Money
could keep you out of heaven!
Short Reading – Mark 10:17-27
Longer Reading – Mark 10:1-27
Key Verse – Mark 10:21
Life is busy, time is money and there are many
questions on my mind. Meet the man who thought money could buy everything!
His question was – ‘What
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’ The key to the man’s question are
the words ‘do’ and ‘inherit’. He was a self made man; everything he had
achieved was as a result of what he had
done. He probably had worked hard for everything he had. He thought of
eternal life as something he could inherit. An inheritance is wealth that
someone has worked hard to accumulate and the people who inherit it have a
right to it. He wants eternal life but he doesn’t understand that you don’t get
it the way you get wealth and possessions.
The Lord checks his life out
against the Ten Commandments. The man reckons he has scored ok on this one (remember
this is his evaluation, not God’s). At this stage we read a touching comment –
‘then Jesus beholding him loved him,’ v 21. Then the Lord touches a raw nerve
in the man’s life. He says to the man, who has everything, you lack one thing
so ‘sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me,’ Mark 10. 21 NKJV. The Lord Jesus is not telling him
that the act of selling up and giving to the poor will save him. He is saying
that money and possessions were his idols, ours may be other things, and that
he needs to deal with the thing that is keeping him from following Christ. He
must also obey the rest of the command i.e. ‘take up the cross, and follow’.
Money and possessions
thankfully did not keep me from salvation but it could keep me from living for
him, taking up the cross and following him.
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