The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God Ministries is available
at www.desiringgod.org Please turn with me
in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 19, verses
16 and following.
Matthew chapter 19, verse 16.
And someone came to him and said, Teacher,
what good thing shall I do that I
may obtain eternal life?
And he said to him, Why are you
asking me about what is good?
There is only one who is good.
But if you wish to enter into life,
keep the commandments.
Then he said to him, Which ones?
And Jesus said, You shall not commit 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.
The young man said to him, All these
things I have kept.
What am I still lacking?
Jesus said to him, If you wish to
be complete, go and sell your possessions and
give to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven.
And come, follow me.
But when the young man heard this statement,
he went away grieving, for he was one
who owned much property.
And Jesus said to his disciples, Truly I
say to you, It is hard for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Again I say to you, It is easier
for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of God.
When the disciples heard this, they were very
astonished and said, Then who can be saved?
And looking at them, Jesus said to them,
With people this is impossible, but with God
all things are possible.
Then Peter said to him, Behold, we have
left everything and followed you.
What then will there be for us?
And Jesus said to him, Truly I say
to you, that you who have followed me
in the regeneration when the Son of Man
will sit on his glorious throne, you also
shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel.
And everyone who has left houses or brothers
or sisters or father or mother or children
or farms for my name's sake will receive
many times as much and will inherit eternal
life.
But many who are first will be last
and the last first.
This message was conceived about two weeks ago
as I was praying concerning the impossibility of
giving another 3.8 million dollars to education
for exaltation and growing without growing.
Here I am preaching and praying about the
Gideon venture, the Isaac factor, the coin in
the fish's mouth, and lifting up this great
truth that God very often chooses to act
in the world in such a way that
highlights the helplessness of man and the omnipotence
of God.
Three hundred Israelites defeating 120,000 Midianites and
an old woman barren and beyond menopause giving
birth to a child and a coin shows
up in a fish's mouth to pay taxes
with and we lift it up and say
precisely because God does the impossible, let's pray
toward this pledging.
And an inconsistency in my prayer life and
my preaching landed on me with tremendous force.
Namely, that here we come toward the end
of the decade at the beginning of which
God gave us a prayer goal we believe
called 2,000 by 2,000 and it
feels so utterly impossible to finish it that
I've just not been praying about it anymore
nor have I been lifting it up in
your presence and calling you to pray about
it.
Turn to the back of the bulletin because
most of you here don't know what I'm
talking about.
I asked them to print this here.
In 1990, we just felt led by God
to have a prayer goal.
We called it a prayer goal.
Lord, we want to send 2,000 missionaries
of these various kinds career missionaries, short-termers
of one kind, short-termers of another kind,
pastoral ministry through the apprenticeship program, parachurch ministry,
church planning people going out from us, nationals
brought over from third world country and sent
back.
We want to send out 2,000 people
like that in this decade, closing in eight
months from now.
Not last December, eight months from now.
And we stand at 988, you see there.
We're not halfway there.
We're about halfway.
And the second half of 2,000 by
2,000 was that we wanted to harvest
2,000 people.
That is 2,000 professions of faith.
Before last Sunday where 47 people checked off
on their cards that they were professing faith
in Christ, it stood at 507.
That's about one a week.
Unlike the New Testament, the Lord added unto
the church daily as many as were being
saved.
We could say the Lord added unto the
church one a week, maybe.
So here we stand with eight months to
go.
And on the one hand, I'm crying out
with all the might I can muster, precisely
because it is impossible, let's pray for $9
million.
And on the other side, I'm letting this
just kind of fade into the sunset of
the decade for the same reason.
It feels impossible.
That's a disconnect, right?
Something's wrong here.
And so I dealt with that and took
it to the staff retreat that we had
a week ago, and I just laid out
before them, I said, I feel real inauthentic
right now.
And here's why.
Pushing like crazy to have everybody commit big
time to building that building for $9 million
and letting 2,000 by 2,000 just
drop out of our vocabulary.
Why?
Shoot.
It's impossible.
To which somebody should have shouted, So this
sermon is intended to fix the inconsistency for
the next eight months and to put us
on a trajectory in which we will give
as much energy and focus to praying that
2,000 by 2,000, impossible as it
is, be done before the end of the
year.
Why not?
Same logic applies.
Same sermons could have been used.
What's wrong?
Father, as we look into this text now
and let Jesus talk to us about what's
possible and what's impossible, I pray for my
own mind and heart and tongue that I
would speak the truth as Jesus is presenting
it here and Matthew is being his mediator
for us in these words.
And I pray that these friends would listen
with spiritual ears and with the ears of
their hearts and that our eyes would be
opened and that a great work of prayer
and a great work of evangelism and a
great work of faith and hope and expectation
would be wrought in our midst so that
we would not give ourselves just to laying
hold on you for one impossible thing, but
for three impossible things.
$9 million pledged by October 15.
1,500 more people brought to Christ and
another 1,000 people sent out from us.
Lord, you are God.
Come, speak now, I pray.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Jesus addresses the issue for us here in
this text that Justin just read.
In particular, the winning of 1,500 people
to Christ in the next eight months.
So that's what we'll focus on, but you'll
see the application to the others as well.
The first observation I want to make about
this text is that it is about salvation.
There are six ways that Jesus describes salvation
in this text, so let's be sure we
see what the text is about, because that's
what I want to be about.
In the next eight months, I want this
church to be about that for ourselves and
for the friends and relatives and colleagues and
classmates that we have, so let's be sure
we see it in the text.
Verse 16, number 1.
Someone came to him and said, Teacher, what
good thing shall I do that I may
have eternal life?
So that's the first way salvation is described.
Eternal life, having eternal life.
I want that, you want that, and you
know lots of people you want that for.
Number 2, verse 17 at the end.
If you wish to enter into life, keep
the commandments.
There's the second way.
Enter into life.
That's the second way of describing salvation.
Third, verse 23.
Jesus said to his disciples, Truly I say
to you, it is hard for a rich
man to...
Here's the third way.
Enter the kingdom of heaven.
So you have having eternal life, entering into
life, and now entering into the kingdom of
heaven.
They're all referring to salvation.
Fourth, verse 24.
It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to...
Fourth, enter the kingdom of God.
There's no difference between the kingdom of heaven
and the kingdom of God.
But here's a fourth way of saying what
it means when salvation happens.
Fifth, verse 25.
When the disciples heard this, they were very
astonished and said, Then who can be saved?
Now there's our word.
Our beloved word, salvation, or saved.
Don't ever mock this word.
Don't ever tell jokes about this word.
As though one little teeny brand of Christians
are concerned with saving people.
And the rest do other stuff.
This is Jesus' word.
This is the disciples' word.
This is a biblical word.
It is precious.
Everybody in the world needs to be saved.
That is, have eternal life.
That is, enter the kingdom of heaven.
That is, enter into life.
That is, enter the kingdom of God.
He's just filling up the meaning for us
here.
You don't have to walk out of here
wondering, What does that churchy word, saved, mean?
Verse 29, number 6.
Everyone who has left houses or brothers or
sisters or father or mother or children or
farms for my name's sake will receive many
times as much and will, sixth, inherit eternal
life.
So the future dimension is being brought in
here.
There's an inheritance coming called eternal life.
And if you are saved, you will enter
into and inherit eternal life.
So this text, this sermon, and this church,
and we as individuals ought to be about
this.
Salvation.
What does he say about salvation?
One main thing I'm going to focus on,
because I don't have time to focus on
anymore.
The most striking thing he says about salvation
is that the conversion which leads to it
is humanly impossible.
And what makes this so striking is that
he says it in response to a question
that doesn't ask for that answer and didn't
have to get that answer.
He brought this up.
I don't bring it up.
The disciples didn't bring it up.
Jesus brought it up and he didn't have
to bring it up, which makes it all
the more striking.
We'll see that in just a moment.
So let's unpack this text with a view
to that striking truth.
Verse 20.
This man thinks that he has kept the
whole law.
Jesus had just summed up the whole law
in verse 19.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
All the law hangs on that, according to
chapter 7.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And this man says, all these things I
have kept, what am I still lacking?
Now, I don't think Jesus agrees with him.
And to bring out the problem and expose
this man's love for his money, the satisfaction
he finds in his money, the security he
finds in his money, so that he's not
a loving person, especially to the poor, Jesus
says, if you wish to be complete, perfect,
go, sell your possessions, give to the poor,
you'll have treasure in heaven, come follow me.
Four things.
Unshackle your heart from your possessions.
Have a heart for the poor.
Treasure God in heaven.
Follow me as your only hope.
And the text says in verse 22, he
went away grieving, for he was one who
owned much property.
He wouldn't do it.
To which now, Jesus responds in verse 23,
truly, truly, I say to you, it is
hard for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven.
Again, I'm going to say it another way
and make my meaning clear.
Again, I say to you, it is easier
for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of God.
One thing is crystal clear.
Camels can't go through the eye of a
needle.
And if you have ever heard a preacher
say or read in a book that it's
a reference to a low gate in the
wall called the needle's eye through which a
camel would have to get down real low
and get all the burdens off his back
and thus it's a spiritual lesson about humbling
yourself before God.
Forget it.
There is no such gate and it contradicts
the context.
Jesus makes very clear what he means in
the following verses.
It's he who uses the word impossible, not
me.
With man it is impossible.
That's Jesus' word, not mine.
There's no doubt about what this means here.
Camels cannot go through the eye of a
needle.
Now, the disciples hear this spoken about this
rich man who just walked away and they
are absolutely astonished.
See that in verse 25?
And they ask, who then can be saved?
Now, here's the question that I said a
moment ago Jesus responds to in a way
he didn't have to respond this way.
They were asking a question, okay, you say
rich people can't be.
Who can be?
Why not say believers can be?
Or poor can be?
Or people who follow me can be.
He didn't answer their question.
He continues on the same road he was
on with the camel.
He said, with human beings, this, what you
just asked about, who then can be saved,
this is impossible.
But with God, all things are possible.
Now, let's get real clear here.
What is this referred to?
This is impossible.
A rich young man has just been unwilling
to leave his possessions, care for the poor,
treasure God, and follow Jesus.
To which Jesus has responded, how hard it
is to be converted when you're rich.
To which the disciples do not pick up
and talk about the rich.
They broaden it out and they say, who
then can be saved?
They see something here that says, wait a
minute, you talk about that towards this man?
It sounds like you're saying salvation for anybody
is like that.
Or do you want to tell us that
there's a class of people for whom it's
not impossible?
It's impossible for the rich, but it's not
impossible for another class of people.
And Jesus won't answer that question.
Because there is no other class.
They're right.
The disciples are absolutely right at this point.
This is not a money issue, this is
a heart issue.
There's a heart that cannot change without divine
power.
The leopard can't change his spots.
The tiger can't change his stripes.
And humans can't make themselves stop loving money.
This is impossible with man.
Jesus could have answered the question totally different
the way that disciples were asking it totally
differently.
And he picks up on their broadening it
out to everybody.
And he says, right.
Nobody can be saved.
It's impossible.
But with God, all things are possible.
So what's impossible?
Conversion unto salvation or eternal life is impossible
with man.
But all things are possible with God.
It's the same thing Jesus taught in John
6, 65.
When he said, no one can come to
me unless it be granted to him from
the Father.
It's the same thing Paul taught in Romans
8, 7.
The mind of the flesh does not submit
to the law of God, for indeed it
cannot.
It's the same thing Paul taught in 1
Corinthians 2, 14.
The natural man does not welcome the things
of the spirit because they are foolishness to
him.
And he cannot understand them because they are
spiritually appraised.
It's the same thing he taught in Ephesians
2, 5.
We are dead in trespasses and sins.
It is impossible for a dead man to
be converted unless God does the humanly impossible.
That's what Jesus is teaching.
When he didn't have to teach it.
They didn't ask him to say that.
They just said, who can be saved?
And his answer was, nobody, unless God does
the humanly impossible.
Now, there's a theology, an interpretation that goes
like this.
That's right.
All human beings are fallen and depraved and
can't move towards God.
But God, in his great mercy, gives universal
grace to all people.
Overcomes that fallen deadness.
Brings them to a point of ability to
believe.
Then the decisive thing happens.
Whether they choose that God-given liberty to
believe or not.
Apart from any added work from God.
So yes, it is impossible.
Apart from the universal grace of God.
And God gives that universal grace to everybody.
And therefore, the reason anybody does not believe
is not because of the impossibility.
That interpretation will not work in this text.
It absolutely will not work.
Look, here's a rich man.
Who loves his riches so much that he
chooses to have them rather than treasure in
heaven.
Chooses to have them rather than help the
poor.
Chooses to have them rather than follow Jesus.
And Jesus explains this tragic choice.
This man is making a tragic choice.
How does he explain this tragic choice?
He explains it like this.
Or does he explain it like this?
Everybody in the world, including this man.
Has received a universal work of grace in
their lives.
To make it possible for them now to
do what they have to do to get
eternal life.
And he waits to see if they'll do
it.
Is that what Jesus says is the explanation?
It's emphatically the opposite of what he says.
What Jesus says is, here is a single
individual human being.
Under that interpretation, he has universal grace working
in his life.
He comes to me with that universal grace
working in his life.
I tell him what he must do and
he refuses to do it.
My explanation is, it is impossible.
The other interpretation is useless to explain what's
happening here.
It's useless.
The issue here is not, how did that
man get here?
The issue is, when he hears the gospel
word from Jesus, he doesn't obey at this
moment in this time with this decision before
him.
And that's what Jesus is explaining.
Why didn't this man follow me?
Answer, with man.
This is impossible.
That's the issue here.
That other theology doesn't even come close to
explaining this text.
What we have here is the Lord Jesus
pronouncing a very powerful sentence on us as
human beings.
We are so sin sick.
We are so depraved.
We are so fallen.
We are so blind.
We are so rebellious.
We are so dead that there will never
be a freedom from love of money, a
love of the poor, a treasuring of God
in heaven, and a following after Jesus as
our only hope, if something supernatural beyond what
humans can do happens decisively.
That's what Jesus is teaching so clearly here.
All things are possible with God stands now
at Bethlehem not only over $9 million.
It stands over your son and your daughter
who are not walking with the Lord.
All things are possible with God stands over
your mother and your father, who have you
prayed for for the time you got saved.
All things are possible with God stands over
your sister and your brother, who are so
callous to spiritual things.
They call themselves Christians and they go to
church three or four times a year and
they have no spiritual bone in their body.
And you're just about ready to give up.
All things are possible with God stands over
your colleague at work, your Jewish friends and
your Muslim friends and the Somalis.
All things are possible with God stands over
the hardest sinner you know.
Nobody is too hard for God to save.
That's the point of this text.
Nobody is too hard for God to save.
That's the point of this text.
And God saves and does what is humanly
impossible.
So here we are at a fork in
the road in this sermon.
It's a fork for individuals and it's a
fork for us as a body of believers.
Let me give you the two roads that
we have to choose here now.
At this point in the sermon, we can
elevate our human reasonings above Scripture and say,
well, if the Bible teaches that conversion unto
eternal life is impossible for man, then men
can't be held accountable and there's no point
in evangelizing and there's no point in praying
and so there's only fatalism and so I'm
checking out.
You can do that with your mind if
you want.
You can elevate your reasonings above the plain
teachings of Scripture to the opposite of all
those conclusions, or you can get on another
road and you can say, King Jesus has
taught me that both I and everybody I
know are hopelessly dead in trespasses and sins
and can never save ourselves.
And unless he does what is supernaturally necessary
and what is humanly impossible, I and all
my friends will be lost and he has
promised with God all these impossible things are
possible and therefore I will contemplate the hardest
sinner I know, the person I love most
whom I prayed for the longest, and I
will not give up and I will with
all boldness and all courage and all hope
and all love press on in my prayers
and my witness believing that all things are
possible with God.
That's the other road you can walk on.
You can either elevate your mind and make
hash out of the Bible or you can
take it as it stands and believe the
glorious promises of God's omnipotent power to save
and lay hold on it in prayer and
open your mouth to speak the gospel which
God says is the power of God unto
salvation and labor until Jesus comes to save
as many as you can.
And I can tell you which road I'm
on and where I want us for the
next eight months and as many years as
God gives me breath and that's this road
right here.
That for eight months we won't just lift
up our prayers over nine million dollars.
We will lift up our prayers over fifteen
hundred unsaved people and more and say this
is not hard for God.
Three thousand in a day in Acts 2.
And it isn't too hard for God to
send out a thousand missionaries.
So there are now three impossible things that
we're going to give ourselves to and I
just want to close by calling you to
join me and the staff and the elders
and the vision team in three practical steps.
Here they are.
Number one.
You've got to contemplate now.
All right.
If I'm going to join Pastor John on
this road of believing God for the impossible
to save as well as give then what
practical steps could I take?
Number one.
I called Dan Holst on the phone last
night after he emailed me and I said
let's do it Dan.
We'll call it the First Sunday Sunrise Prayer.
And we'll do what we did for three
Sundays moving toward the Challenge Sunday.
That is next Sunday is the first Sunday
of May at 630 in the Fellowship Hall.
Dan Holst will lead us in an hour
and a half of laying hold on God
for three impossible things.
Not just one but three.
3.7 million dollars more in pledges by
October and the salvation of 1500 people by
December and the sending out of a thousand
more people from us.
Impossible though they may seem.
So the first Sunday of every month until
the end of the year we will pray
from 630 to 8 on Sunday morning.
Would you be here next Sunday?
Please and join us.
Second.
We've always for now two years been doing
the First Tuesday Fast.
So that's this coming Tuesday and we'll keep
on with the First Tuesday Fast.
That simply means we skip our lunch as
a staff.
We invite as many of you as will
come to skip your lunch and pray for
an hour.
12.30 to 1.30 on Tuesday.
And now we won't just fast for the
coming of the Lord Jesus as we've been
fasting.
We'll fast for the pledges.
We'll fast for the harvesting and we'll fast
for the sending.
12.30 Tuesday.
First Tuesday of every month for the rest
of this year.
Lastly.
Do you remember me saying several times in
the last weeks?
Don't do the math.
Pray God to do the miracle.
And I got my financial people upset at
me.
Where's Scott?
I saw you over here somewhere.
I'm glad there are people that do math
in this church.
I really am.
But I said don't do the math.
Ask God to do the miracle.
Well, do the math on 1,500 souls.
Here's the second grade question.
How many people, precious people created in the
image of God in your family and in
your circles, How many people each do 1
,500 people have to lead to Christ this
year for there to be 1,500 professions
of faith?
Tell me the answer.
One person each.
Great months of those who've attended these two
services.
And that's closer to 2,000.
So, will you join me?
I'm going to pray this very personally for
myself.
Should I pray with them on Sunday morning
on the first Sundays?
Should I pray with them on the first
Tuesdays?
Should I go to one of the seven
prayer meetings there are every week in this
church, always listed in dark print on the
back of the bulletin there.
No excuse for five people on Wednesday night
in my judgment at 545.
Why not 15?
Why not 50?
Where are we?
Let's pray together.
Let's unite our hearts and pray.
And then ask God particularly to give us
one person.
I know that in this room right now,
almost everybody deep inside would say, I would
love to have the joy of leading one
person with my witness into a profession of
saving faith in Jesus.
That would make my life.
Because some of you have never done it.
And so maybe this would be the year.
Maybe this would be the year when you
personally would do it.
Let's pray.
Father in heaven, as we bow in these
closing seconds, I ask that you would give
us unity on the road towards bold, God
-exalting, Christ-centered evangelism, prayer, and
giving.
Whom have we to turn to in a
world of such hardness of heart and callousness
and indifference and world saturation than you?
And so we do turn to you.
And I ask that you would give us
a sweet burden to pray for the giving
and pray for the prayer and pray for
the evangelism in order that 1,500 people
would profess Christ in the next eight months.
A thousand of us would be sent out
and $3 million more would be pledged.
Would you stand up for a benediction?
Now, by the power of the Holy Spirit
and in the name of Jesus, may the
Lord grant you the freedom and the love
and the joy and the power of trusting
him.
To give and to pray and to witness
so that you could be involved in the
great harvest and the great joy.
And all the people said, Amen.
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