Money could keep you out of heaven!

 

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Suggested Bible Reading for today - Mark 10:1-27

Life is busy, time is money, and there are many questions on my mind. Meet the man who thought money could buy everything!

His question was – ‘What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’ The key to the man’s question are the words ‘do’ and ‘inherit’. He was a self-made man; everything he had achieved resulted from what he had done. He probably had worked hard for everything he had. He thought of eternal life as something he could inherit. An inheritance is wealth that someone has worked hard to accumulate, and the people who inherit it have a right to it. He wants eternal life, but he doesn’t understand that you don’t get it the way you get wealth and possessions. 

The Lord checks his life out against the Ten Commandments. The man reckons he has scored ok on this one (remember, this is his evaluation, not God’s). At this stage, we read a touching comment – ‘then Jesus beholding him loved him,’ v.21. Then the Lord touches a raw nerve in the man’s life. He says to the man, who has everything, you lack one thing, so ‘sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me,' Mark 10.21 NKJV. The Lord Jesus is not telling him that the act of selling up and giving to the poor will save him. He says that money and possessions were his idols (ours may be other things) and that he needs to deal with the thing that keeps him from following Christ. He must also obey the rest of the command, i.e. ‘take up the cross, and follow’. 

Thankfully, money and possessions did not keep me from salvation, but they could keep me from living for Him, taking up the cross and following Him.