“No one is good except God alone.” Luke 18:18.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
How great is the goodness I have stored up for those who love Me, for those who understand My ways! Every good thing given and every perfect gift comes down from Me, the Father of lights. There is no darkness in Me. No duplicity or hidden agendas. I withhold no good thing from those who seek Me.
You are with Me always, I conceived you in My innermost being from the beginning and have brought you into being at your appointed time. I have unique plans and paths prepared for you that are full of good deeds and wonderful adventures. I have no desire to give you anything but that which is good.
Jesus came to give you life, abundant overflowing beautiful precious life, filled with My goodness.
I made everything good. The Garden of Eden was filled with good and delightful things. But the devil persuaded the first woman and man to disobey Me by convincing them that I was withholding something good from them that they should have to be wise and powerful that he was able to offer them if they rejected Me. But really the devil had nothing to give them. He needed to steal from them to obtain what he was offering to give them.
You may not want to acknowledge this but rejecting My Word is rejecting Me, for I am My Word.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. John 14:23-24.
If you say you love Me but you are living a lifestyle that is contrary to My Words, than the answer is simple, you do not love Me and you are putting aside who I am to gain things that you think you cannot get from Me. But, as Adam and Eve found, there is nothing good apart from Me.
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the LORD God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works. Psalm 73:28.
We have been preparing to study a conversation that Jesus had with a rich ruler. He came to Jesus with a question that he believed Jesus could answer. It was about what good he had to do to inherit and take possession of eternal life. Just as the promised land was their inheritance under the Covenant, he believed eternal life is an inheritance as well. And you will remember that the tribes cast lots to see which tribe got which portion of their inheritance.
The LORD is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my inheritance is beautiful to me. . . You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever. Psalm 16:5-6,11.
In the gospel of Luke the rich man is identified as a “ruler.” And as we go into the conversation more deeply you will see that he knows and keeps the commandments from his childhood. Thus, this ruler is a Jewish person and not a Roman, so you know from the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus, whom I also called a “ruler,” that he is a member of the ruling body of the Jewish people in matters of their law and daily life and that ruling body is the Sanhedrin.
The Sanhedrin was the Jewish supreme court of Israel at that time, It was made up of 70 men and the high priest based on the commandment the LORD gave to Moses when he needed help judging and governing the numerous people of Israel as they crossed the wilderness to the land God had promised Abraham by covenant oath.
The LORD therefore said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it all alone.” Numbers 11:16-17.
And it is clear this man is a Pharisee because he believes in eternal life. The Pharisees were the members of the Sanhedrin who believed in angels and eternal life. The high priest and chief priests were Sadducees, they did not believe in angels or eternal life. Thus they did not believe in the resurrection. But it turned out to be difficult to hide the truth of resurrection and eternal life when I raised Jesus from the dead. And their belief that there were no angels was hard to justify after angels let the apostles they were holding in custody out of jail, and not just once. Lies are perishable and bring death, truth is eternal and gives life.
Now let us go to the conversation.
One day as Jesus and His disciples were going forth on a journey, a ruler ran up and knelt before Jesus as if with a very urgent matter and questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, what good shall I do that I may possess (inherit) eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Matthew 19:16-17. Luke and Mark further elucidate that Jesus explained to make it quite clear that I alone am the One who is good. Luke 18:18-19; Mark 10:17-18.
This answer goes back to the Garden of Eden. I am the standard of absolute goodness. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is Mine, not human lawmakers that call good evil and evil good. Not those who do not understand what life is and the sacredness of it and that you cannot snuff it out or treat it has nonexistent when it is a life in being. Not those that destroy the family and the partnership of co-creation in a man and a woman. Not those that say healing a person on Shabbat is evil and contrary to My law. Not assisting suicide of the ill instead of releasing My healing power which is in all believers. All this is evil. So Jesus referred this ruler back to what he should know well as a teacher of the Law. Yes, the clear defining of good and evil in My commandments.
I am the source of all that is good. When Moses wanted to know Me better and asked to see My glory. I told Him I would show Him My goodness. My great goodness is My glory. Glory is the exercise of power in love and it produces goodness, brings the imperfect to the perfect, and causes all evil to cease. My presence, My power, results only in absolute good.
But this ruler did not stop there, he wanted to know which commandments Jesus was referring to. He was not thinking of the ten but on the hundreds of laws the Jewish leaders had codified over the years and really did want to get a handle on which ones he should be concentrating on.
So Jesus replied, “You know the commandments, ‘you shall not commit murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.”
Looking at him, Jesus felt love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.
What took place here is very profound and very sad. This man lost the opportunity to be included in the glorious inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. He lost the greatest adventure in the greatest story ever told for a bowl of beans, like Essau.
But there are two reasons that Jesus told this Pharisee to do take this challenging step, though actually all of the disciples, as Peter will point out in this conversation once the rich ruler departed, had left everything to follow Him but, like Paul would later expound about his call to follow, everything which they once regarded as so important to have now seemed like worthless rubbish compared to knowing and being with Jesus, which ended up bringing them rewards now and eternally that all the riches in the world could not hold a candle to, so to speak.
First, this ruler was a Pharisee and Jesus had already pointed out to them that the riches they amassed were obtained by preying upon widows and the people they should have been assisting but instead they took their homes and livelihood behind their cloak of religion. He offered them a way to be cleansed of that, however, when He told them if they gave what they had as alms all would be wiped clean for them. This Pharisee knew that and that is one reason he was worried about obtaining eternal life.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.” Matthew 23:14.
“Now you Pharisees make the outside of the cup and dish clean, but your inward part is full of greed and wickedness. Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But rather give alms of such things as you have; then indeed all things are clean to you.” Luke 11:39-41.
Second, you cannot serve two masters; for either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve Me and Mammon. Matthew 6:24. Mammon is wealth personified as an object of worship. It is the demon spirit of greed for amassing the riches of the world for selfish gain and self-glorification.
But it is more than that it is the destruction of My people even when they think they are just pursuing providing for themselves and their families. Instead of living in the dominion authority I blessed you with from the start it is a perversion of the devil whereby you spend your life pursuing things as your source instead of Me.
Let Me explain. If you spend your life running after the things of the world, and I know you need these necessities to live, they will allude you and lead you on a rat-race chase. Like when Peter fished all night and caught nothing. The more you chase them the faster they run. They will consume your life and never give you any time for seeking the Kingdom. No matter how much you amass it will never be enough.
On the other hand, if you seek Me first, that is, My Kingdom and My way of righteousness in Christ, these things will chase after you! Like when Peter took Jesus in his boat to preach and went out to fish at the direction of Jesus, then the fish all chased him down and jumped in his nets. As I told the Israelites, if they put My Word first place then all the blessings would chase them down and overwhelm them! Deuteronomy 28:1-14. But if they disobeyed My Word and went after the idols of wealth and other things these things would destroy them. Deuteronomy 28:15-68.
If you bow your knee to Mammon, it will destroy you. If you bow your knee to Me, Mammon must bow to you, for at the Name of Jesus, which you confess, every knee must bow in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
With some people this worship of Mammon is working three jobs and they still cannot make it from paycheck to paycheck, it is like pouring water in a broken cistern that will never fill up but everything will run out. The more you put the faster it runs out. Your whole life is focused on things without Me—no tithing, no time for praying or going to gather with other believers as members of the body of Christ, the Church.
With others who are successful in business, it is climbing the corporate ladder with the ungodly and sacrificing all for prestigious homes, cars, and the trappings of worldly success leaving a train of broken relationships and families as carnage for the sacrifice of giving all your time and your very life to climbing to the “top,” only to find all you really should have valued is lost and all you have left is Mammon.
You can serve money and let it destroy you or you can serve Me and be the master of money. I did not create you to live as a servant to creation but as its master.
And this Pharisee had heard this before he came to Jesus with his urgent question regarding eternal life. Jesus had taught this to the Pharisees before this incident:
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth (Mammon), who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth (Mammon).”Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16:10-15.
After the rich ruler departed, Jesus had more truth to impart to His disciples. But enough has been said for this Life Lesson. For now I will just say, Jesus let them know if that ruler had done what he asked and given his wealth as alms, he would have received, now in this life, one hundred times more than what he gave to the poor, and eternal life in the ages to come. Selah. He missed to sow into the biggest investment opportunity he ever had or would have in this life.
Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last, first.” Mark 10:29-30.
I love you. With Me, all things are possible. Do you believe that enough to follow Me?