“The Rich Men” (Part One)

Interesting words from Jesus about wealth–

“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.” (Matthew 19:24).

It has been well said that wealth is a wonderful thing to have, as long as that wealth doesn’t have you. When your money has you, it becomes a god—in fact, anything that has you is not merely a god, it is YOUR god. We are going to examine a series of “rich men” in the New Testament, and will end up with an unsung hero of the early church. By comparing the four, the one we end with will be all the more clearly seen.

The key is that, as we examine these men and their money, we must be willing to do two things…

• Place yourself and whatever has you- wealth, greed, anger, pride, whatever is “your god”- in the place of these men and their “gods”; and,
• See what the result of this folly is.

For our study together, we will consider one of these men today, and the others tomorrow and Wednesday. So, you’ll need your Bible as we begin with…

The Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-22)

What He Asked- for eternal life (picture the scene and the obvious interest of this young man)

What Jesus Required- keep the horizontal commandments. In Exodus 20, the 10 Commandments divided into two segments…

• Vertical Commands- speak of our living in relationship to God;
• Horizontal Commands- speak of our living in relationship to our fellow man.

Notice the young man’s response- he says he has kept the horizontal commands- but he really hadn’t! The result? Since he had not kept the horizontal (which are the easier of the two), he could not have kept the vertical (the far more difficult of the two)!

This brought the young man to a crisis point- Jesus challenges him to put his words to work, and give what he has to the poor so that he can follow Jesus in an unencumbered way. Problem: Because of his love of the money and what it would buy, he wouldn’t follow Jesus. In essence, because he wouldn’t love his neighbor, He couldn’t love God!

What He Did- went away sorrowful. Keys…

• See the young man’s dependence upon his wealth and possessions.
• See the disciples’ amazement- in their culture, the wealthy were a lock for heaven (supposedly)!
• See how ineffective material wealth is in the securing of eternity! You cannot by a window, pew, hymnal, or piano in order to get to heaven- you must come to Christ.

He was- the religious rich man. We’ll continue our study tomorrow…