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An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Lectures
Well, good morning, church. It's so good to be with you all here this morning. How's everyone doing?
Okay. Good morning. It's great to be here with you. My name is Jacob Nanny. I serve as the
pastoral resident at our Shawnee campus, and it's just an honor and privilege to be with you all
here this morning. I know it's earlier in the morning, and it's a Sunday, but I want to start
with a hard question. What would you give? What would you give up for eternal life? What would
you give for eternal life? And by eternal life, let me tell you what I do and do not mean. What I
don't mean is a really long, immortal life. A long, immortal life is not what I mean. A life that lacks
decay is a watered-down version of what eternal life actually is. And we've been chasing down this
watered-down version for quite some time.
I have in mind things like the
Fountain of Youth. The Fountain of Youth
is an ancient legend that's a
spring with waters that could restore
you to your youth.
It's a timeless symbol of our
longing to live forever,
to escape the decay
of age. Or how about the medieval quest for
the Holy Grail? The Knights of the Round Table
searching for this cup that once
you have it and drink from it, you
have a mortal life.
A cup
that offered you a mortal life.
We've always chased these things,
and today we chase them through science and technology.
People such as Brian Johnson are working towards
becoming the first generation of humans
to reverse aging and also avoid death altogether.
Work out this amount every day,
eat this specific amount of calories,
get this much sunlight,
all these things to reverse aging and try to avoid death.
Or people are creating artificial organs
to replace their existing organs.
In fact, some world leaders were recently caught discussing this on a hot mic.
You know you can replace your organs and live like 150 years?
With each passing year, it seems like we're getting closer and closer
to our own form of a fountain of youth or a holy grail.
At least for those who are super rich, right?
They're getting closer to this, it seems.
But again, that's a watered-down version of eternal life.
Eternal life is something much more than the lack of physical decay.
It's much more than living a very long life.
I mean, who wants to live a very long life anyways?
Like, stay in this body with all its aches and pains forever?
No, thanks.
No, I don't want immortal life.
I want eternal life.
And my question for you is not what would you do to have immortal life?
It's what would you do to have eternal life?
So what do I mean by eternal life?
Well, I mean what Jesus says in John 17, 3.
He says, this is eternal life,
that they may know you, the only true God,
and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.
I mean a life where forever we will live
and be intimately known by the Father,
by the Son, and by the Spirit.
A life where though, through that intimate union,
we will never experience sickness,
or death, or decay, or whatever else sin, death, and the devil ails us with in this life.
And friends, here's the amazing thing about that eternal life,
is that you can have that and experience that right now.
Because Jesus rewards those who humbly depend on God.
And he rewards those dependent on God with eternal life,
a life that is wholly dependent on God.
Jesus gives those people eternal life.
And he gives it so richly to us that we can taste and see it even on this side of death,
even on this side of glory.
And when we see that throughout the Gospel of Mark,
the disciples often experience eternal life on this earth.
They operate with that eternal life, and they get to see four tastes of it.
We see that in Mark 6.13, and this verse always gets me,
because Mark just kind of reads through nonchalantly,
When you get to this verse, they drove out many demons, anointed many sick people with oil, and healed them.
Like, no big deal.
The disciples are just doing eternal life things as their daily business.
It's through their humble dependence on God that they can offer wholeness and healing to the broken.
And that they get to taste and see it as well.
And when they lose that thread of humble dependence, they're no longer able to do those acts.
A couple weeks ago we went through Mark chapter 9 where Jesus comes down from the mount of transfiguration
and he comes into this troublesome scene of people debating with his disciples,
his father who has a boy that is even possessed, upset that the disciples can't cast out this demon.
And why couldn't they?
Because they didn't depend on God.
And Jesus points them back to prayerful dependence on God.
He's been teaching them that this humble dependence on him is essential to discipleship.
And he's been teaching them this dependence for some time.
He's been teaching what we call upside-down values of the kingdom of God.
And we've been seeing this as we've been journeying with Jesus through this gospel.
Upside-down values of the kingdom.
You have to give up your life to keep it.
You have to be last to be first.
These are acts of humble dependence on God.
And Jesus is teaching us that he rewards those who act in this way.
He rewards those who are humbly dependent on him in this way of discipleship.
But there are things that get in the way of that path of discipleship.
There are things that get in the way of us having and enjoying and tasting and seeing eternal life even now.
And one of the things that gets in the way of our dependence on God,
that keeps us from that rich, eternal life experienced and seen,
is our own wealth and possessions.
That's what we see in our passage this morning.
We see a man who came to Jesus, he knelt down before him and asked him,
good teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?
Last week we learned about the Pharisees who came to Jesus with a nefarious question,
with prideful hearts trying to trap and test Jesus.
That's not this man.
This man comes genuinely wanting to know
how he can have eternal life.
He kneels before Jesus
rather than stands pridefully before him.
He equates him with God
rather than doubting his status as God.
He humbly bows before Jesus
and calls him a good teacher.
And he asks a true question.
But Jesus, notice Jesus does not respond to his question.
Not at first.
First, in verse 17, it says,
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt before him, and asked him,
Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Why do you call me good?
Jesus asked.
No one is good except God alone.
See, Jesus, in the way this man approaches him,
in the way he asks him, in the phrasing he asks him,
Jesus already sees the dissonance in this man's heart.
And so he first asks him, why do you call me good?
Only God is good.
In other words, the subtext here is Jesus saying,
are you equating me with God?
And he points him back to God as a source of all good.
You can't do anything good to inherit eternal life.
Only God is good.
Scholar Sharon Dowd says,
Jesus' rhetorical question in response to the man's address
says in effect that since being good is not a human possibility,
being good is not a human possibility,
the man may as well give up his ambitions in that regard
before the conversation even begins.
Only God can do good.
But next, Jesus points this man to the Torah, the Old Testament,
the law that this good God has given his people.
He says, only God is good.
And he replies to, in verse 19, you know the commandments.
Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal,
do not bear false witness, do not defraud.
Honor your father and mother.
And this man replied back to Jesus,
Teacher, I've kept all of these from my youth.
You know, prior to the first advent of Jesus,
the way to be righteous was to follow the Torah,
to follow God's law, to follow the Bible.
And this man is claiming that he's done that from his youth.
He's kept the path of righteousness from his youth.
And he probably has.
He probably has.
It's not abnormal in this day for people to keep the law.
On the surface, right, we know that to be angry at someone is just as bad as murder in Jesus' eyes.
But this man probably kept the outward-facing law.
It was common.
In fact, some scholars say that that a person possessed the ability, without exception,
to fulfill God's commandments was so firmly rooted in rabbinic teaching
that in all seriousness, they spoke of people who had kept the entire Torah from A to Z.
They believed that you could do this, keep the law.
And he may have kept all those commandments from his youth.
But that claim, paired with the way he approaches Jesus and the question that he asks,
tells us that he did not have confidence in his Torah-keeping abilities.
He did not have confidence that him keeping the Torah, keeping the law of God, would do anything for him.
If he was confident in that, and that that was the way to eternal life,
he would have never asked the question.
He knows that something is missing.
Something is missing.
Look at verse 21.
Looking at him, Jesus loved him
and said to him, you lack one thing.
Go sell all you have and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven.
You will have treasure in heaven.
And then come, follow me.
But he was dismayed by this demand.
And he went to by grieving because he had many possessions.
This man who was first in Torah keeping, first in righteousness, first in wealth,
was last in humble dependence on God.
How do we know this?
by the way he responds to Jesus' encouragement and instruction
to come and have the good eternal life.
Jesus instructs him to sell all that he has and follow him,
but this man leaves dismayed because of his wealth and reputation of righteousness.
This man misses that the nexus of righteousness,
the center of righteousness, is no longer Torah, but is Jesus.
Being yoked to Jesus is the path to eternal life.
Being yoked to Jesus is the path to a good life.
But he can't do it.
I mean, he wants the path to eternal life.
He wants to know how to have this.
And when Jesus gives him the answer, he's dismayed because he can't do it.
Even though Jesus lovingly encourages him to, he can't.
Did you catch Jesus' posture in this verse?
Verse 21 again.
Looking at him, Jesus loved him.
And said to him, you lack one thing.
Go and sell all you have and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven.
Then come, follow me.
But he was dismayed by this
because of all the possessions that he had.
Jesus is lovingly inviting this man
to come and follow him on a path of righteousness,
on a path to eternal life.
It's loving, it's gentle, it's joyous,
it's exciting celebration, it's an invitation.
It's as if he's saying, you've kept the law your whole life,
you're blessed with wealth, those are good things,
just do one more good thing,
and give to the poor and come follow me.
This is not Jesus being cold-hearted,
this is Jesus being loving,
giving this man the path to eternal life.
And you have to wonder in this exchange,
did this man ever look back up at Jesus?
Or did upon hearing Jesus' words,
did he just look at the dirt in dismay?
Looking at him, Jesus loved him.
Did he miss that invitation?
Did he miss looking up into the eyes of his Savior,
who is gently, patiently, joyously inviting him to have a good life?
Jesus, with gentle eyes and an outstretched hand,
inviting him to have eternal life, did he miss that?
My question for you is, are you missing that?
Are you missing that same invitation?
Maybe you're coming to Jesus and saying,
Jesus, I go to church, I tithe, I live a moral life,
I serve at my local church.
What must I do to have eternal life?
Are you then looking at Jesus and accepting his gracious invitation
as he tells you to give up the one thing that you treasure
so that you can follow him?
The man in our story refuses to follow Jesus
because of his wealth and possessions.
In fact, he's the only one in the entire Gospel of Mark
who does not follow Jesus' invitation to a good life.
Why? Because he's unable.
He's unable to relinquish what he has.
And rather than humbly depend on God for eternal life,
he's relying on his own wealth and possessions.
Friends, that's not the way of Jesus.
This is not the way to eternal life.
Disciples of Christ don't hold their power and possessions
with a closed fist.
In fact, that's the biggest lie we tell ourselves,
is that because of our power and possessions,
we are in control.
But we're not.
We are not in control, despite what we might feel.
We need to recognize that we have no control
and that we are to approach God like little children.
Jesus actually talks about this in verses prior
to what was read this morning.
In verse 14, he says,
Let the little children come to me.
Don't stop them.
Because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child
will never enter it.
Like little children, we are powerless.
We lack control.
my children, we should come to God and depend on the one who has all control.
However, often we're obsessed with control. We want to be in control. And this is what the
disciples wanted too. Sharon Dowd says again that the disciples were obsessed with being in control.
Who is the greatest? They want to know. They think they can control that.
Who is authorized to exercise? They think they know. They think they can control that.
Who can have access to Jesus?
They think they can control that.
They are not prepared to welcome the imminent reign of God that Jesus announces
because they cannot control it.
It is, after all, God's reign.
Do you ever feel that way?
I mean, it might be hard to admit, but do you feel the way the disciples do?
Do you ever struggle to let go of control and humbly depend on God?
I know I do.
I would be just like them, controlling who has access to Jesus
and who can do ministry with us and who can't.
I know I feel that way.
And what I need are subtle reminders
that I'm not in control.
I'm powerless in this world without God.
You know, I got a lot of those reminders
in the job that I had prior to moving here
to be at Christ Community in Kansas.
For eight years before this,
I farmed almonds in California.
That's my one interesting fact for the day.
And in farming, you work a lot with really powerful implements, really powerful implements,
and you never really think about how powerful they are.
You can't just go about your day driving these massive tractors, and then things break.
And then you really realize how much you lack control.
More than once, I was humbled by the side of a broken tractor pin.
Now, I think that's almost an inch thick bolt.
It might be grade 8.
I don't mean to bore you with farm facts right now.
But if it is, that takes 90,000 pounds of pressure over an inch for that to snap that way.
That's called shear.
It didn't bend.
It didn't pull apart.
It snapped clean in half.
90,000 pounds.
So when you're driving a tractor and you hear a clunk and you get out and you see that
and know that it takes tens of thousands of pounds to snap something like that,
It's a visceral reminder that there are forces that I cannot control.
I think I have control because I control how fast the tractor goes,
when it goes, when it stops.
But I can't control 90,000 pounds of force over an inch.
And just like that pin, our own lives often feel sturdy and in our control.
We go about our way and things don't tend to break that often,
but when they do, they break, don't they?
When the forces of life snap our plans,
They snap our possessions.
They snap our reputation.
We realize we were never the ones holding all these things together, don't we?
That's the biggest lie we tell ourselves.
Even though we experience that, we still tell ourselves, once we recover, I'm in control.
I've had a lot of humbling moments like that tractor pin.
But the most profound reminder for me has not been in farming.
It's been in my wife and I's move here to Kansas City.
I'm from California. Christina, she's half from here and half from California.
And early on in marriage, she expressed a desire to move to Kansas, to which I firmly said, no way.
What is in Kansas anyways? There's nothing out there.
I was initially resistant. I liked my job. I liked my church community.
I liked the house that wasn't mine, but I was living in. Life is good here.
But over time, my desire softened, and despite my fears of moving, I wanted to move.
But I had a lot of fears. We had a lot of fears.
Are we going to make enough money? Where are we going to live?
Will we find the right church community?
I mean, that's important to us. Will we find the right church community?
In fact, one of Christina's concerns was, would I ever preach again if we moved?
I'm leaving God's community where I get to serve people, his people.
Will I get to do that again if we move?
We have these fears, and so for five years, we did not move.
For five years, I said, this is more comfortable.
I have control over this.
I have this job.
I have this place to live in.
I'm not doing any of that.
But my desire grew and grew to a point where I had an extreme desire to move.
And so January 1st, last year, 2024, I made a resolution.
I said, by July 1st of 2024, I want to live in Kansas City, in Kansas.
Job or no job, we're moving.
I had enough of my own fear.
I will figure it out.
We will figure it out.
You notice the I and the we there and the lack of dependence on God.
I was pridefully depending on my own power to make this move.
But despite that pride, God led me to prayer.
And I prayed with specificity, God, I want to move to Kansas on July 1st.
God, show me what I need to do to move to Kansas on July 1st.
God, give us, give me signs that this is a move for us to be in Kansas on July 1st.
And the more that desire grew and the more I prayed, the more I realized my lack of control, my need for God.
Then one fateful week, March 2024, I will never forget it.
I had the worst case of strep throat ever.
I could do nothing else but lay in bed.
So I hopped on the computer.
I looked up on the EFCA website, churches in Overland Park.
Because a month later, we were visiting my sister-in-law and brother-in-law in Overland Park.
And I found Christ Community.
I found someone pointing me to the pastoral residency.
And I'm like, this is a scam.
This is not real.
You're going to pay me for two years to train me to be a pastor.
We'll see.
But I looked into it.
And I came to find an awesome program.
and it would allow me the opportunity to serve the local church, even preach.
And Christina and I realized how dependent we are.
We couldn't have found the opportunity.
God had to bring it to us.
God had to orchestrate that.
Only he could have presented us with that.
And so we humbly depended on him and followed him and took steps in faith.
And check this out.
We live now one block from my sister-in-law and brother-in-law.
A desire that my wife had for many, many years.
God has blessed us financially with more than we asked for.
We have you in an outstanding church community.
Christ community is a rich blessing to me and Christina.
I've been given an abundance of opportunities to preach.
The website says you preach twice a year.
And I was like, that's great.
This is sermon number 20 for me.
Most of them are the hard ones Paul doesn't want to preach at Shawnee campus, so he gives them to me.
And here's the most amazing thing of all to me.
I started my job here with Christ Community on July 1st of 2024.
I couldn't do that.
I couldn't say yes to hiring me, even though I would have loved to.
That's all out of my control.
I can't place us in this apartment near my family.
I can't ask for this amount of money.
I can't make me have an outstanding church community.
That was all God.
These are things that are outside of our control.
But through the process, we learned to depend on God.
And we learned we can expect things from God when we depend on him.
I was and remained stunned at his grace and provision and his timing.
And it's that experience that taught me
how to defeat the lie that we all tell ourselves.
That we are in control.
We're not in control.
That is a lie that is not the way of Jesus.
That's not the way of discipleship.
Instead, disciples of Christ humbly depend on God.
But here's the problem with that.
What enables that big lie?
We tell ourselves that lie, whether functionally or actually, but what enables that?
How do we get there?
How do we keep telling ourselves that lie?
What's our power and possessions, our materials, and our wealth?
In fact, our wealth tells us three dangerous lies that keep us from living a life dependent on God.
And the first lie is this.
I must be doing something good, or I must be good if I'm blessed with this much.
this is a lie of both ancient and modern prosperity preaching,
that if you want to be blessed, if you are blessed, actually,
when you have wealth and possessions,
and the more wealth and possessions you have, the more blessed you are,
that's a lie.
That is not true.
They believe it in Jesus' time, and people believe it today.
You must be doing something right if you have such wealth, right?
In fact, this belief is so deeply embedded in our culture
and the culture of Jesus' day,
that the disciples respond this way in verse 23.
He looked around and said to his disciples,
how hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God.
The disciples were astonished.
After a long, awkward pause, again,
Jesus said, children, how hard it is
to enter the kingdom of God.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
and for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.
They were even more astonished
saying to one another,
then who can be saved?
Culture tells us back then and now
that wealth is a blessing from God.
So if the wealthy have a hard time
inheriting this eternal life,
what about those of us who don't have wealth?
Can God save us?
But that wealth is a strict blessing
from God is a lie. Does God bless people with wealth? Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that
everyone here is blessed with wealth because even the poorest in America are more wealthy
than the first century Jew could ever imagine. God has blessed you with wealth today.
But whether or not you have that wealth, that's not a scale of God's blessing. If you have no
wealth, that's not a sign of God's divine blessing being withheld from you. Don't believe the lie
that you're good, or you're doing good, or you're blessed because you have some possessions.
That's a lie. And when we believe that lie, we tell ourselves a second. My abundance isn't a big
deal. It's just a world that I live in. We lie to ourselves often telling ourselves that we're not
greedy. You are. Why? Because there's always someone else to point to. There's always someone
else that's more wealthy and can do far more than I can with their wealth.
There's always someone else to point to.
We simply have a hard time seeing our greed.
We're willing to recognize it in others. We're actually willing to recognize a whole
host of our sins. Just not this one.
Not my possessions. Not my wealth. Tim Keller experienced this
firsthand when he taught about the seven deadly sins in his local church.
He says, my wife Kathy told me, I'll bet that the week you deal with greed will be the lowest in attendance.
She was right.
People packed it out for lust and wrath and even for pride, but nobody thinks they're greedy.
As a pastor, I've had people come to me and confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin.
Almost.
I cannot recall anyone ever coming to me and saying, I spend too much money on myself.
I think my greedy lust for money is harming my family, my soul, and the people around me.
Greed hides itself from the victim.
The money God's modus operandi includes blindness to your own heart.
We're blind to our greed.
And this blindness does not just apply to money, it applies to every other thing in life.
The lie of self-sufficiency can hide in other places too.
For me, it hides in my health or lack thereof.
Last year, I was diagnosed with an extremely mild form of an autoimmune disorder.
It's very mild, but sometimes it's very painful.
Incredibly painful, actually.
In fact, pain is a little bit of an understatement sometimes.
Sometimes it's pain that brings me to my knees
and makes me literally cry to God for help.
I realize in the depths of that pain that I can't do anything.
It can get so bad that I can't sleep, I can't walk, I can't read words on a page,
I can't speak, and without the grace of God, I can't do anything.
And it's there that I learn this humble dependence, but what happens when I get healthy again?
When that flare-up goes away and I feel great?
When I'm humble on God, I can ask God in prayer to heal me, and he does, but then I get healthy again,
And all that's out the window.
I don't really need God that much.
I mean, I'm healthy now, right?
The amount of health I have isn't that big of a deal.
I don't need to depend on God because I have this health, right?
Now I'm pain-free now.
I don't need to adjust my lifestyle.
I don't need to adjust my eating.
I can still have, you know, three or four or ten pieces of the apple pie my wife baked.
I don't really need God that much when I'm healthy is what I functionally tell myself.
I hide in the own abundance of my health,
because most of the time I am healthy.
I hide there.
I'm blind to that.
I'm blind to my need to depend on God.
And that spiritual blindness
leads to the third and most dangerous lie of all,
that our wealth, that our abundance tells us.
Our wealth and our abundance tells us
that Jesus' words to this man in Mark 10
are not for me.
We hear him telling this man to sell everything he has and give to the poor
and think, that's not for me.
And you know what? You're right.
Jesus is not telling every human in existence to sell all they have and give to the poor.
That's not his command here.
But he is confronting idols.
And he is revealing hearts.
And he is asking you to give up something.
And your reaction to Jesus' words here
reveal exactly what your heart desires.
R.T. France has some incredibly challenging words about this.
Here's what he says.
That Jesus did not command all his followers
to sell all their possessions
gives comfort only to the kind of people
whom he would issue that command.
If hearing that Jesus does not command everyone
to give up their possessions
makes you breathe a big sigh of relief,
he might be revealing something to you.
He might be telling you something.
He might be telling you that your heart values
wealth and possession too much.
Friends, disciples of Christ don't depend
on their wealth and possessions.
They don't depend on their abundance,
whatever that abundance might look like.
And if you do depend on those things,
I think Jesus' words here are for you.
maybe you should sell all you have and give to the poor.
I, the preacher, can't make that decision for you.
I can't tell you that is definitely what you need to do.
But Jesus can.
And Jesus might call you to that life.
But that Jesus compassionately reveals to us
our own heart is our biggest hope.
Our wealth is our biggest lie,
but Jesus' compassion to reveal to us our heart
is our biggest hope.
Remember his instruction and his posture
in approaching this young man
and answering this young man.
Looking at him, Jesus loves him.
This is not some random emotion that Jesus had.
He had loved this man in the way that he looked at him,
in the way he instructed him,
and in the way that he invited him to have a good life.
Often we approach God thinking, knowing that our hearts need adjusting,
and we think God's going to come down on us with a cold steel hammer of wrath and justice.
But Jesus, his invitation is not one of cold-hearted, angry, shameful scolding.
Rather, it's loving, joyous, celebratory invitation to have relationship with him and his father,
to have eternal life.
And he gives us those hard instructions,
and those hard instructions are a blessing to us
because he loves us.
Our biggest hope is that compassion of Jesus.
And it's because of his compassion
that we don't have to respond like that young man,
like the world, or even like the disciples.
Remember, they're living in a period,
and even our day today,
where wealth meant you were blessed
by the good Lord himself.
so if someone blessed by God
is going to have a hard time
getting into the kingdom,
what about me?
And so the response, again,
is astonishment.
Twice our text says
they were astonished
at Jesus' words.
Look at verse 26.
They were even more astonished,
saying to one another,
then who can be saved?
Looking at them,
Jesus said,
With man, it is impossible.
You cannot be saved in your own power, but not with God,
because all things are possible with God.
Peter began to tell him, look, we left everything and followed you.
Peter's saying, what about us, Jesus?
This guy was rich.
This guy was righteous.
And he can't get into the kingdom.
He's having a hard time getting into the kingdom.
What about us?
We've done what he could not, Peter's saying.
Peter's saying, we've left all we have and followed you.
What is our reward, Jesus?
And our question is not much different, is it?
When I hear Jesus' words, I think the same thing.
What about me?
What's my reward?
What about my situation?
And in verse 29, Jesus answers it.
He says, truly I tell you,
There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or fields for my sake
and for the sake of the gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more.
Now at this time, that's eternal life tasted
and seen here on earth and eternal life in the age to come.
What's your reward?
If you are humbly dependent on God, it's eternal life.
And the reward that we will have is more than any wealth or possession
or power that you and I could ever imagine, and it's life with God.
Life with God is more rich than those things ever will be.
It's more fulfilling.
And it can fill us even here and now, as well as when we pass through death
into glory with the Father and the Son.
The reward you receive when you are humbly dependent on God is eternal life.
And what is eternal life?
Again, John 17, 3.
This is eternal life, that they may know the only true God and the one you have sent, Jesus.
Eternal life is knowing intimately God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
And friends, you can have this eternal life right now.
So here are a few practical steps that we can take to overcome
these lies that culture and ourselves tell us.
The lies of possession and wealth.
Steps we can overcome to experience eternal life in the Son of God.
First, give up your heart to Jesus.
Remember the man in our story.
Despite sincerely wanting eternal life, he left grieving because he could not give up something that was in his heart that was not Jesus.
He could not place Jesus on the throne of his heart.
What's sitting on the throne of your heart?
What are you holding on to?
One good diagnostic way to look at this is a quote by Albert Schweitzer who said,
if you have something you can't give away, you don't own it, it owns you.
Are there things in your life that you cannot give away?
Start there.
That thing that you can't give away,
that thing is taking the place of Jesus in your heart,
and you need to give it up.
Give up things that hold your heart.
And doing that is an act of dependence.
It's not discipline.
It's an act of dependence.
This is why Jesus was referring to little children.
They are dependent.
Be like that.
give up your heart to Jesus.
And the second thing that I would encourage you to do
is give up more than you can spare.
And some of you, when I said that just now,
thought of something that you don't want to give up.
Some of you hear that and you clutch your pearls
or your wallet,
or you look at your watch saying,
I can't give more time.
You kind of think of that email
that maybe Gabe sent you to invite you to serve.
We have a service day, October 12th.
you can give there.
Give that up.
Your money, maybe your time,
maybe your talents,
maybe your treasures,
whatever it is you're holding on to,
give that and give more of it
than you can spare.
Give generously.
Finally, I encourage you
to give your life in pursuit of Jesus.
Give everything you have in pursuit of him.
You have nothing to lose.
This reminds me of that Nike commercial
that's been airing recently.
Some of you may have seen it.
It's a bunch of slow-mo shots of different athletes taking risks in their various sports.
And the narrator says over it, why do you do it?
Why would you make it harder on yourself?
Why chance it?
Why put it on the line?
With so much at stake, with so much room to fail, why risk it?
Why would you dare?
Seriously, why?
What if you give everything you have and still lose?
But my question is, he says, what if you don't?
Gosh, that gets me fired up.
I want to do things that I know I can't do because this is so, gets me so fired up.
And it gets me even more fired up when I apply it to the pursuit of my Savior.
What if it's hard?
It will be hard.
What if I fail?
You're probably going to fail.
What if I lose everything I have?
Friends, that might happen.
But what if you don't?
What if your reward is heavenly bliss rather than eternal pain, earthly pain?
What if it's eternal success rather than temporary failure?
What if I gain Jesus at the cost of losing everything?
Oh, then I would give all I had in pursuit of the one who pursued me.
And so I ask you again, what would you give up for eternal life?
Let's pray.
Father, thank you.
Thank you that you even came to offer us this rich blessing of eternal life, this good life.
Thank you that even when we're homily dependent in this life, God,
you give us foretastes of what that will look like.
Help us now, Spirit, to identify those things that are holding our heart.
Help us to relinquish them to you.
Help us to meet your eyes that are gentle and lowly,
your outstretched hand inviting us to a good life.
Help us to follow you, even right now, God.
Pray these things in the name of the Son. Amen.