We're looking at the story of
the rich young ruler. And one of the things that's
so comforting as we read the scriptures and especially read
the accounts of the Lord's dealings with his apostles, is just how
wonderfully human the apostles are. how wonderfully like us
they are. And so the situation is of course
that the rich young man had best been given one request to leave
all of his riches behind and then come follow the Lord Jesus
and he would have eternal life. And so Peter in verse 28 asks
the question that all of us would have asked or makes the statement
all of us would have stated. Then Peter began to say to him,
see we have left all and followed you. There is no question that
true discipleship does involve leaving all behind. It does involve, as the bride
in Genesis and the husband in Genesis, it involves a leaving
and a cleaving. A leaving of the things of this
world and a cleaving, adjoining to the Lord Jesus. I think the point of the passage
that's before us, and we're just going down to verse 31 this morning, The point of the passage again
and again is that when the disciples are left to themselves and are
left to human wisdom, they are as frail and fickle as all of
us. And yet when sustained and carried
by the grace of God, they bring with them all the attributes
of heaven itself, the characteristics of the Lord Jesus. And so this
is just another one of those beautiful pictures The reality
is that what was Peter doing? He was fishing. He may, like others who have
been following John the Baptist and hearing his preaching, but
he was fishing. So when Peter, whenever any of
us look to ourselves and boast about the things that we have
done, the Lord Jesus is going to come and deal with us in grace. There will be no boasting. Our
boast will be alone in the Lord Jesus, who was the one who called
them. Who was the one who called them
with that powerful voice that says, come and follow me? It was the Lord Jesus, it wasn't
Peter saying, I must follow this man. It was God, always it is
God who initiates service, who initiates the leaving, who initiates
the cleaving. But the Lord Jesus takes the
opportunity, before I think he brings a challenge and a rebuke
to Peter, he actually takes the opportunity to present some amazing
promises. Verse 29 of Mark Chapter 10. 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 the
Gospel's sake. but that he will receive a hundred
times as much now in this present age, houses and brothers and
sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecution,
and in the age to come, eternal life. In verse 29, he makes an amazing
promise. He also has an amazing declaration,
that whoever leaves, whoever has left
houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and farms, for my
sake and the Gospel's sake, people keep challenging us and we keep
challenging others about the Gospel. And they keep saying,
why do you define the Gospel so precisely? Why do you actually
say that there are particular things about the real Gospel,
and particular things about any Gospel, any news, any good news,
that are not faithful to the Scriptures? Why? are they damaging? Why can we be particular? Why can we be dogmatic? I gave
the illustration last week about my friend who had a particular
problem and she would have died. If that particular problem, that
tick that was killing her, had not been removed, then she would
have died. We have particular things that
we cling to in this life. We expect precision in things.
But this verse before us is incredibly helpful. Whoever leaves for my
sake and the gospel. Jesus Christ is the Gospel. The Gospel is a person. The Gospel is a declaration that
this man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the God of this universe. The Jews had no doubt about it,
that's why they killed him. They weren't killing him because
he did good deeds, they were killing him because you, a mere
man, claim to be God. He's a real man, with real characteristics,
characteristics defined by His Father, defined by the Holy Spirit
in the Bible, defined by Himself. It's just really important that
we actually say, along with God, that this Jesus and Him crucified
is the salvation of sinners. And the word promises, Jesus
promises, that the world will be full of Jesuses that look
like him, bear his name, but are not the real Jesus. The fact
that they are out there and they are in multitudes of churches
and they are believed by millions is just God's promises being
fulfilled. Jesus is the gospel. Jesus Christ
and Him crucified saves sinners. Are there sinners in the house
today? Are there sinners? Jesus will save sinners, real
sinners. But there is a great promise,
what an amazing promise in verse 30 of chapter 10. To leave all
of these things behind, he will receive a hundred times as much
now in this present age. Houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and farms. So the reality is that
when God takes his children, by the power of His grace and
He separates, He causes a separation between His people who are chosen
by grace and the people of the rest of the world. He will bring
a separation, a separation that will be real, a separation that
will be painful, a separation that most of us here have felt. God knows our tears. He stores
them in a bottle. He knows the pain of being rejected
by family for one simple reason, that we'll stand for the Lord
Jesus and we'll proclaim Him. All of us have been there. All of us will continue to be
there while ever we walk on this earth. But what a promise. I taught Mark's Gospel to the
kids at school, and you might wonder why there's such a procession
of them. One of the reasons there's been a procession of them for
the last four or five years coming through our house is that one
of the things I said to them is that in the Christian world,
We might be rejected by our real brothers and sisters. We might
be rejected by our mothers and fathers. But God promises a hundred
times more now. Those kids who came from that
school in India can come to Australia and they can come to a place
where they will have all of what we have been granted by God to
be freely available to them. They actually have it better
than us. We have to look after a farm,
they can come and enjoy a farm. We have to look after a house,
they can come and enjoy a house. And for those of you who have
travelled as Christians, you'll be, like me, just stunned that
you walk into strange places, into strange cities, and you
find that God raises up people that you've never heard of, and
their home is your home. The fellowship that God's children
share in a place like this is so much bigger and so much better
than any fellowship we have with our natural brothers and sisters,
unless they happen by the grace of God to be the Lords. Is it
not the case with you? Have you not felt that? Have
you felt family here? Have you felt closeness? Have
you felt that you are among people who will be honest with you about
your soul? Who will have one aim in mind
that will declare good news to each other? Rotten, filthy sinners. Nothing but rotten, filthy sinners. Rotten, filthy sinners loved
by God. Together, as Colossians promises,
knitted together like ligaments in a body. A skeleton just falls
apart, but you put sinews and ligaments and muscles there.
And God builds a body as he has promised to build a body. We
have a hundred times much more fellowship with our brothers
in Christ than we do with our natural brothers. We have a hundred
times more blessing with our sisters in Christ than we do
with any natural sisters. We feel nurtured by other Christians
in a way which is a hundred times better than having mothers and
fathers. as much as they are precious
to us. God's blessings, according to the promise of the Lord Jesus,
are real. And if you want farms and houses
and all those other things, then they're there, aren't they, amongst
God's people. In a few months' time, Don Faulkner
will be coming here, as Clay did last year, and they become
family to us. Our homes are their homes. Our
food is their food. Our farms are their farms. And
the fellowship is sweet amongst God's people. It's just an amazing
promise. It's an amazing promise from
the Lord Jesus. It's wonderful how Peter, in
a sense acting out of selfishness, is actually taught an amazing
lesson. You've left your fishing boats,
you've left your family, but you've actually now got a hundred
times as much. A hundred times as much. The promises of God are just
unreal. They are unreal, aren't they? They don't bear any reality in
this world. They are just unreal. And then
along with them will come persecutions. We've talked a bit about persecutions
of late. The reality is that God is actually
going to knit his people together, to grow them together and to
cause them to stand together and they are going to suffer.
They are going to suffer together, the persecution of this religious
world. Persecutions are designed by
God. Like everything else that happens
in all of our lives, everything for God's children is designed
perfectly by God, according to His power in 2 Timothy 1.8, to
bring us purity. To show us that this is the truth
about our Lord Jesus, this is the truth about God, and this
is a lie. Persecutions bring clarity. They bring division, which causes
God's people to go back to the scriptures and say, what is really
happening? They bring purity, they bring
clarity, and they bring reality. The reality is in this world,
God's children are going to be misunderstood as the Lord Jesus
was. God's children are going to be
persecuted as the Lord Jesus was. God's children are going
to feel the rejection of their family. And it's all just promises
fulfilled. But the other thing that persecution
brings is just a closeness to the Lord Jesus. Paul begins his
last letter to his friend Timothy by saying that he knows whom
he has believed. He knows the Lord Jesus. And
at the end of his life, as the executioner's sword is about
to flash and chop his head from his body, he says, All of these
people rejected me. I was left alone. But, verse
17 of chapter 4, but the Lord stood with me and strengthened
me. As God causes his people to stand
for the truth, they are going to be persecuted, but there are
going to be the most amazing blessings that come as a promise. And so as we talked about earlier,
and I'll come back to this a bit later on, there is the promise
of persecutions, but in the age to come, eternal life. But before we get to that beautiful
picture, he has a serious word in verse 31. He says, but many
who are first, will be last and the last first. That's a verse
that's given me lots of headaches over the last few weeks as I've
been contemplating it, but I think the answer is really clear. If
we turn back in our Bibles, and we want to spend a few minutes
here, come back to Matthew chapter 20. Before we get to chapter 20, at the end of
verse 30 in chapter 19 of Mark's Gospel, Jesus says that many
who are first will be last and the last first. And he finishes this story, this
familiar story by saying in verse 16 of chapter 20, so the last
will be first and the first last. And of course it's in answer
to the question that Peter asks. The statement in a sense that
Peter makes. A statement that we all in our
humanity will make. See, we have left, verse 27 of
chapter 19, see we have left all and followed you. They have left all in some sense,
but we will find as we go through the Gospels, there is a big chunk
of Peter's pride that hasn't been left behind, a big chunk
of Peter's sense, as he goes on to say in the next verse,
the next part of that verse, See we have left all and followed
you, therefore what shall we have? We have done all this for
you, God. What's our reward going to be?
And so we have this amazing story. And I'll just read the verses
to you and then we'll comment briefly on them. It's a very
familiar story, a very challenging story, a story about grace. For the Kingdom of Heaven is
like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire
labourers for his vineyard. Now when he had agreed with the
labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing
idle in the marketplace. And so in those days, as it was
in India when we were there, people who survived on their
daily wages for their food stood around in the marketplaces, stood
around in public places waiting for someone to come and say,
come and work on my farm and I'll pay you, generally I'll
pay you enough so that you can feed your family and yourself
at the end of the day. He went out about the third hour,
nine o'clock in the morning, and saw others standing idle
in the marketplace and he said to them, you also go into the
vineyard and whatever is right, I will give you. So they went.
Again he went out about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did
likewise. At about the eleventh hour, about
five o'clock in the afternoon, he went out and found others
standing idle and he said to them, why have you been standing
here idle all day? And they said to him, because
no one hired us. And he said to them, you also
go into the vineyard and whatever is right you will receive. So when evening came, had come,
the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, call the labourers
and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first. And when those who came Those
came who were hired at the eleventh hour, five o'clock in the afternoon,
evening time and cool. They each received a denarius. But when the first came, they
supposed that they would receive more. And they likewise received
each a denarius. and they did exactly what all
of us would do, instantly. And when they received it, they
complained against the landowner, saying, these men have worked
only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne
the burden and the heat of the day. That's exactly how all of
us think, all of the time, is it not? I've been working since
6 o'clock in the morning and here it is, some layabout comes
along at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and he receives exactly the same
pay I have. All of us, all the time, naturally
want to have things awarded according to our efforts. God will not
do that. They complained against the landowner,
saying, these men have worked only one hour and you have made
them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the
day. But God answers. But he answered one of them and
said, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with
me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your
way. I wish to give to this last man
the same as to you. Is it not lawful, says God, for
me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil
because I am good? So the last will be first, and
the first will be last. So it's interesting, there's
some really important things in this parable. As we've been
going through Mark's Gospel and Matthew's Gospel, it says the
same things. We have continually seen the
Lord do two things. The division that is promised
between humanity. He comes along to the outcasts,
to the drunks, to the traitors, to the prostitutes, to the lost,
to the lepers, to those who are in desperate need, and He shows
the most amazing grace. The outcasts of society are His
people and He rewards them, not on the basis of anything they
can bring to Him, but He rewards them purely out of His love and
His goodness. And at exactly the same time,
where one crowd is rejoicing and is just amazed as God reveals
Himself in His love and His care and in His grace, on the other
side there is another group who keep complaining. Every single
time the Lord Jesus reveals His glory, this group of Pharisees
and Sadducees and Herodians, the ones who eventually kill
him, they continually whinge. All they ever do is whinge. And the basis of their whinging
is that they look at the things they have done, and they stand
in judgment of God himself, because they can say, look what I have
done. Look at my righteousness. Look
at this miserable leper. And look at me, polished and
faultless. Their basis for judging Jesus
was their own good works. Look what I have done. And in
this story, in this parable, they were really wanting others
to suffer. That they might be justified
in their own eyes. It's a rebuke to Peter and to
all of us, isn't it? We continually want to come to
God and say, look what I have done. Look what I have that deserves
your reward. God's children are the recipients
of grace from a generous giver. A hundred times as much, he promised
them. A hundred times as much. But
these people want more. In verse 12 they talk about what
they have done. They have borne the heat and
the burden all day long. Instead of seeing work as a blessing,
they talk about it as a burden. There they were with a guarantee
that they and their family would be fed that night. The others
sat in the marketplace wondering what was going to be on the table
that evening. Hungry kids. hungry people. So they had work which is a blessing,
but for them it wasn't a blessing, it was a burden. Just like the
Pharisees, the law for the Pharisees which was meant to point them
to Jesus, was full of pictures of the Lord Jesus, was full of
pictures of grace, was actually for them just a burden. These people, instead of being
caused to feel their need of a saviour, were led by their
self-righteousness to see that they actually needed a reward
for all that they've done. I like people who go back to
the law, to live under the law. It's a fiery law on that mountain
Sinai. It's a hot law and it's a scorching
law and it's a law that works wrath. And Peter describes it
in Acts 15 as a heavy burden, a burden that no one was ever
able to bear. You cannot please God by doing
things. You cannot please God by law
obedience. And God answers these people. He answers the Pharisee in Peter
and the Pharisee in all of us. saying in verse 13, I'm doing
no wrong. God is always going to be faithful
to his word. God is always going to be absolutely
sovereign over the way he distributes his gifts and his reward. Is
it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? What
does God own? He owns a universe. Does He own every little tiny
atom of that universe? He owns every little tiny atom
of that universe. The Lord Jesus in John 17 prays
that priestly prayer before God and He says, The hour has come. Glorify your
Son that your Son also may glorify you. For you, God the Father,
have given Him authority over all flesh. that he should give
eternal life to as many as you have given him. The Lord Jesus
sits on a throne in heaven and he rules all flesh in this universe. Does he rule the Muslims? Does
he rule the Buddhists? Does he rule the atheists? He
rules all flesh. He has the right As he says in
this parable, he has the right to do what he wishes with all
of his own things. And then there's a wonderful
description of God, that he is good. Is your eye evil because
I am good? It's exactly the complaint of
the Pharisees all the way through. When the Lord Jesus acts in grace
and mercy and love, their eye is evil. It's extraordinary. They see the goodness of God
and they respond with evil. And the summation of the parable. And the answer to the question,
the understanding of verse 31. For the last will be first, and
the first last, because for many are called. Israel was called. Many are called. The whole world,
according to Colossians 1, has been called. The whole world
lies under an obligation before God to respond to the Lord Jesus. Many are called, but few chosen. Just few chosen. What a wonderful way the Lord
Jesus deals with the Pharisee and the self-righteous man in
Peter. He describes the good things that Peter has done. He
attributes them to His grace, He promises Him, and then He
does as He does to us so often. He just brings a word of warning
to His people. And then He promises eternal
life. Life forever. The life that we
read about in Revelation lies before them. And it's life that
is not achieved by reward. So many people think that there
are degrees of reward in heaven, that there is this hierarchy
in heaven, and those who have behaved in the most holy and
godly manners on this earth will get the seats closest to the
throne in heaven. Nothing in the scriptures point
to that. The blessings that we have are
blessings that are earned for us, not by our activities, but
they are blessings that are earned by the Lord Jesus. Just read
a few verses with me, or listen to a few verses. Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with
every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ. Peter at the end of his life,
now much wiser, now much less inclined to talk about what he
had done. Simon Peter, a bondservant, a
slave and apostle of Christ Jesus, to those who have obtained like
precious faith with us. That word obtained is a beautiful
word. The picture of it is that you
are sitting underneath a tree and a piece of ripe fruit falls
into your lap. That's how grace is received
by people, not by them shaking the tree or climbing the tree,
by sitting and receiving. Grace and peace be multiplied
to you in the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ by
His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life
and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to glory
and virtue by which we have been given to us exceedingly great
and precious promises that through these you may be partakers of
the divine nature. That's what lies before God's
children, partakers of the divine nature. The promise of God for
His children is that we will be like Him. We will be like
the Lord Jesus, not in deity, but we will have the blessings
of that communion with Him. We will be like Him because we
will see Him as He is. There are no degrees of holiness. God requires absolute perfection
to get into Heaven. He doesn't require good works,
He requires perfect works. He requires absolute, 100% perfect
sinlessness from the time that we were in Adam in the garden,
from the time that you were conceived in your mother's womb, from the
time you came out. God's demand is 100% absolute
perfection, 100% of the time. If anyone here feels that they
have achieved it, they can come and take over from me right now.
The standards of heaven are holiness. The standards of heaven are perfection,
absolute perfection. It is just found in one person. That's the gospel that we declare.
The righteousness that you need to be in relationship with God
is the Lord Jesus Christ. The sins that you have done and
are doing right now need to be put away. You cannot live with
a holy God and your sins at the same time. And the Lord Jesus
has taken all of the sins of all of his people away. He didn't
try. He did it. He said it was finished. It's done. All that's needed for heaven.
is in a person. Everything that's needed for
life in this world is in a person, the Lord Jesus. And so, instead
of it being a legal obedience, look what I have done, now I
must be rewarded. God's children say, look what
Jesus has done. What a reward that comes as a
gift. We receive, we receive. And we don't want him to be robbed
of his glory. We don't want to put people back
under illegal obedience. And we don't want people to be
boasting. There is nothing to boast in.
We're all wretched sinners. In the parable, the Lord Jesus
said, all are equal. All of the ones who just came
there as a result of gift and grace receive exactly the same
thing. There's no room for the works
of man plus the works of Jesus. And so eternal life, the promise
is eternal life. And we read those verses in Revelation
earlier and it's good to read them again. It's good to be reminded
of where we are going. Now I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, chapter 21 of Revelation. For the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away. The promise of God is that this
is all about to pass away. And there was no more sea, no
more chaos. Then I, John, saw the holy city,
the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared,
not prepared by her works, prepared by God, as a bride adorned for
her husband. And I heard a loud voice from
heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle, the dwelling of God is with men. And he will dwell with them and
they shall be his people. God himself will be with them
and be their God. And God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes. The tears of separation from
people that we love in this world. but who don't really love the
Lord Jesus. The tears of our sin, the tears
of our failures and our faults, the tears of our sorrows, Jesus
is going to wipe them away. What a beautiful picture of the
intimacy of relationship that God's children have with Him. There shall be no more death,
no more death. ever, no sorrow, no more crying. There should be no more pain
for the former things that passed away. Then he who sat on the
throne said, behold I make all things new. He said, write for
these words that are true and faithful. He said to me, it is
done. I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of
the water of life freely, not as a result of anything that
you do. It's a free gift from God to
him who thirsts. Are there thirsty people here?
God will satisfy the thirsty. Are there people here hungry?
God will fill the hungry. We will be like Christ, is the
promise of God. We will be with the Lord Jesus
Christ. We will see the Lord Jesus Christ. We will in that day love Christ
perfectly. We will in that day serve Him
unceasingly and we will see clearly that it's all by His activity
and not ours. We will worship the Lord Jesus
without sin. We'll rest in the Lord Jesus
completely. We will enjoy the Lord Jesus
fully, because in that great day we will have the Lord Jesus
Christ completely. Let's pray.