NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH
October 20, 2013
All In: Part 1
Mark Batterson
Once again, welcome to National Community Church! We are thrilled that you are here! If you have a Bible with you, turn over to Matthew Chapter 19 and we will also put it up on the screen and we’ll get there in just a moment.
Two quick announcements, first of all, you have been praying, as we have been updating you on the D.C. Dream Center. We had a meeting with the ANC Commission on Thursday evening and what an interesting night! Our prayers were answered! And it was prayer that really put this thing over the top. We won approval from the Commission to move forward with our D.C. Dream Center and it is one small step, one giant leap in the direction of this vision. Again, I want to remind us so that we don’t forget who we are and what we are about. We believe that God is going to bless us in proportion to how we care for the poor in our city. That’s at the heartbeat of this church and the Dream Center is right at the epicenter of that. So I can’t wait to see the way God is going to continue to go before us and prepare good works in advance! Thank you for praying with us and of course thanks to Pastor Joel and Ernest for their leadership in that endeavor. So I wanted to share that update in case you don’t follow NCC on Twitter. Why wouldn’t you? But in case you don’t, you are out of the loop but now you are in the loop and you can follow on Twitter.
Second, it has been awhile since we’ve done an all-church gathering and we felt like it is time. So on November 3rd, the third week of this series, we are going to culminate with an evening, a Sunday evening at the Lincoln Theater. And what’s beautiful is we are going to have an opportunity for you to be baptized. If you have never taken that step of obedience or that step of faith, this is an opportunity to do that. We know many of you have put your faith in Christ over the last few weeks and months and maybe some of you have just never taken that step. Baptism is the public profession of our faith. In a sense, it is the way we let everybody know that we are all in. And we go all in! We do baptism by immersion so you will get wet! I’m going to put you all the way under the water but I’ve never left anybody under there! 100 percent come back up! It is this wonderful symbol of the new life we have in Christ. So I encourage you to email or fill out a connection card and let us know that you are interested in that.
Matthew 19:16
16Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” 17And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; 19Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 20The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?”
And this is one of those questions that belies what is underneath the surface and we’ll come back to it.
21Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22When the rich, young man heard this word, he went away sorrowful, for he was very rich.
Let me paint a picture before we jump into this passage. A number of years ago, I was part of a mission team from this church to the Galapagos Islands. I think it’s the closest thing to the Garden of Eden left on earth! It’s amazing! Yes it is populated by people but it’s like a zoo without cages. Animals are everywhere, exotic animals. We are talking 200 year old Tortugas that are this big! Then you’ve got these iguanas that are not intimidated by human kind. These are lizards that bake on the dark-colored rocks and you can go right up to them if you dare do it. One of my distinct memories was, we went by boat island hoping and at one of those islands, there were some sea lions swimming right off the dock. I don’t know what I was thinking, Parker was with me. He was 10 or 11 years old and I had the brilliant idea to jump in and swim with them! Looking back, I’m thinking was that safe, but I’m here! And it was one of the most thrilling experiences! These sea lions just played with us. They were swimming figure eights around us. What a memory! Then one of my favorites, whenever we were out on the boat, we would see these pelicans that looked like prehistoric pterodactyls that would just circle around the boat and at any given moment they would dive-bomb and the water is so clear that you could see it and they would go six, eight, ten feet down and come back up with breakfast in their beaks. It was thrilling to see these animals in their natural habitat.
So then we got on a boat and got on a plane and came back home and it was maybe two weeks later that our family went to the National Zoo. Let’s just say that it wasn’t the same experience because there was no chance that these animals were going to kill us. It was not nearly as exciting as being in the Galapagos. It is not like we could jump in with the walruses, at least not without getting kicked out. The animals were behind cages and it was just a little bit boring. Then we walked into the ape house and I had one of those moments. There was this 400 pound gorilla behind Plexiglas and I don’t even know why but this thought fired across my synapses, I wonder if churches do to people what zoos do to animals.
Now, I think it is well-intentioned but would you agree with me? I grew up in some churches that were this way, almost like we try to remove some of the risk, minimize the sacrifice, and eliminate the element of danger. We try to tame people in the name of Christ. We will as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. But the will of God is not an insurance plan, it is a dangerous plan. Jesus didn’t die just to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous.
So when we pronounce the benediction at the end of our services at this church, I would sure like to think that it scars the you-know-what out of the enemy! I would like to think that we are sending dangerous people back into their natural habitat to wreak havoc on the enemy. Now if you’ve been around here for very long, you know that is how we operate. That is our mindset. Faithfulness is not holding the fort, faithfulness is invading hell-holes with the light and love of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 11:12 says that from the time of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing and forceful people have been seizing it.
I think C.T. Studd may have said it best. He said, ‘Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bells, but I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.’ I like that a lot. Here’s what I’m getting at, I think that when this rich, young ruler, who was obeying all the commandments says what’s still missing, I think what’s missing is the risk, the danger, the sacrifice. On paper, this guy has everything that we think we would want. You don’t have to go to seminary to exegete this one, it’s right there for us. He was rich. He was young. He was a ruler. What that means is he had wealth and he had youth and he had power. He had it all and yet he says what am I still missing. Now, isn’t that the question that others should have been posing to him because he is the guy who seemed like he had everything. I think the problem is he was like the caged animal. He was obeying the commandments but he lacked the rush of holy adrenaline that you experience when you begin to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
So here’s what I want to do. With that as a backdrop, we are going to drill down and we are going to jump into this story and see if we can’t walk out with a clear understanding of the gospel.
Let me just tell you, there probably was a day and age maybe when I was a little bit younger where I would love to get up and entertain you with stories and maybe say something that would make you laugh and it’s not like I don’t believe in laughter. I think you ought to have a little bit of fun at church. But I want to make sure this weekend there is a single person that walks out of any of our locations that does not have an explicit understanding of what the gospel is. This is what is more fundamentally important. And it think we see it in this story.
Verse 16
Someone came up to Jesus and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
In other words, to have eternal life, to be saved, to be in this place where I’m right with God, where my sins are forgiven and my eternal future is secure, what good thing must I do? What’s interesting to me is that this question reveals a false assumption that eternal life is the by-product of something that we do, namely good deeds. Are you tracking with me? This is the wrong question. And if you ask the wrong question, you will not get the right answer. The beautiful thing is, you can see this throughout the gospel, when someone asks the wrong question, I love Jesus’ answer because it has nothing to do with the question that they asked. He has the ability to go, ‘The question you should have asked is this so I’m going to give you the answer to that.’ And we are going to see that in just a minute.
There is a common misconception in our culture that is the same as this rich, young ruler had, that if you do more good things than bad things, that the scales of justice will tip in your favor and you are ok. The problem with that is this – James 2:10 says: Whoever keeps the whole law yet fails at one point has become accountable for all of it. In other words, if you break one part of the law, you fall into a category that the Bible says is a lawbreaker. It is all or nothing. There is no middle ground here. So if you fail at one point, you fail at the whole thing.
Romans 3:23 says it this way: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The word ‘sin’ here is an archery term and it refers to missing the bull’s eye, if you will. Shooting an arrow but not hitting it right in the middle of the target. In other words, just a little bit off. Sin is missing the moral bull’s eye, and not just in our actions but our motivations as well. Do I need to ask if there is anybody who has hit the bull’s eye ever time? I think sometimes language carries certain weight and the word ‘sin’ probably, I’m guessing it is not your favorite word! It’s not the word you love to use more than any other word. And in some respect, we don’t necessarily like to think of ourselves as a sinner. But what the Bible is saying is that you are not Robin Hood! You can’t split an arrow. You are not a perfect archer. You don’t hit the bull’s eye every time. You have fallen short of the glory of God.
It means that we don’t measure up to the standard that God has set, which is perfection. There is only One who has and that is the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ. The good news is this, this is the gospel, II Corinthians 5:21: God made Him who had no sin to become sin for us so that we would become the righteousness of God.
Let me try to translate. It is like Jesus says, ‘Here’s the deal that’s on the table, you take your sin and transfer it to my account and I will pay your sin debt in full.’ Now that’s an incredible deal right there, but that’s on half of the gospel. The other half is this, He says, ‘Then I’m going to take my righteousness, everything I’ve done right, in other words, I’ve already paid for everything you’ve done wrong, but it gets better. Why don’t we take everything I’ve done right, my righteousness and transfer it into your account and let’s call it even.’ What? This is better than good! This is not just good news, this is the best news! What it means is we can be in right standing with God, not by keeping the law because we all fail at trying to keep the law, not because of something we do. Listen, religion is spelled d-o, it is what man can do for God. But a relationship with God is all about what He has done for us!
In fact, in Romans 12, it says the best thing that you can do for God is simply accept and receive what He has done for you. That is the gospel message! Some of you have been trying so hard for so long to do so many good things so that you can get into God’s good graces. That is not how you get into God’s good graces! No, you simply receive the gift of salvation that He freely offers through the sacrifice of his sinless Son on the cross. That is the gospel!
Someday, you are going to stand before the judgment seat of God. That is the destiny of all of us. Doesn’t that make sense, to give account to the one who created us, to give account for the time, talent and treasure that God has entrusted to us. And when you stand before God, if you try to stand on your good deeds, it is a house of cards and it is going to crumble. There is only one way you can stand before God and that is in the righteousness of Christ. And what is so beautiful is that you don’t have to stand on your own two feet as your own advocate. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is our advocate! In other words, we stand on his righteousness so that if you have come to that point in your life where you have confessed your sin and professed your faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then when you stand before the heavenly Father, you don’t stand in your sin. You sin has been forgiven and forgotten! You stand in the righteousness of God and that is precisely what the Father sees in you. He sees the righteousness of his Son that has been transferred to your account.
This is the wrong question, what good things must I do to gain eternal life. You can’t do enough good things. The problem is you’ve done enough wrong things, there is only one way and that is through Jesus Christ. The good news is the cross is never closed. It is always open for business. It doesn’t matter how big your sin debt is, He is ready, willing, waiting to forgive you. Not just some of your sin, all of it.