Every Last Word

Guest (Male): How do we get to heaven? Some say it’s by being like a child. Others say it’s by giving away all your money to the poor. What does the Bible really say about how to get to heaven? We’ll turn to the Gospel of Luke to find answers to those questions.

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we continue our study in Luke, investigating what the Bible says about how to enter God’s Kingdom.

Phil, the children’s song says that Jesus loves the little children. We normally think of kids when we hear that, but in reality the Bible speaks of all of us as children of God. What is it about children that we’re supposed to imitate?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, Mark, it’s a great thing to be a child of God. The point is not that we should be immature in our faith—in fact, in many places the Bible calls us to maturity in the Christian life—but we should be utterly dependent on God. That’s the way children are, particularly small children. They need their parents to clothe them, to feed them, to look after them, and children know that. They don’t have any trouble being dependent. For those of us who think that we can be more independent, we need to recognize our deep need for God. That’s what it means to have a childlike faith.

Guest (Male): Well, the second parable in the passage we’re studying today presents the rich young ruler, who claims that he had never broken any of the Ten Commandments. Is that really possible?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: Well, Mark, it’s not possible. It’s certainly not possible for me, but really not possible for anyone apart from Jesus himself. Because of our sinful nature, we all break all of the commandments of God. Even this rich young ruler, as we’ll find out, had broken the very first commandment: he had put his riches above God.

The commandments tell us not to do that; they say you shall have no other gods before me. As we consider his story today, Mark, we should ask ourselves, what is it that is keeping us from really following God wholeheartedly? Maybe it’ll be the same thing as the rich young ruler, maybe something different, but that’s a good question for all of us to ask.

Guest (Male): All right, well, thank you, Phil. Let’s turn in our Bible now to Luke chapter 18, verses 15 through 27, and listen together to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: My mother was out running errands when she heard a little voice from the back seat of our Pontiac Catalina singing a little song. "When will God take the sins away?" the song began. "He already took the sins away," he said to the other guy. The song continued, apparently an antiphonal, a conversation. And then the song continued: "He will stop your naughtiness. He will take your sins away. So please come to the safe, safe God."

The vocalist and songwriter was my little sister Nancy. She was three years old. What a wealth of sound doctrine may come from the heart of a child nourished on the grace of God. I’ve always been impressed with the important truths contained in Nancy’s little song. It showed the need for personal evangelism, for speaking to the "other guy" about the Christian faith. It showed the possibility of grace, that there was forgiveness for sinners.

It testified to the protective care of God, his preservation of the saints. Truly, out of the mouth of babes, our God has ordained his praise. And if only we too will come to him like little children, then we too will be received into the Kingdom of God. Now some people are inclined to underestimate children or perhaps even to think that children are less important than adults. Sadly, this was true of the first disciples.

The Gospel of Luke tells us—and let me encourage you to turn in your Bibles to Luke 18, verses 15 to 27—the writer tells us that they were bringing even infants to him, that is to say to Jesus, that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. Now I’m sure you can imagine the scene. Everyone knew that Jesus was a holy man and so some people wanted him to bless their children.

If only he would just put their hand on them, surely it would make some kind of difference in their lives. At first one person brought a little child to Jesus, but then everyone wanted to do it once they saw what had been done. This is the way parents are; they want the very best for their children. But of course, children do tend to be noisy, especially babies, which Luke tells us that people were bringing—it's a word for the very youngest of children—and so there must have been a good deal of commotion.

The disciples didn’t care for it. Maybe they weren’t all that fond of children to begin with. Maybe they were jealous of the attention that they were receiving. Maybe they were trying to preserve Jesus from all of the crowds surrounding him. Whatever the reasons, the disciples told people in no uncertain terms to stop bringing their children to Jesus. But Jesus gave a very different response.

He called them to himself, verse 16, saying, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God." With these words, Jesus rebuked the rebuking disciples and opened his arms to the littlest people in the kingdom of God. Now we can learn many things about Jesus himself just from this verse. We see how gentle he was; surely otherwise parents would not have brought them their littlest children.

We see how sympathetic he was. Rather than being severe with children like the disciples, Jesus invited them to climb right up onto his lap. What the children’s song says is true: Jesus loves the little children. They are precious in his sight. I say "loves" because Jesus loves little children as much today as he loved them on this occasion in the Gospels. He still issues his gracious invitation for the children to come to him and to receive his grace.

We are encouraged therefore to bring our children to Jesus. We do that by reading them stories from the Bible. We do that by calling them to repentance and faith in Jesus. We do that by praying with them so that they can learn to articulate the desires of their hearts to their Father in heaven. We do all of these things and we are called to do this with all of our children—to do it with the baby who is yet unborn, to do it with the child who is disabled, to do it with the child who seems to love to disobey. Jesus says, "Let the children come." Bring them to the Savior who loves them, who wants to bless them, and who says, "Let the children come to me."

May I also say I think we can find encouragement here to bring our children to Jesus for baptism. Sometimes people have used this passage as a proof for infant baptism. Well, there’s no sacrament here, so surely that interpretation is going too far. Yet what this passage does say certainly is in keeping with the biblical practice of welcoming children as members into the family of God, especially since it was on the basis of the faith of their parents that they were brought. Jesus wants to bless our children. In the new covenant, the sign of his blessing is the sacrament of Christian baptism.

Jesus welcomed the little children and he said, "To such belongs the kingdom of God." Shall they not then receive the outward sign of belonging to that kingdom? I know that there are some Christians who disagree with the practice of infant baptism as it is practiced in this church, but let me just say, if that’s your position, to consider carefully here the words that Jesus gives in verse 16: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them." I think one of the best ways to heed our Savior’s warning is to bring our children in faith to receive the sign of the gospel in Christian baptism.

Having done that, we are called to raise our children—all of the children of the church—to love and to serve the Lord. This is a corporate responsibility. Some people still think that children’s ministry somehow is secondary to the real work of the church, yet Jesus shows us here that nothing could be more important. Nothing could be more worthwhile than taking time to bless little children with the gospel.

A child who is won to Christ has a whole lifetime to work for the Kingdom of God. Generally speaking, you will find that most believers make their decision for Christ when they are still children. This is the time to make that commitment above all. Furthermore, most full-time Christian missionaries made that commitment as well when they were little children. How important then is the work of ministry to children. What the scripture says is true: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

There are many good reasons for bringing children to Jesus, including the rightful claim that they have on the blessing of God. Jesus says here, "To such belongs the kingdom of God." But you’ll notice as well that Jesus goes beyond that and says that we all need to be like little children ourselves if we would ever gain eternal life. He says, "Truly, I say to you," verse 17, "whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

Let me remind you that the kingdom of God is not a political principality; it is simply the rule of God. It’s everything that comes under the reign of his sovereign authority. I think here Jesus is using this phrase "kingdom of God" as a kind of shorthand for salvation and all of its blessings. To enter the kingdom of God is to have an everlasting, saving relationship with the God who rules the universe. Jesus says the only way to have that relationship is to come to him like a little child.

But what exactly does that mean? What does it mean to come to the kingdom like a child? Jesus is not saying that we need to return to some kind of childlike innocence, as if children were any less sinful than adults. No, Jesus knew that when it comes to having a sinful nature, children are no better and no worse than anyone else. We shouldn’t glamorize childhood, and Jesus isn’t doing that here. Nor is he saying that we should be childish, as if somehow immaturity were a virtue. And yet it remains the case that children, particularly small children, do have some important qualities that show us what it means to know God.

They have a wide-eyed wonder, something you may have seen if you’ve seen the film when Lucy Pevensie went through the wardrobe into Narnia and saw Narnia, a whole new kingdom in the snow. With wide-eyed wonder, she looked at what she could see. Well, that’s the way that God wants us to come to him. That’s the way he wants us to perceive his grace—with wonder and awe.

Children have full-minded faith; they generally believe what you tell them, at least when they are very little. As they get older, of course, they start to question everything you do. But at the beginning, really the kind of children Jesus was receiving here, the very littlest of children, they give you their total trust. God wants us to have the same kind of confidence in him.

Little children also have a wholehearted love. I saw this a month ago when Caroline and I spent four hours together at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. She had just learned how to walk and was eager to show that off. She went around the airport greeting strangers with arms open wide and a broad smile—ready to love and to be loved, which most people are, but not everyone is, as she discovered.

That’s the way that God wants us to come to him, with that same kind of affection. For to know him really is to love him. We cannot know God in any other way than this except with wide-eyed wonder and full-minded faith and wholehearted love like a little child. Yet when Jesus speaks here of little children coming into the kingdom, I think the most important word is "receive."

It is specifically our reception of the kingdom that requires us to be like little children. Because if there is one characteristic of children—especially babies like the ones people were bringing to Jesus—it is their total dependence on other people for what they need. Children come into the world utterly helpless. It takes years before a child is able to look after his or her own daily needs.

Parents have to dress their children and feed their children and change their children and hold their children and look after them in all kinds of ways. They have to do it day after day after day. And what do the children do? They simply receive that care. Babies are so needy in their dependency that all they can do is receive whatever food or clothing or protection that anyone offers.

You can see this if you graze the cheek of a nursing infant; immediately the child will turn and open his or her mouth and begin sucking and rooting. This is the way that a child receives; it takes everything in. It simply receives the gift of that loving care. You will never find an infant saying to a parent, "Oh, you shouldn’t have." No, they simply receive all the grace that is given to them.

This is the way that we must come to God if ever we would come into his kingdom. To enter, we need to receive. We must make to God a declaration of our dependence, offering him nothing except our need and hungrily receiving the grace that he gives to helpless sinners. We need to receive God with all of the needy dependence of a little child or else, Jesus says, we will not receive him at all.

Is there a better example in all of scripture than the rich young ruler who asked Jesus how he could enter the kingdom of God? You’ll notice that Luke calls the man a ruler—that's in verse 18—he was a leader in his local community. Later we learn in verse 23 that he was extremely rich. What this wealthy man wanted was to enter the kingdom of God. He asked, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Already the man’s off on the wrong track, isn’t he? For starters, he’s thinking of salvation as something he could gain by what he does. "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" as if the grace of God would come as the reward he deserved for his own obedience. There was a man who worked hard for everything in life. He expected to pay full price even for his salvation. Jesus then rebukes the man for the manner of his address.

He’s off on the wrong track with Jesus as well. He calls him "Good Teacher," which was true enough—I mean, Jesus wasn’t denying that—but Jesus says to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." Jesus wanted the man to see that he was more than just a good teacher; he was also the Son of God. Don’t think here that Jesus is somehow denying his deity. He’s affirming it because he’s pressing the ruler to follow his logic to its conclusion.

The first premise is the one that he has already granted, that Jesus is good. The second premise is that God alone is perfectly good; that’s the plain teaching of scripture. You could read about that in the Old Testament. On the basis of these two premises, the conclusion therefore follows: Jesus is not just good, he is also God. Jesus then was making a claim on the man’s life; he has to come to him acknowledging his divine authority.

Having said that, Jesus still had this question to answer: what did the man have to do to be saved? Well, if you want to be saved by doing—I mean, if that’s the way you want to come to God, if that’s the way you’re expecting salvation—the answer is that you have to do every last one of God’s commandments. Jesus said, "You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother."

In other words, if you want to be saved by doing, just keep the Ten Commandments. Jesus only mentions five of them here, but really he’s saying that they all have to be kept. If we do not come to God ready to receive grace like a little child, well, then we will need to be saved by keeping the law. But that demands our total perfection. In his own humble opinion, the ruler was pretty sure that he had met that standard.

He said, "All these I have kept from my youth." That’s his claim in verse 21. He seems to be a little bit miffed that Jesus would give him such an obvious answer. "The Ten Commandments, is that all there is to it? I’ve been doing those all my life. Everybody knows about those." Well, that response is as common today as it was then. Many people thinking these days of the Ten Commandments as a short list of bad sins that they almost never commit.

Therefore, if you think of the Ten Commandments that way, you might be encouraged to think that you’re able to keep God’s law, or maybe at least to keep it well enough to impress God enough to get into heaven. Let me say that anyone who thinks that way has a completely wrong understanding of what God requires. In response to what the ruler said here, J.C. Ryle had the following disparaging remark:

He said, "An answer more full of darkness and self-ignorance it is impossible to conceive. He who made it could have known nothing rightly either about himself or God or God’s law." The truth is that God is holy and that he demands holiness. The truth about his law is that it requires exact obedience. The Ten Commandments are stated very simply. I was doing a radio interview this week, and the interviewer was remarking, "Oh, these are very simple commandments, aren’t they?"

In a way, they are; they’re stated very simply. But you’ll find that they’re not that easy to keep. Every one of those commandments stands for a whole category of behavior. So if you think you can keep the seventh commandment just by not committing adultery in the technical sense, understand it’s broken with every lustful thought, with every gaze at pornography. Each commandment has a positive side and a negative side.

That makes them more difficult to follow as well. When Jesus tells you not to steal, he’s not just telling you not to do something; he’s also telling you to do something: he’s telling you to work hard so that you will have something to give to others. That’s the meaning of the commandment. Of course, the commandment rules your heart as well as your actions.

When Jesus said if you hate someone, you’re really thinking murderous thoughts, you’re breaking the sixth commandment. They’re not that easy to keep when you understand their full implication. If that is the case, do you really think that this young man had kept all ten of the commandments? Had he never said anything that wasn’t completely true? Or cherished an idol in his heart? Or failed to show full respect for his parents?

The real question is not about his own obedience, but about yours and about mine. Have we really done the law or not? Well, I think rather than saying, "All these I have kept from my youth," it would be better for us to go back up to verse 13 and pray the publican’s prayer: "God, be merciful to me, the sinner." Now, the way that Jesus responded to this man’s outlandish claim of saving obedience was by giving him a very simple test.

The logic of it goes something like this: if the man was keeping the law of God, then of course he must have been keeping the very first commandment, which says you shall have no other gods before me. So let’s just test that. Was God really first in his life, or was something else getting in the way? Jesus said to him, "One thing you lack," verse 22, "Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

Jesus was not saying here that we can win our way to heaven simply by giving away all our wealth. If he had said that, then we still would be saved by a work—a work of generosity—and not saved by grace through faith. No, he’s not changing the requirement for salvation. That’s not selling our possessions; the requirement for salvation is putting our faith in Jesus Christ.

But what Jesus was doing was identifying that one area of the ruler’s life where he refused to let God be God. Oh, he was trying to keep some of the commandments, maybe with some success, but he was unwilling to give up his standard of living for the glory of God. Here was a man who wanted the good life more than he wanted eternal life. This is what was keeping him from following Jesus, and so Jesus told him to just give it all away.

He needed to eliminate everything that was keeping him from giving his life to Jesus, and in his case that meant giving away everything he had. It is true that Jesus was speaking most specifically to the ruler himself and not to anyone else, but I wonder, why do you suppose it is that we always want to put that kind of qualifier on this verse? Why do we want to insist that Jesus does not command all Christians everywhere to sell all that they have?

Why is it that we secretly hope that Jesus won't tell us to do that but will tell us to do something else instead? Could it be because we are unable to pass the same simple test? If you had to sell everything you had to inherit eternal life, would you be able to do it? Can you demonstrate that that’s really true from what you actually do with the possessions that you do have? If not, then aren’t you in the same kind of spiritual trouble that this man was in?

We need to ask ourselves those questions because many people are mastered by the love of money. Not so much the love of the money itself, but all the things it can do: the friendship and the pleasure and the security that people think it will buy. People who have many possessions, like nearly all of us, tend to be very self-reliant. They’re the opposite of the kind of little children that Jesus was talking about, little children who have a sense of need and dependency and just receive things.

Rather than receiving God and all of his grace, people in love with their possessions are grabbing all that they can for themselves. They have too much treasure on earth to lay up treasure in heaven, and they are in danger of being lost forever. But you know, money is not the only thing that keeps people away from the Kingdom of God. Sometimes, like that proverbial monkey caught in the trap because he won’t let go of the coconut, there are other things that people refuse to let go.

Many people, J.C. Ryle says, are ready to give up everything for Christ’s sake except one darling sin. And for the sake of that sin, are lost forevermore. For some people, that darling sin is a self-destructive romance or lifestyle choice. For others, it is some body-wasting addiction or maybe a craving for worldly popularity and then a willingness to do everything it takes to be popular like that.

Still others refuse to give up control of their own lives. For a long time, this is what kept C.S. Lewis from coming to Christ. He didn’t want to give up sovereignty over his own life; most people don’t. We prefer to be the god of our own lives. This was the objection Lewis had to Christianity: he wanted to be his own ultimate authority.

But in Christianity, there was, he said, no region, even in the innermost depth of one’s soul, which one could surround with a barbed-wire fence and guard with a notice that said "No admittance." "And that was what I wanted: some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.'" Well, as long as you say that, you will never follow Jesus, you will never enter the kingdom of God.

Sadly, that’s what the ruler did. When Jesus told him to sell his possessions, he heard these things, we see in verse 23, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. When the man left with such a heavy heart, we could hardly be hopeful about his salvation. For the love of money, he walked away from the Kingdom of God. He didn’t come with helpless childlike dependence but insisted on going his own way in life.

So let me ask you, is there anything that you love that is keeping you away from God? Is there any sin that you won’t renounce? Any relationship you won’t release? Any earthly treasure that you are unwilling to relinquish in order to follow after Jesus? How sad it is if that were the case, if there’s something in life that’s keeping you from entering the Kingdom of God.

Sad for you certainly, but maybe also for Jesus because we see here how sad he was when this man walked away. Jesus looked at him with sadness, we read in verse 24. And he said, "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God."

Some commentators have tried to diminish the force of this statement by saying that when Jesus said camel, he didn’t really mean camel. One popular story is told about a gate in Jerusalem, the so-called Needle Gate, that was too small for camels and that therefore a trader had to unload his animal before he was able to bring his possessions into the city. It’s a very interesting suggestion that makes for a good story; as far as I have been able to tell, there’s no evidence for it at all.

Besides, I think it’s really missing the point. Jesus is saying here how hard it is for rich people to get saved. Not that you can do it some way by finding a way to manage it in your own situation. No, humanly speaking, it’s impossible. Jesus takes the biggest animal that anyone in those parts really had ever seen and imagines trying to stuff it through the eye of a needle.

The people who were listening got the point, I can assure you, because they couldn’t believe what Jesus was saying. Notice their question in verse 26: "Then who can be saved?" I mean, if it’s impossible for rich people to enter the kingdom, how can anyone be saved at all? People in those days believed in a kind of prosperity gospel—the richer you were, the more likely you were to get to heaven. If Jesus was right that it was hard for rich people, maybe even impossible for them, then what hope was there for anyone?

In a way, those people were right. Not because salvation is based on how much money you make—there’s nothing about that in the Bible—but because it’s impossible for anyone to be saved. Impossible, that is, without the powerful saving grace of God. Rather than denying the difficulty here, Jesus goes on and he agrees with them that it is impossible, but then he went on to say that it is possible for God.

"What is impossible with men is possible with God." It’s practically a miracle when somebody rich comes to Christ because that requires them divesting themselves of their own independence and starting to trust in God for their salvation. But if you think it’s impossible, all you need to do is look at what happens in the scriptures. God has saved many wealthy men: think of Abraham, or David, or Boaz, or Job—those wealthy men from the Old Testament.

Jesus is right: what is impossible with men is possible with God. On the basis of the atoning death of Jesus Christ, by the grace of the Holy Spirit with his powerful inward work of transformation, God is able to save even the richest sinners, granting them the gifts of faith and repentance. He is the God of the possible. Jesus is telling us here, particularly in the context of salvation, this is what God is able to do that people are not able to do for themselves.

What encouragement that gives to us as we think about the possibility of salvation. Perhaps you yourself are sometimes tempted to doubt whether God could really save a person like you. But Jesus is saying here it’s possible; it’s not possible for you, but it is possible for him. Don’t despair of anyone else’s salvation either because God can change the hardest heart of even the wealthiest sinner.

The way to pray for this saving grace is the way that one very wealthy man prayed with some very small children in his Bible classes. I’m sure you’ve heard of the man; his name was John Wanamaker. He was a very wealthy man, one of Philadelphia’s most eminent citizens, the inventor of the department store, builder of churches, giver of millions of dollars to Christian work.

You may perhaps not know this, that he established an independent Sunday school where each week he proclaimed the gospel to 5,000 children. This is the way that John Wanamaker began to lead the children in prayer. It’s a prayer for every little child in the kingdom of God. It’s a prayer for every wealthy sinner who comes to God with childlike faith.

If you make this kind of prayer, you yourself can enter the kingdom of God. Here’s how Wanamaker prayed: He said, "We will make heart room for Jesus, the name to sinners most dear. We will live in the grace of his redeeming life because our only hope is the finished salvation of Calvary. Empty-handed, full of sin, and sad of heart, we cast ourselves at thy feet, O Christ."

Then he ended his prayer by saying, in the words here of Luke 18, "God be merciful to me a sinner." This is the way that all God’s children should pray. I say "children" because there are no adults in the kingdom of God, only children. You can read through the whole Bible; you won’t find the Bible talking about the adults of God. It’s always the children of God. You too can be a child of God if only you will come to him in needy dependency to receive his grace through faith.

Father, we come to you now to receive that grace. We call you Father and come to you in the name of Jesus, saying there is nothing that we can give to you for our salvation; we can only receive. We pray that you would give us your grace in Jesus’ name, amen.

Guest (Male): You’re listening to Every Last Word with Bible teacher Dr. Philip Ryken, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance exists to promote a biblical understanding and worldview. Drawing upon the insight and wisdom of reformed theologians from decades and even centuries gone by, we seek to provide Christian teaching that will equip believers to understand and meet the challenges and opportunities of our time and place.

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