Extraordinary Ordinary - Part 5
June 26, 2022Today's message was given by Pastor Patrick. A video of the message is here. "God makes the ordinary extraordinary." Today's focus was the story of the rich young ruler (Mark 10). Click here for the Conversation Starter for the week that TimberCreek Church provided.
I first looked for uses of the word surrender in the Old Testament (beyond just the Torah). I could not find any with the Christian meaning of surrendering all to Jesus. The OT uses were all surrendering to an enemy or other men, all in what you could call earthly situations. The Torah speaks more of having faith in God, that is trusting that God will do the right thing. And your faith in God is to be expressed in terms of ethical behavior to your fellow man.
The God of the Torah does ask us to fear Him. This is not fear as in runaway yelling and screaming. It's more like being in awe of Him, understanding that He can do anything, including bring you to justice.
Interestingly, the God of the Torah also commands us to love Him. This may get closer to what the rich young ruler was being asked to do, put God first in your life as you might put those you love first in your life or as you might put things you love first (as in the case of the man in the story). Prager points out that God's asking us to love Him also suggests that God understands He's not easy to love what with all the injustice and human suffering in the world.
It's also interesting to note that Israel means "argue/struggle with God" and Islam means "submit to God."
The notion of having God as one's #1 priority is very much in keeping with the first of the Ten Commandments: "no other gods before me." And we're not just talking about pagan gods here. It can be anything you put before God, like wealth in the case of our rich young ruler to any of a very long list of things we tend to care about more than God today, like fame, position, work, art, education, etc.
Patrick also mentioned the phrase, "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom" (Mark 10:25). As with earlier topics, I could not find any Torah references to a camel and the eye of the needle. But in looking around, I discovered some interesting notes. 1. The notion that the eye of the needle is a small door in a larger gate is likely not right. There is no evidence such doors existed in Jesus' time or earlier. 2. One interesting reference was to a common Aramaic expression that if you made friends with someone easily it was like sending thread through the eye of a needle, but if the process was hard, it was like sending a rope through the eye of the needle. Note, too, that in Aramaic, the word for camel can also mean rope. 3. Lastly, the expression is not to suggest that the feat is impossible. A rich man can enter the Kingdom if he works at it, meaning, gives God first priority.
Patrick made the point that Jesus wasn't turning the young ruler away, rather the young ruler turned himself away. It was not a punishment not to get into the Kingdom but rather a natural consequence of the young ruler's actions. If you don't fix the air conditioning, the room gets hot. It's not a punishment, it's a natural consequence. Moses explains this sort of thing to the Jews in the wilderness in Deuteronomy 32: God has no need for the Jews if they do not take up God's mission for them of being "a light unto the nations." No hard feelings, I'll just get someone else. Some say God did get another group, the Christians. Even the Jews recognize that much of the world knows about the Torah not because of the Jews but because of the Christians.