Mark 10:17-31 Following Jesus is Difficult

Mark 10:17-31

The Question on Inheriting Eternal Life

17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 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.”

26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”

27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”

29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Jesus gives us a choice to follow Him...Their is no pressure to follow Him and His Teachings...One can follow Him or we can just ignore Him -or be somewhere in between on how we feel about Him...The cost is more than we think...It involves putting the Father and the Son above all things...And the obstacles of money, and whatever take our eyes and views off the Father and Son are to be carefully watched, so that we have Them at the Top of the List...This may mean leaving a comfortable life for an uncomfortable one...We enter His Kingdom on His terms and not our own...So there are these things we must change or give up...The early followers knew of the cost of following Him...After meeting with the original Disciples and His original followers those wanting to follow Him understood that His Message and Teachings were difficult and hard...Jesus was a Servant for us, yet He demanded that we repent and act and do as He does...Today, we seem to believe we can do those things we like and that are easy in His Teachings and fill up the rest of our day doing the things we want to do, regardless of whether they are in the gospels or not...We do what we think is right and not what He knows is Right...Jesus says there are two roads in life...Jesus tells us we make a choice in our daily decisions about these two roads in life...We can make a wise choice of the road we decide to follow in this life or make the easy choice...He basically tells us we should enter the narrow road of His, which is hard...Or we can enter the road that is wide and the way is easy, where we are in control and make and follow our own decisions...The Way to the cross is a difficult narrow road following His example...It is the road that leads to eternity...Following Him and doing what He does is not a soft, cozy cushion...

Theologian John Stott wrote on the cost of following Jesus...“Jesus never concealed the fact that his religion included a demand as well as an offer...Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free...If He offered men His salvation, He also demanded their submission...He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship...He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer...He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty...Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the LORD’s test...The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish...For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so...The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.”...In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity...They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable...Their religion is a great, soft cushion...It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience...No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism...The message of Jesus was very different...He never lowered His standards or modified His conditions to make His call more readily acceptable...He asked His first disciples, and He has asked every disciple since, to give Him their thoughtful and total commitment...Nothing less than this will do”...

Author C. S. Lewis put the cost of the cross like this...“Imagine yourself as a living house...God comes in to rebuild that house...At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing...He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised...But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense...What on earth is He up to?...The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards...You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace...He intends to come and live in it Himself.”...