I think Matt mentioned it in an update a few weeks ago,

but we've recently taken it upon ourselves to teach

the 10 commandments to our toddlers.

We set all 10 of them to the old coke cola theme song.

If you pay me money,

I'll sing it for you quietly during coffee hour.

Why the 10 Commandments?

Well, in order to understand and experience

the full impact of the grace and mercy poured out on us

by God through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus,

you have to experience the full weight of the law

and how perfectly impossible it is to keep it.

Our children are basically not murderous or adulterous

(we've gone with a positive wording on that,

Be Faithful,

rather than don't commit adultery)

and they haven't entered into theft or covetousness, yet.

But that doesn't mean they're in the clear.

In our household we struggle with three of the big ones—

Honor your Mom and Dad,

Don't Misuse God's Name and

Don't Make Idols.

 

Two things have happened since we've started to do this work.

First,

Matt and I have been convicted out of our unrighteous complacency.

I know it's hard to believe,

but sometimes even we break God's law.

When I am amazed by something and say, loudly, ‘oh my gosh',

a small voice unfailingly rings out,

‘Don't Misuse God's Name'.

Second, our little ones are learning

that they are filled with sin just like the rest of us.

They have a big huge problem honoring their parents

and they don't, yet, have God at the center of their lives.

That spot continues to be occupied by their own darling selves.

We want them to know that they are unique and loved by God,

but we also want them to know the true state of themselves—

that they have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Why do they need to know that they are sinners?

Well, turn with me to Mark chapter 10 and let's find out.

 

 “As Jesus started on his way,

a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him.

"Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered.

"No one is good—except God alone.

You know the commandments:

'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal,

do not give false testimony, do not defraud,

honor your father and mother.'"

"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

 

To get to the heart of the matter,

let's begin at the end of this little exchange.

All these I have kept since I was a boy.

Wow! That's amazing.

There was never a moment, say, when he was 10,

when he looked his mother squarely in the eye

after she told him to hustle to the market

and buy her a denarii's worth of oil and flour and hustle home,

and she wants to know why its now the middle of the afternoon

and there is only flour and no oil

and he didn't look her in the eye

and explain that he had been knocked down by a large camel

and the money fell out of his garment

and it was all he could do to get up, practically crippled,

and limp and have to make the agonizing decision

between the flour and the oil.

In other words,

if you really examine the details of life,

you can't get very far down the list of commandments

to find that you haven't broken one.

We all fib,

we dishonor our parents,

we're disobedient.

So maybe the young man just means the really big ones—

he's never sinned big.

He's never killed anyone,

he's never committed adultery.

Well, as we've demonstrated again and again,

just keeping the big ones does not a righteous person make.

Any and all sin separates us from God.

But we delude,

especially in this culture,

ourselves into thinking that in the balance of things,

God will take all the good things we did

and weigh them against all the bad things

and we'll probably come up on the positive end

and get to go to heaven.

When we first arrived at this parish,

a few of you might remember,

we preached a few warm cuddly sermons

about how much God loves us all,

and then Matt began a kind of relentless preaching of the law. Sunday after Sunday he stood up here and said,

‘we have all sinned.

We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

Our sin separates us from God.

Turn, today, repent of your sin and be saved'.

After a while it began to wear.

Matt collapsed on the couch one Sunday after church and said,

‘why am I preaching this over and over.'

What is the deal?

And various members of the congregation started moaning during the week, ‘why is he preaching this all the time?

It's so negative. Why is he so negative?'

And then one day it all became clear.

A very lovely normal looking person sat in the rectory living room

and explained to us both that other people might be sinners,

but she is not—she is good.

All these I have kept since I was young.

So stop calling me a sinner.

I'm a good person, she said.

I've done a lot of good things.

 

Which leads us back up towards the beginning of our text.

“Good teacher” the young man addressed Jesus.

And Jesus replied, ‘why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.”

Jesus is messing with him.

It is probably big news to him that only God is good.

We see that by his answer—all these I have kept since my youth.

What is the big irony here?

The young man is standing in the presence of God,

the Lord of heaven and earth

and he wants to know how to ‘inherit eternal life'.

God, who gave him life,

since before the foundation of the world knows all things,

sees all things,

who holds all things in his hand,

who can give all things,

provide in all circumstances, and who will, at the cross,

open the way to eternal life to all who believe,

but who, most importantly in this case,

sees the full human heart,

who knows what every living soul thinks, does, believes, feels,

from whom nothing is hidden,

nothing is unknown.

It is God himself

to whom the young man says he has kept all the commandments,

that he is good.

 

And Jesus, he doesn't laugh at this outrageous claim.

He doesn't humiliate the man in front of everyone.

He doesn't say, ‘well, sorry dude, wrong answer, get thee out of here.' No.

He looks at him and loves him and he opens the door.

‘Go, sell everything, give it to the poor, and follow me.'

And here we arrive at the crucial point.

When the young man said, all these I have kept,

which major huge commandment was he forgetting?

‘Number one, You shall have no other gods'

and number two ‘you shall not make for yourself any idol.

The first command,

the perfect order of things is for God to be first.

There is nothing above God.

He is the beginning—he made all things.

He is the end—he will gather up and restore all things.

So we must not put anything in God's place,

certainly not ourselves.

And yet we do.

We put ourselves first and then we set up other small sham idols—wealth, reputation, the tv, relationships, the blogoshere.

It is impossible for us not to do this.

By virtue of being human,

we are oriented to always put ourselves and other things

in the place of God.

So even if you say comfortably to yourself,

I haven't killed anyone,

I'm all good, you have not loved God first and only.

Not just you, me either.

And so we are both guilty of breaking the whole law.

Why is this so important?

Because if you don't know the law

and you don't know that you have broken it,

then you won't know that you need to repent.

And you won't be able to recognize who Jesus is and the full measure of what he has done for you in giving up himself to die on the cross. Let me be clear—

Jesus, the Son of God,

who lives in perfect love with his Father—

Jesus laid aside his crown, his glory,

his very own self, body, mind, spirit and died

so that you could enter into eternal life.

If you go along and think you're good

and that you've kept the law

and God is just going to some day recognize that

and give you the big prize of eternal life

than you also will miss out on the riches of God's grace and mercy, like this young man.

Jesus looks at the young man and loves him.

And he eases the door open for this young man

to consider the truth of his situation.

Your priorities are fouled up.

You are rich and selfish and sin filled.

Put it all aside and follow me.

And the young man wanted to.

He wanted to very much.

But he was very rich,

and he was very young and so he went away.

 

Now I know that not many of you are rich,

by today's standards,

and also that if you are sitting here

it is because you want eternal life,

or maybe you're curious about all this churchy stuff,

but curiosity is not enough,

just wanting eternal life is not enough.

You have to be willing to lay down everything you have,

everything you hold onto,

everything you value and love and follow Jesus.

You won't be able to get it any other way. You can't earn it.

You can't buy it

You can't bargain with God for it.

It is God's free gift to give, and he gives it to you when you lay everything down and give yourself to him,

then he gives himself to you.

If you want eternal life,

if you want to live in the rich light of God's glory,

if you wan to be forgiven of your sins,

if you have faith in Jesus

but have fallen back into sin and darkness,

today the door is opened for you.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit,

the love of the Father,

the work of the Son

you can lay down yourself and all you posses and follow Jesus.

Don't walk away from him in sadness and despair,

drop everything you're hanging onto and cling to him.

Don't let the pale faded cheap seductive wealth of this world

pull you away

from the unsurpassable riches of God's grace and mercy. Amen.