whole passage. Does that mean we have to sell everything we have and give it to the poor in order to have eternal life? That doesn’t seem to fit with what the New Testament says elsewhere. Now we can all agree that salvation is for those who are willing to forsake everything, and clearly this young man was not willing to do that.

In the gospel of Mark this story is also recorded, and when the young man walks off the disciple’s then say to Jesus,  who then can be saved? As a matter of fact, this passage records that same portion of the conversation except in mark Jesus goes a little further and he says, well let me show you Matthew’s version first.

23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, 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.” 25 When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19: 23-26)

When Luke also records this longer version of story he uses the Greek term for a surgeons needle, it would be easier to run a camel through the eye of a needle than it would for a rich man to get to heaven. 

This all just seems to make it worse. First of all you got to sell everything and give it to the poor and now you’re telling me that rich people can’t go to heaven and if that statement is literally true like that then none of us are going because by the worlds standard every person listening to this is rich so, we got a problem.

When Mark records this story, he says that Jesus said how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God. The the point, Jesus tell him to get rid of everything and give it to the poor because he was already to a degree trusting in those things for eternal life. Maybe the rich young ruler thought I’m rich therefore the Lord has blessed me and I’m going to heaven and Jesus is saying you’ve got it all wrong, what you have to do is get rid of your money in order to have eternal life.

This is the only man for who this aspect of teaching is even hinted at, it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the Bible. So maybe it refers to this one individual then and only to specific individuals today. Many individuals I’m sure, but specific individuals non the less, and you will know if you are one of those individuals. What’s I believe is going on in this passage is Jesus is saying to this rich young ruler is you need to rely on me in order to have eternal life. You’re love money, so get rid of it because you can’t have eternal life because your love of wealth is blocking you from receiving the grace and forgiveness of God.

Summary.

In summary, Jesus is teaching it is impossible for people who trust in what they have or what they do to be right with God. So, did Jesus contradict himself, my answer is a definite, no. 

Let me make some final observations about that.

I think this story illustrates some things that we all need to know especially if you’re trying to accurately represent the real Jesus to people. It seems to me, as compared to other stories like Nicodemus and the woman at the well and others, one of the things we need to note is that Jesus did not deal with everybody the same way.  That’s a very interesting lesson to learn in when it comes to personal evangelism straight away. You should not deal with everyone the same way. We can’t pour everybody through the same funnel and expect them to land upon Jesus. Jesus didn’t do it, and we shouldn’t.

Paul tells us in first Corinthians Chapter 9, that, “We are become all things to all men that I might by all means win some”. Meet people at their point of need, start where they are. Notice Nicodemus came and said we know that you’re a man from God for no man can do these miracles without God being with him, and Jesus started right where he was talking about spiritual things and being born again of the Spirit.

In the very next chapter, he meets the woman at the well and he doesn’t start spiritually at all. He just asked her for a drink of water, why because they’re standing by a well, and by her following question he deals with what is on her mind, then he aligns up her political perspective on the differences between Jews and Samaritans and by doing that introduces her to the way of salvation. Here this rich young ruler comes and says good teacher what must they do to have eternal life and Jesus says, OK, let’s start right where you are because you called me good, why did you do that?  Let’s start by why you asked me that when there is only one who is truly good and that’s God. 

My point is that we can learn from this passage that you shouldn’t treat everybody the same especially when you’re talking to them from an evangelistic point of view. One of the occupational hazards of being a Christian is we know have an answer to most of people problems  in life so the minute somebody starts talking we back up the tipper truck and unload on them a whole load of Bible stuff. But, we can all learn a great lesson here in that if we would just stop and listen for a minute and try and listen between the lines of what they are saying you might be able to help them at their point of need. Thereby gently introducing some biblical wisdom into their lives or just giving your Christian perspective on the problems they are facing. Listening, that’s what Jesus did. omebody came to him and said tell my brother to share his inheritance with me and Jesus said, beware of covetousness, he always started where they were, and he read between the lines and saw what was really going on in their lives. That’s a good principle for us all to learn.

There’s one other principle I see here, and I think this is most important because it also explains this story. Jesus didn’t treat him like he did everybody else would have, he didn’t react in any way different because he was rich wealth and had power, he started where he was, and he tried to get this fella to understand he was in fact lost. That’s what this passage is about he’s trying to get him to understand his true state before God.

He tries to get the guy to realize that in spite of everything he really does need a saviour. He wanted to know how to gain eternal life, and Jesus instead told him he has got to start with the fact he has got to lose something in order to gain it. The average person thinks I don’t need God, I’m OK, I’ve got enough good things in my life to outweigh the bad. We’re back to the scales again. The biggest problem is always getting people to understand they need to lose something in life to gain a relationship with God through Jesus. Jesus used a little shock therapy here.

Lots or people out there thing think there sorted because of how much money they have, or because they give to charity lately. At the beginning of this story this rich young man said, “good teacher “what good thing shall I do,  what good thing, (Singular) shall I do. I think that’s the crux of this story is that there are two kinds of religions in the world, the do things religion and the done something  religion. The do religion says I have to do these things to get to heaven, and the done religion says you’re too late, Jesus already did it. He fulfilled the law and the commandments already and by doing that he paid for your sin and there’s nothing left for you to do except accept that.

That’s what’s really going on here, it’s the do religion person, versus the done for me already outlook on life. The New Testament teaches the done version of the religious faithful life. On some occasions I’ve go with people for lunch or coffee, and they offer to pay, and I say, no these ones on me and on some occasions, we’ve get into a little squabble about it. One time recently I said to my friend,  OK, this one’s on me and my friend said, too late, it’s already done. When I went to the bathroom halfway through, he went up to the counter and paid the bill. It’s done there was nothing left for you to pay.

That’s the religion of the New Testament, I come before God and understand I’m a sinner and the penalty is death and Jesus then says on the cross, it is finished, it is done, it’s paid for and all you can do is accept that gift with thanks and live your rest of your life believing and trusting that t has been already done for you. And maybe once in a while think about that and say thank-you.