I had the privilege of being a youth pastor in Chicago when Michael Jordan began his first 3-peat. He led the Chicago Bulls to three straight NBA championships in 1991, ’92, and ’93. Then, after his father was murdered in a carjacking gone wrong, he became disillusioned with basketball. He quit. He started playing baseball.
Then he came back and did it again: ’96, ’97, ’98. He won three more NBA championships. He had a perfect 6-0 record. Like if he made it, he won it. If they made it to the finals, they won.
Jordan is still considered by many to be the greatest basketball player ever. He was stunning on both ends of the court, both offense and defense. He won MVPs in every final he appeared in. Basketball has been good to him.
He is currently worth just under $4 billion (that’s a B, billion), and so it was not surprising at the end of his acceptance speech—as he was inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame in 2009—when he said these words:
“The game of basketball has been everything to me — my refuge, my place I’ve always gone when I needed to find comfort and peace. It’s been a source of intense pain and a source of the most intense feelings of joy and satisfaction … It’s been a relationship that has evolved over time and given me the greatest respect and love for the game.”
He ended with a prediction that he might be back playing basketball when he was 50. He was 46 at the time. He had already retired twice. People laughed. He did not. Then he said,
“Limits like fears are just an illusion.”
I’ve wondered if he still thinks that now that he turned 63 a couple of weeks ago. Are all limits just an illusion. But his words,
“the game of basketball has been everything to me— my refuge, my place…to find comfort and peace,”
are both beautiful and tragic.
All of us have a refuge, a place we go for security, a stronghold, a space that tells us who we are and lifts us up when we’re down. It could be your athletic ability, your music, your intellect … It could be your relationships, money, family … It could be alcohol, social media, or your religious reputation.
In Matthew 19, Jesus is having a fascinating conversation with a young man who’s asked him for the secret sauce of eternal life: Where can I find an eternal refuge? Not a refuge that just lasts for a few years, but an eternal one.
This man who asked Jesus this, he has it all. He’s the kind of guy you would want as your next-door neighbor. He would be the kind of guy you’d want to hire in your company. He has everything.
If you combine what is said of him in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we learn
So this man is the kind of man most men would want to be. He has a lot going for him, yet despite his remarkable resume, Jesus gets him to slow down and think.
Two considerations:
1. Think about who I am.
First, Jesus says essentially, think about who I am. Think about who I am. Verse 17:
“Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good” (Matthew 19:17a).
So here, Jesus is not denying his own goodness. He is asking the man a question that forces him to rethink who he thinks Jesus is. Only God is good! Romans 3:12,
“No one does good, not even one.”
There’s no human who does good. Now, what is Jesus saying there? Jesus is not denying what we could call “relative goodness.” Like one neighbor helps mow his elderly neighbor’s yard, another neighbor steals his elderly neighbor’s car. There’s a difference, right? Good, bad.
Jesus isn’t denying a relative goodness. What he’s talking about, in an absolute sense, is that there is no one who can stand before God and claim absolute goodness — in essence or action.
So Jesus is saying, if you’re coming to me as a rabbi, a teacher — There’s no human who is truly good, in an absolute sense. So why are you coming to me for the secret sauce of eternal life through understanding goodness? There’s only one.
Jesus is forcing the man to rethink who he thinks Jesus is, because he’s either God, who can therefore convey goodness that leads to eternal life, or he’s just another teacher who can’t. Think about who I am.
2. Think about who you are.
I find this fascinating, the way Jesus meets him where he is and begins to subvert his false sense of security. This man is trying to find his refuge in his money and in his morality, so Jesus says, let’s go there. Verse 17:
“‘If you would enter life, keep the commandments.’ He said to him, ‘Which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 19:17b-19).
Notice Jesus lists commandments from the right tablet of the decalogue. There were two tablets. The left one is what we could call the vertical one, which has vertical commandments. Like what? Don’t have any other gods. No carved images. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Keep the Sabbath.
Jesus ignores those. He goes right in for the sixth commandment: don’t murder. Seventh, don’t commit adultery. Eighth, don’t steal. Ninth, don’t bear false witness. Back to the fifth: honor your father and mother. Wraps them all up, Leviticus 19:19,
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
By the way, what commandment on the right tablet did Jesus skip? Number 10, yeah, “don’t covet,” which is really significant in light of where this conversation is going. So the young man at this point is feeling really good about himself. Verse 20,
“All these I have kept. But what do I still lack?”
He’s essentially saying, “I’m good, but I’m just missing something. Can you top me off?”
We need to pause in this conversation and ask the question, what is Jesus doing here? It seems like an odd way to answer the man’s question about eternal life. Why doesn’t he use the Romans Road? Or the Four Spiritual Laws? What is he doing? Is Jesus distracted? Did he forget the original question? No.
One aspect of this conversation that I think indirectly answers this question is the range of words that are used in these two paragraphs. They’re not synonyms, but their use together in this context is significant. Let me give you a sampling:
What is significant about these? Jesus has a very holistic vision of salvation. It is not complicated, but it is not isolated either. What do I mean by isolated? Like, “Pray this prayer, check this box, and you’re good to go.” No.
His vision is small enough to include a little child’s prayer, as we heard last week, the most simple prayer of salvation. It’s tiny enough for that, and it’s big enough to sweep us all up into the rule and reign of God and the renewal of all things in the new heaven and the new earth. That’s big. It is tiny, and it is vast, and these words are all merged together to communicate this huge vision. So, how is Jesus leading this man there?
Jesus is going with this young man into his own refuge.
You want to find a refuge in your money and your morality? Let’s go there. It’s kind of like visiting Michael Jordan at his home and saying, “Can we go to your trophy room?” He has a trophy room.
You walk in, and there are cases and cases of trophies. “That was that championship and that championship.” And, “I wore those shoes and that shirt and that memorabilia,” and billboards and, on the big screen, highlight reels of that dunk and that buzzer-beater shot. “That’s my refuge.”
It’s like Jesus says, “Take me there. Let’s go there. How long do you think this is going to last? These trophies, this money, this applause?”
He does the same thing with the young man: “Law keeping is working for you, isn’t it? You don’t murder, you don’t sleep around, you don’t steal; people trust you. You’ve been able to build a big, successful business on your hard work, your character, the trust people have in you… But deep down, you know it’s not enough.” That’s why in verse 20,
“What do I still lack?”
So in verse 21,
“Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect [whole, complete], go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’” (Matthew 19:21).
Why does Jesus ask him to do this? He hasn’t asked anyone else specifically to do this. Have you noticed that? Zacchaeus gave how much? Half. Joseph of Arimathea was a godly rich man. We’re not told that he gave all his riches away. He gave his tomb. Luke 8:3 tells of people who traveled with Jesus and supported his ministry “out of their means.” So they obviously had means.
So why does Jesus tell this man, “Go, sell, give it all, and follow me”?
Obviously, he’s taking this man into his place of refuge, and he’s saying, “You have to get rid of this. This is not an eternal refuge. Follow me.” Then in verse 22, one of the saddest verses in the Bible,
“When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (Matthew 19:22).
This is one of the saddest verses in the Bible because this man was so close. Imagine, because many of us think, “If I could just talk this through with Jesus, I’d be good to go!” This man, so close, walked away, sorrowful. Some of you may do that today, to be so close and to walk away, sorrowful.
See, he was ready to do anything but the one thing Jesus said to do. Obviously, Jesus knew his heart, called his bluff, and went straight for his place of refuge. “You cannot worship me and money. You cannot worship me and your moral checklist.” So he turns to his disciples, and he says in verse 23,
“‘Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, 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.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’” (Matthew 19:23-25)
Jesus is using a ridiculous illustration to communicate the human impossibility of a rich person releasing their refuge and finding an eternal one. It’s as easy as squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle. In case you’re not sure, it ain’t gonna happen.
This should be a great concern to us as Americans because, even if you make minimum wage (like $7.25 and you earn in a year like $14,000-15,000), you are richer than 85-90% of the world. Isn’t that stunning? I know that’s not going to make you feel any better when you go try to buy groceries, but pretty much everybody in this room is rich from a historical or a global perspective.
What Jesus is saying is that rich people have a hard time seeing their need for a real refuge. Why? Wealth whispers, “I have a refuge.” Poverty screams, “I need a refuge.” So there’s a desperation for something when we experience real poverty, and there is a lethargy for something when we think we have one.
Jesus has already said this in different ways throughout Matthew. Think back to the Beatitudes,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
Or as we saw in the last chapter, Matthew 18:3,
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Turn from your self-sufficiency, turn from your cynicism. Why? As we learned last week,
“for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14b).
So essentially, Jesus is agreeing with the disciples that it is humanly impossible for rich people to go to heaven because they don’t feel their need. Verse 26,
“But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’” (Matthew 19:26).
Praise God! With God, he can even show people who are deluded by their unreliable refuge to look to him for a real one. Ephesians 2:8,
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
So in a very real way, Jesus is demanding more by demanding less. He is saying to us, “You have to come, you have to let go and come with empty hands to me. Follow me as your refuge. Release your moral checklist, your money, your trophies. I demand more than you think.”
I provide more than you think. Verse 27,
“Then Peter said in reply, ‘See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:27-28).
That word, it’s one word in the Greek: “new world” is a very interesting word. It is the word “paliggenesia.” It can be translated “regeneration” or “renewal,” but it’s from two words: “Palin” is again, and “genesis” is birth or beginning, a “beginning again.”
It’s used of a personal renewal in Titus 3:5, and it’s used of a global renewal here in Matthew 19, where everything is made new. Verse 29,
“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and last first” (Matthew 19:29-30).
When we relocate our refuge from our performance, or our possessions, or our families to the Lord, we can never ultimately lose. You cannot out-sacrifice God.
This week, I was meditating on Psalm 31:19,
“Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you” (Psalm 31:19a).
Abundant is your Goodness. So here’s a question we need to wrestle with: How do we know if we are trusting in an unreliable refuge, or the one true reliable one? There are many ways to answer this. We could talk about anger, fear of man, pride— Many indications, but I want to focus on
Three common signs of an unreliable refuge.
1. Anxiety
One is when we experience anxiety. Anxiety is insecurity’s alarm system. It lets us know that I’m trying to find my security in an insecure refuge. I can feel the weight on my chest. I become defensive and brittle. The future feels out of control.
In contrast—and I know there are sometimes physiological manifestations of that, not denying that—but in contrast, when the roots of my faith go deep into the promises of God through the gospel, the fluctuating seasons and circumstances of life do not rattle me. Jeremiah 17:7,
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8).
When I feel anxiety, I receive it as an invitation from Jesus to come to the reliable refuge, to leave the unreliable refuge. So, one is anxiety.
2. Envy
A second sign of an unreliable refuge is envy. Envy.
My wife and I recently finished an excellent book by Tilly Dillehay on envy called Seeing Green. She defines envy as craving someone’s borrowed glory. If you think about it, God is the Lord of glory. He’s the source of all the glory there is, and he has poured out his glory on earth. Sometimes our neighbors have pieces of that glory that we desire and we envy.
Listen to her description of what’s happening in our hearts when we envy:
“Something is wrong with us. Something is missing. We’ve been locked out of something, but we want more than anything else to be let back in. Something is calling to us. We want to be enveloped by it, whatever it is. So when we find an experience that lets us brush our fingers, even for a moment, on this beauty or truth or fame or love that seems to lurk behind the locked doors of the world around us, we will do whatever it takes to chase that experience down for another taste.”
That’s envy, the desire to be let back in to meet a lack that we feel that we feel someone else doesn’t. So how does envy in our hearts indicate that we might be trusting in an unreliable refuge?
Near the end of the book, Tilly quotes this passage, Matthew 19 (the last part, verses 28 and 29), where Jesus assures us that we will never lack in the new world, receiving 100-fold and eternal life. She then compares and contrasts the “new world” with hell.
Both heaven and hell have inequalities. Only hell has envy. In some ways, hell is the experience of envy stretched out forever, that perpetual feeling of lack, being locked out of something. But in heaven, we will experience inequalities completely differently. She explains,
“How can you begrudge the difference between an eternally happy baker and an eternally gleeful cupbearer? They are both living in joy and serving the king. How can you look at the hairline difference between one eternity of bliss and another eternity of bliss in a slightly different color? How can you find the heart to quibble over the difference between having been forgiven a death-sentence worth of sin and having been forgiven a death-sentence worth different sin? The more you see your own position through God’s eyes, and the better you understand the outrageous overflow of good things coming your way in the presence of the Eyes That Matter, the less possible it will be to mutter to yourself over your friend’s husband’s new job.”
Tilly is inviting us, in her words, to
“prepare yourself to be a citizen of whichever kingdom you choose. You will play by its rules forever.”
When we envy, we are playing by the rules of hell, the kingdom of darkness, a very unreliable refuge. We, like the rich, young man, sense we lack something, but we’re unwilling to come with empty hands to Jesus, who can truly satisfy and never leaves us without what we need, and so we end up going away sorrowful.
When you experience envy, let it draw you to Jesus, away from the unreliable refuge, into the reliable one.
3. Stingy
One more. So anxiety can indicate an unreliable refuge, envy can, and third — stingy. Stingy.
Stinginess is the close-fisted grip of insecurity and selfishness. Generosity is the open-handed gift of security and kindness. When we are stingy, we are announcing to everyone that we are relying on an unreliable refuge.
The Apostle Paul points us in a better direction. 1 Timothy 6:17,
“As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches—”
Stop for a second. You see what he’s saying there? It’s not a reliable refuge. It’s uncertain.
“…but on God [set your hopes on God], who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
“Truly life,” like real life, lasting life, not fake life. When we give, we are not only blessing others, we are investing in gospel advancement here and around the world, but we are reminding ourselves that our money, our possessions, are not a reliable refuge. A couple of questions:
What/who do you tend to turn to as a refuge?
Throughout this message, I’m sure things have popped into your minds. If they haven’t, think about what makes you anxious. Follow that back. Think about when you look around, you see somebody on TV — what stirs up envy in your heart? Follow that back. Or what might keep you from being generous?
Then secondly, in what ways is God showing you this is an unreliable refuge?
Let me tell you, this is one of the most painful things you will go through in life. You can feel it with this rich young man as Jesus so patiently is pointing out his unreliable refuge, but he goes away sorrowful.
Some of you are in the middle of this right now. He’s prying your fingers off what will not provide real security. Embrace that process, thank him, release this. Sometimes he will do what he did with Abraham. He gets us to say, “Okay, it’s all yours, God,” and sometimes he’ll give it back (like when Abraham offered his son Isaac). But he is determined to pursue our hearts so that we are resting in a reliable refuge.
Don’t ever forget when we study these paragraphs here in this section of Matthew, where Jesus is heading. We saw that at the beginning of the chapter. He’s heading to Jerusalem. What is he going to do in Jerusalem? He’s going to die. He’s going to die on a cross, which is just stunning. He’s not standing before us with some kind of threatening posture (“You release your fake refuge or else”). He says, “I’m giving my life so you can do what is humanly impossible because I’ve done it for you.”
As we respond to the words of Jesus for us today, we’re going to prepare to remember his sacrifice: his broken body, his shed blood. But as we do that, I want us to meditate on these words, this song:
“My worth is not in what I own
Not in the strength of flesh and bone
But in the costly wounds of love
At the cross
“My worth is not in skill or name [these things we tend to find refuge in]
In win or lose, in pride or shame
But in the blood of Christ that flowed
At the cross.”
If you can’t sing this, don’t sing it. But if you can — Yes, none of us can do it perfectly, but in faith:
“I rejoice in my Redeemer
Greatest treasure, wellspring of my soul
I will trust in him, no other
My soul is satisfied in him alone.”
If those who are going to help pass out the bread and the cup would come. If you are a believer in Jesus, take this bread and this cup, and I’ll come back in a few minutes, and we’ll partake together. If you’re not a follower of Jesus, I pray right now you’ll use this time to cry out to him. He’s inviting you. Let’s respond.
