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| Wealth or Heaven? |
- Luke 18 : 27
Vitals
Focuses on: Luke 18:18-30
Job Description: A Certain Ruler
Significant events in worldly position: Lived a life without committing any huge sin
Aftermath: Grows sad of Jesus's order in giving away his wealth
Is this person one with desirable traits of a Christian?
In Luke 18:18-30, a wealthy ruler asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus than tells the ruler of the commandments that he needed to follow such as not committing adultery, not murdering, not stealing, etc. The ruler would reply to Jesus stating that he has kept all of these. Christ would than follow by telling the ruler to sell everything he has to the poor, than he will have a spot in Heaven. The ruler would be very reluctant to do so and would grow really sad. He than talks about how hard it is to reach salvation.
This one caught me a bit. Not because of how selfish the ruler was, but because the way the ruler reacted would've been the way that I would've reacted. The Rich Ruler is the featured "Servant of The Weak" because of what a dilemma he was in.
Of course, everybody's taught to do as well as they can. Do well in studies, do well during office hours, do well during any moment of the day. All of this is done so that one day in the future, a fat paycheck could be earned. That's exactly what the rich ruler did during his life.
He said that he followed all of the commandments since he was a boy. That combined with the fact that he's currently a rich ruler means that he had to deal with quite a lot to get to his position. But after all that, Jesus told him to simply give it all up, without any hesitation if he wanted to go to the Kingdom of Heaven.
With all honesty, if I was the rich ruler, I certainly would not have given it up. Possibly, I would've spared some change to the poor. But offering every last penny? Throwing all my success across the room just like that? That's ridiculous.
I worked hard for what I have, I best keep it all shouldn't I?
As much sense as that makes, that's wrong. Just like the the rich man in the parable featuring Lazarus, we need to find it within ourselves that no material belonging in the world is of any value compared to what's really important. There's really only two things that are important once some thought is put into it, God and people.
All these nice clothes, watches, and houses are all nice, but can those things be taken with us once life is over? They can't.
The ruler is this entry struggled mightily on the task of pouring away all of his wealth to the poor. But wealth alone is nothing compared to the sacrifice that was made by that one guy. Jesus gave up everything on that day when he was crucified. To not even want to give up our money just shows how flawed we all are. We have to realize that nobody can do this alone by themselves. In Luke 18:27, it says "What is impossible with men is possible with God." We have to exchange everything. We have to lay it all down, wealth or burden, at the foot of the cross, because Jesus laid it all down for us.
