Idolatry (Matthew 19:16-30)
The story of The Rich Young Ruler. This is NOT the story where Jesus tells a man it isn’t enough to maintain the whole law, you also have to sell everything you know. (Although, when the true message of the story is understood, it might just mean that for a lot of people today.) No, this is a story about idolatry.
The whole of the biblical story can be summed up as the battle between worship of the true Creator of the universe vs. the idolatry that we creatures chose to engage in. And the gospel can be summed up as our need to exchange our false gods for the one true God, Jesus Christ. It is very clearly seen in this story.
When the man asks Jesus how to obtain eternal life—entry into God’s Kingdom—Jesus implies that “goodness” (i.e. holiness, blamelessness) would be the way, but also says that none qualify other than God. He lists off a selection of laws (pointedly avoiding some) as an example of how we break God’s demands. When the man (likely happy and smug) says that he has maintained the laws Jesus listed, Jesus then tells the man to sell everything he owns and give it away. For, you see, the man was breaking the first law, “Thou shall have no other gods take priority over Me.”
The man’s wealth was his god, and the thing he worshiped in the place of the true God. Money was his idol. To quote the ESV commentators:
Anything we have in our lives—other than God—that we rely on for sense of self, security, or meaning, is potentially an idol to us. And for a vast majority of Americans, materialism and wealth is that idol. It is a dangerous trap, because it is perfectly suited for people to worship and for turning our trust away from God.
Wealth = false sense of self-sufficiency.
When we consider the story just prior to this one, the contrast is even more apparent. The rich young ruler is the opposite of a child. Wealth gives us an illusion of self-sufficiency, rather than the truth that we, like children, are totally dependent on God for life, meaning, and everything.
This is why Jesus says it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. (In fact, for any man, entering the kingdom of God is not difficult, it is impossible!) Rich people look to their wealth for the things that we should find in God.
So, maybe you need to sell everything you own and maybe you don’t. The question is, can you have it all and not worship it?
The whole of the biblical story can be summed up as the battle between worship of the true Creator of the universe vs. the idolatry that we creatures chose to engage in. And the gospel can be summed up as our need to exchange our false gods for the one true God, Jesus Christ. It is very clearly seen in this story.
When the man asks Jesus how to obtain eternal life—entry into God’s Kingdom—Jesus implies that “goodness” (i.e. holiness, blamelessness) would be the way, but also says that none qualify other than God. He lists off a selection of laws (pointedly avoiding some) as an example of how we break God’s demands. When the man (likely happy and smug) says that he has maintained the laws Jesus listed, Jesus then tells the man to sell everything he owns and give it away. For, you see, the man was breaking the first law, “Thou shall have no other gods take priority over Me.”
The man’s wealth was his god, and the thing he worshiped in the place of the true God. Money was his idol. To quote the ESV commentators:
“Jesus knows that the man’s wealth has become his means to personal identity, power, and sense of meaning in life—that it has become his idolatrous god.”
Anything we have in our lives—other than God—that we rely on for sense of self, security, or meaning, is potentially an idol to us. And for a vast majority of Americans, materialism and wealth is that idol. It is a dangerous trap, because it is perfectly suited for people to worship and for turning our trust away from God.
Wealth = false sense of self-sufficiency.
When we consider the story just prior to this one, the contrast is even more apparent. The rich young ruler is the opposite of a child. Wealth gives us an illusion of self-sufficiency, rather than the truth that we, like children, are totally dependent on God for life, meaning, and everything.
This is why Jesus says it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. (In fact, for any man, entering the kingdom of God is not difficult, it is impossible!) Rich people look to their wealth for the things that we should find in God.
So, maybe you need to sell everything you own and maybe you don’t. The question is, can you have it all and not worship it?
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