In today's message, we explored the story of the rich young ruler, a narrative that challenges our understanding of achievement and surrender in our spiritual lives. This story, found in three of the four Gospels, presents a young man who approaches Jesus with a sincere question about eternal life. Despite his moral and material wealth, he is left unsatisfied, seeking something more profound. His question, "What good deed must I do to have eternal life?" reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel. Jesus responds by listing commandments that the young man claims to have kept, but then challenges him to sell all he has and follow Him, highlighting the young man's attachment to his possessions.

This story is particularly relevant to those of us in Silicon Valley, a place known for its culture of achievement and success. We often measure our worth by what we accomplish, but the gospel turns this notion on its head. It is not about what we achieve but what we receive. The rich young ruler's story reminds us that the gospel is always received, never achieved. Jesus is not merely an addition to our lives; He is the foundation. The young man's sorrowful departure underscores the difficulty of surrendering our idols, whether they be wealth, status, or self-reliance.

Jesus' interaction with the rich young ruler also challenges us to examine our own lives. Are there areas where we are holding back from full surrender? Are we trying to add Jesus to our lives without allowing Him to transform us? The call to follow Jesus is a call to let go of our self-constructed identities and embrace a life of surrender and trust in Him. This story invites us to reflect on our own spiritual journeys and consider what it means to truly follow Jesus, not just in word but in deed.

**Key Takeaways:**

1. **The Illusion of Achievement:** The rich young ruler's story illustrates the futility of trying to achieve salvation through our own efforts. Despite his moral and material success, he lacked the one thing that truly mattered: a heart fully surrendered to God. This reminds us that the gospel is not about what we can achieve but what we are willing to receive from God. [37:19]

2. **The Challenge of Surrender:** Jesus' call to the young man to sell all he had and follow Him highlights the challenge of surrendering our idols. Whether it's wealth, status, or self-reliance, these idols can prevent us from fully experiencing the life God has for us. True freedom comes from letting go and trusting in God's provision. [41:37]

3. **The Real Gospel:** The gospel is not a self-help tool or a moral guide; it is the power of God for salvation. It requires us to acknowledge our need for a Savior and to receive His grace. This story challenges us to move beyond a superficial understanding of faith and embrace the transformative power of the gospel. [44:42]

4. **The Cost of Following Jesus:** Following Jesus is not about adding Him to our lives but allowing Him to transform us. It requires a willingness to let go of our plans and dreams and to trust in God's greater purpose for our lives. This surrender is not a loss but a gain, as God's plans for us are far better than anything we could imagine. [49:36]

5. **The Invitation to Transformation:** The rich young ruler's encounter with Jesus invites us to examine our own lives and consider what it means to truly follow Him. Are there areas where we are holding back from full surrender? Are we willing to let go of our idols and embrace the life God has for us? This story challenges us to live lives of radical trust and obedience. [53:02]

**Youtube Chapters:**

- [00:00] - Welcome
- [02:15] - Introduction to the Lent Series
- [05:30] - Hope for Everyone Initiative
- [08:45] - The Cost of Connections
- [12:00] - The Rich Young Ruler's Question
- [15:30] - Jesus' Response to the Young Man
- [19:00] - The Challenge of Surrender
- [22:45] - The Real Gospel
- [26:30] - The Cost of Following Jesus
- [30:00] - The Invitation to Transformation
- [33:45] - The Illusion of Achievement
- [37:19] - The Challenge of Surrender
- [41:37] - The Real Gospel
- [44:42] - The Cost of Following Jesus
- [49:36] - The Invitation to Transformation
- [53:02] - Questions for Reflection

**Bible Study Discussion Guide**

**Bible Reading:**
- Matthew 19:16-22

**Observation Questions:**
1. What question does the rich young ruler ask Jesus, and how does Jesus initially respond? [19:00]
2. How does Jesus challenge the young man's understanding of the commandments? [19:00]
3. What is the young man's reaction to Jesus' final instruction, and why does he respond this way? [19:00]

**Interpretation Questions:**
1. Why does Jesus list the commandments related to human relationships before addressing the young man's wealth? What might this suggest about the young man's priorities? [19:00]
2. How does the story of the rich young ruler illustrate the difference between achieving and receiving in the context of the gospel? [37:19]
3. What does the young man's sorrowful departure reveal about the challenges of surrendering personal idols? [41:37]

**Application Questions:**
1. Reflect on your own life: Are there areas where you are trying to achieve your way into God's favor rather than receiving His grace? How can you shift your mindset this week? [37:19]
2. Consider the idols in your life, such as wealth, status, or self-reliance. What steps can you take to begin surrendering these to God? [41:37]
3. The sermon mentioned the challenge of adding Jesus to our lives without allowing Him to transform us. In what ways might you be guilty of this, and how can you invite Jesus to truly transform you? [44:42]
4. How can you practice letting go of your self-constructed identity and embrace a life of surrender and trust in God? What practical steps can you take this week? [49:36]
5. The rich young ruler's story invites us to examine our spiritual journeys. What does it mean for you to truly follow Jesus in both word and deed? [53:02]
6. Identify a specific area in your life where you feel God is calling you to surrender. What is one action you can take this week to begin that process? [53:02]
7. How can you cultivate a heart that is open to receiving God's grace rather than striving to earn it? What changes in your daily routine might support this shift? [49:36]

Day 1: The Illusion of Achievement
The story of the rich young ruler serves as a poignant reminder of the futility of trying to achieve salvation through our own efforts. Despite his moral and material success, the young man lacked the one thing that truly mattered: a heart fully surrendered to God. This narrative challenges the common belief that our worth is determined by our accomplishments. Instead, it emphasizes that the gospel is not about what we can achieve but what we are willing to receive from God. The young man's question, "What good deed must I do to have eternal life?" reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel, which is always received, never achieved. This story invites us to shift our focus from self-reliance to reliance on God's grace. [37:19]

"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, ESV)

Reflection: In what areas of your life are you relying on your achievements for validation? How can you begin to shift your focus to receiving God's grace today?


Day 2: The Challenge of Surrender
Jesus' call to the young man to sell all he had and follow Him highlights the challenge of surrendering our idols. Whether it's wealth, status, or self-reliance, these idols can prevent us from fully experiencing the life God has for us. The young man's sorrowful departure underscores the difficulty of letting go of what we hold dear. True freedom comes from letting go and trusting in God's provision. This story challenges us to examine our own lives and identify the idols that may be hindering our spiritual growth. It invites us to embrace a life of surrender and trust in God's greater purpose for our lives. [41:37]

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (1 John 2:15, ESV)

Reflection: What is one idol in your life that you find difficult to surrender? What steps can you take today to begin letting go and trusting in God's provision?


Day 3: The Real Gospel
The gospel is not a self-help tool or a moral guide; it is the power of God for salvation. It requires us to acknowledge our need for a Savior and to receive His grace. The story of the rich young ruler challenges us to move beyond a superficial understanding of faith and embrace the transformative power of the gospel. It is not about adding Jesus to our lives but allowing Him to transform us from the inside out. This narrative invites us to reflect on our own spiritual journeys and consider what it means to truly follow Jesus, not just in word but in deed. [44:42]

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." (Romans 1:16, ESV)

Reflection: How have you been treating the gospel as a self-help tool rather than the power of God for salvation? What changes can you make to embrace its transformative power in your life?


Day 4: The Cost of Following Jesus
Following Jesus is not about adding Him to our lives but allowing Him to transform us. It requires a willingness to let go of our plans and dreams and to trust in God's greater purpose for our lives. This surrender is not a loss but a gain, as God's plans for us are far better than anything we could imagine. The story of the rich young ruler challenges us to consider the cost of following Jesus and to embrace a life of radical trust and obedience. It invites us to let go of our self-constructed identities and embrace the identity that God has for us. [49:36]

"And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'" (Luke 9:23, ESV)

Reflection: What is one area of your life where you find yourself holding back from surrendering to Jesus? What would surrendering this area to Him actually look like in terms of daily habits?


Day 5: The Invitation to Transformation
The rich young ruler's encounter with Jesus invites us to examine our own lives and consider what it means to truly follow Him. Are there areas where we are holding back from full surrender? Are we willing to let go of our idols and embrace the life God has for us? This story challenges us to live lives of radical trust and obedience. It is an invitation to transformation, to let go of our self-reliance and embrace a life of faith and trust in God's provision. This narrative encourages us to reflect on our spiritual journeys and to take steps towards a deeper, more authentic relationship with Jesus. [53:02]

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV)

Reflection: What steps can you take today to move towards a deeper, more authentic relationship with Jesus? How can you embrace the transformation that comes from being a new creation in Christ?

"Now, I don't know about you, but it feels a little bit like Christianity is having kind of a moment in Silicon Valley. If you've been paying attention with influential tech executives and venture capitalists, we are hearing about a new wave of interest in the ethical and inspirational values of Jesus from some very unlikely people. And that's such a good thing. I don't want to minimize that, but there is more to Jesus than sort of these ideas, than just the ethical, inspirational values that I might add to an otherwise existing way of living or thinking." [00:28:32] (37 seconds) Edit Clip


"And we all know that at least in part, that's kind of the game you play as you try to get into college. But the good news of Jesus is way different than that. See, the gospel, Jesus dying so that we can live with Him forever in a forever kingdom, is not something that we can achieve. And the good news is it's never been something that we can achieve. And so over the next few minutes, we are going to be reminded that the gospel is always received, never achieved in our life." [00:30:21] (29 seconds) Edit Clip


"Now this might be one of those passages for you that you can kind of just breeze through because you've heard it before and you're like, I think I get the main point. What we say often when we come to passages like this is don't allow familiarity with the passage to rob you of transforming work that God wants to do in your life today through his word in this passage. I think that we miss a lot." [00:33:07] (23 seconds) Edit Clip


"And he has what everyone around him would have considered to be enough to help him feel whole and happy and experience peace. But yet he wanted more. He wasn't even maybe sure what he wanted. He wanted something different. He wanted something better. And some of you, that's why you're exploring God, because you've gotten everything that your world and this world can offer you, and you've discovered it's not enough. And I would argue it's because you were made for more than this world can deliver." [00:34:50] (27 seconds) Edit Clip


"Do you actually love God with your heart and your life? Is he your first priority? And so when Jesus responds with one final commandment after the rich young ruler says, I've been doing all that stuff, I'm doing great, Jesus responds with a question or a challenge that is intentionally unachievable by asking him to sell everything and give it to the poor, a command that Jesus does not give everyone, but he can see the moral problem in the heart of the rich young ruler." [00:36:18] (29 seconds) Edit Clip


"Before he could receive it, Jesus, he needed to show him that receiving it is the only way to experience it. You can't do some achieving and then ask Jesus to fill in the rest. It's either you work to achieve it or you actively receive it. The task to sell everything and give it to the poor, living in light of the kingdom of heaven, it was too heavy a burden for him to live. Because he still wanted a life that he was largely achieving." [00:37:34] (27 seconds) Edit Clip


"Second, he saw the real gospel, at least in part. See, his version of Christianity was something he could add to his life, something he could do in his power. When the gospel is something that we try to achieve, it will only ever create more striving, more turmoil. But for us, when we see Jesus flagging that in the life of the rich young ruler, I hope he flags it in us too." [00:39:06] (25 seconds) Edit Clip


"Finally, the third thing that the rich young ruler walked away because of is that Jesus saw the real him. See, Jesus, he had seen through all the performance management, the moral relativism, the resume building, everything that he had done up to this point, and he got personal really quick. Jesus kind of like rope-a-doped the rich young ruler. And if you don't know what that is, it's a boxing term that was made popular by Muhammad Ali." [00:40:14] (24 seconds) Edit Clip


"Jesus will not share the throne of your life. And you wouldn't want him to anyway. It requires full surrender to experience the full life that he has for you. And that's sense of growing in greater surrender allows greater freedom, that the life we live is not so that God will love us, but because He loves us. In a culture where everything is about what you achieve, you are here because you are really good at that game." [00:43:02] (30 seconds) Edit Clip


"God's rescue mission for you and the plan of the world, don't forget that the gospel is always received, never achieved. And if you're pushing back in your own mind and heart right now and going like, well, how much do you really mean? I mean like all the way. It's 100% received. It's 0% achieved." [00:43:51] (19 seconds) Edit Clip


"Jesus is not offering medicine to cure the disease of sin. He is bringing the paddles of life to bring the dead back from the grave. And you are simultaneously created in the image of God with infinite dignity, value, and worth. And because of the rebellion that we all walk in as humanity, we are without hope apart from him." [00:50:07] (21 seconds) Edit Clip

Good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome. Welcome back to our series that we're doing leading up to Easter together, a Lent series or springtime series for us.

I hope that if you're a person who maybe church and faith is a very new thing to you, you've grabbed onto some things and tools to be able to prepare for Easter, maybe in a brand new way. And for some of you, this is just deepening the opportunity to experience a tradition for you that you step into every year. No matter which end of that spectrum or along the way you're a part of, we're so grateful.

Last week, Scott spent some time challenging us about the cost of slowing down and understanding how we embrace the pace of appreciating Jesus as the fuel of our formation in Him. If you missed it, you can always find it online at menlo.church. I'd encourage you to take a look.

Now, I had a chance last week to visit a couple of our campuses, which is always a really fun thing to be able to meet some new people, to shake some hands, as well as to see some old friends. But last week, one of the cool things that I got to do was see something that our Hope for Everyone initiative fueled, which is we installed and launched a brand new camera system.

Because of what you heard about earlier in our Hope for Everyone initiative, we were able to completely replace and upgrade an aging infrastructure that serves everything we do for all of our services, how it streams to campuses, goes online to around the world. It's a testament to the staff team and volunteers that made the system that we had before work as long as it did, but it was actively failing.

I hope that you've already noticed the difference. It's one that we'll continue to refine and tune up in the coming weeks. But if you are a part of that team that calls Menlo home and gives, you give to the Hope for Everyone initiative. Thank you so much. It helps us to do this and so much more. I think God's going to use it as we continue to innovate with it for years to come.

I want to welcome all of our Bay Area campuses in Saratoga, Mountain View, Menlo Park, San Mateo, and those of you joining us online, whether you're in the Bay Area or around the world. We're so glad that you're here today.

I think that our passage today will feel uniquely relevant to those of us in the Bay Area. We've been talking about the cost of connections over the last number of weeks, and we've been talking about it on a bunch of different levels. But our passage today might feel the most personal, the most relevant for the average Silicon Valley person of any that we've studied so far, especially in a moment where Christianity is feeling uniquely interesting to a culture around us that is looking for an edge, that's trying to figure out, "I have so much, but it's not delivering what I thought it would. Could this idea of Christianity sort of put me over the top?"

So we're going to dive into that. But before we dig into the rest of our time together, I'm going to pray for us. If you've never been here before or never heard me speak, before I speak, I pray kneeling. I hope that all of us can humble ourselves in a way that the young ruler that we're about to be introduced to couldn't.

So no matter where you are in your own personal faith, what you think about God or faith, would you pray with me?

God, thank you so much. Thank you for the unique promise that we have in you, that your love will never fail us, that there is nothing that this world needs that you can't deliver. So whatever we've been trying to strive and achieve on our own, would you shine a spotlight on it, God? Help us to see the gap between what we can achieve and what's available to receive. Help us to experience that now together. In Jesus' name, amen.

Now, I don't know about you, but it feels a little bit like Christianity is having kind of a moment in Silicon Valley. If you've been paying attention with influential tech executives and venture capitalists, we are hearing about a new wave of interest in the ethical and inspirational values of Jesus from some very unlikely people.

That's such a good thing. I don't want to minimize that, but there is more to Jesus than sort of these ideas, than just the ethical, inspirational values that I might add to an otherwise existing way of living or thinking.

Last week, I spent some time with a number of our high school students in Mountain View. Shout out to Mountain View and high school students there. It was so great to learn about them and to experience words that Gen Z and Gen Alpha say that my kids tell me, and I don't know what they mean from them either.

Then to see committed adults who are investing in the lives of the next generation, we're so thankful for those. One group in particular that I really keyed into was our group of seniors that were talking about basically one topic. The topic of their conversation was college acceptance status. Like that was it.

When I was a kid, it was like, was it the big envelope or the little envelope? Which one did that mean? And now kids are like, why didn't they just email? Because we didn't really have email yet. That's why.

For them, they were having conversations about the visits that they had to different schools that were scheduled or not letting senioritis crater their grades and their chances of getting into the schools that they hope to get into, or whether their extracurriculars would be enough to get them in as they waited to hear back from some really unbelievable options. These were high-achieving students.

We all know that at least in part, that's kind of the game you play as you try to get into college. But the good news of Jesus is way different than that. See, the gospel, Jesus dying so that we can live with Him forever in a forever kingdom, is not something that we can achieve.

And the good news is it's never been something that we can achieve. So over the next few minutes, we are going to be reminded that the gospel is always received, never achieved in our life. If you are an achiever, it might be a challenging message for you to hear.

We have a lot of those in Silicon Valley. We talked about this, that Silicon Valley is not a place that you drift to. You decide to be here. You don't coast here. You know the cost, and you lean in because you want to be the best and you want to be among the best.

You have made your life in this place. Now, there are really great parts about that and ways that God uses that. There are also some really dark shadows that can drift into the way we view life and God as well.

Today, we're going to look at that through the life of someone who has often been called the rich young ruler. The story starts with a sincere person approaching Jesus with so much going for him, but one problem. That one problem leads him to ask the wrong question.

That's where we're going to begin in our time. I think he approached Jesus with the right motives, but his question reveals some core assumptions that he was making that are going to get in the way for him.

Over the next few minutes, you may decide some of those assumptions are ones you have as well. The story that we're going to read shows up in three of the four biographies of Jesus' life in the New Testament of your Bible. We're going to focus on Matthew's account of this story.

It begins this way: "And behold, a man came up to him saying, 'Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?' And he said to him, 'Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. 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. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

And the young man said back to him, 'All these I have kept. What do I still lack?' And Jesus said to him, 'If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions."

Now, this might be one of those passages for you that you can kind of just breeze through because you've heard it before and you're like, "I think I get the main point." What we say often when we come to passages like this is don't allow familiarity with the passage to rob you of the transforming work that God wants to do in your life today through His word in this passage.

I think that we miss a lot. In this moment in Jesus' ministry, His disciples have just, verses earlier, shooed kids away that were trying to come and see Jesus. Instead, Jesus actually welcomes the kids and says that we need to have childlike faith in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Not childish faith, but the kind of fully embracing of what childlike faith can be, that the hope of God can be found only in Jesus.

Here, the pendulum swings, and they see a high roller rolling up. They probably have dollar signs in their eyes, right? We get the idea of him as a rich young ruler by descriptions from all three different versions of this story that we have in the Bible.

But it's an important thing for you and me to see that he's not just a person of material wealth and influence. He actually has two kinds of wealth. He has material wealth. He also has moral wealth. He is living by the standards of the day better than what other people are living. Like he's doing lots of things that people would say, "Hey, he's a really good guy. He's trying really hard."

Now, when he recognizes that Jesus carries authority, he is admitting that he has need, that as much as he has going for him, he still is trying to surface what might give him a deeper sense of peace or accomplishment. He has what everyone around him would have considered to be enough to help him feel whole and happy and experience peace. But yet he wanted more. He wasn't even maybe sure what he wanted. He wanted something different. He wanted something better.

Some of you, that's why you're exploring God, because you've gotten everything that your world and this world can offer you, and you've discovered it's not enough. I would argue it's because you were made for more than this world can deliver. I think that's what the rich young ruler was sensing.

So for you, can you relate to the rich young ruler? His moral character was very high compared to his peers. He was ethical. He was kind. When Jesus asks him about several commands, he's quick to say that he was obeying them, right?

But there's something really important about the way Jesus sets up this conversation. See, all the commands that Jesus mentions to him are horizontal commands, commands that relate to how we treat one another. In Jewish tradition, Jesus is highlighting what are typically called second tablet commandments.

If you think about the Ten Commandments, they thought of first tablet commandments as vertical commandments between them and God, and second tablet commandments were horizontal in the way that we related to one another in the social order.

So Jesus asks him about second tablet commandments that he knew he would have good answers for, but then Jesus reminds him of the first tablet, basically saying, "Where is your heart really? Do you actually love God with your heart and your life? Is He your first priority?"

When Jesus responds with one final commandment after the rich young ruler says, "I've been doing all that stuff, I'm doing great," Jesus responds with a question or a challenge that is intentionally unachievable by asking him to sell everything and give it to the poor, a command that Jesus does not give everyone.

But He can see the moral problem in the heart of the rich young ruler. His idol, the false God that he has erected, is his stuff, and He wants to break down his achievement-oriented access to God, the way he sees his access into the kingdom of heaven.

He frames it as this way for the rich young ruler to be perfect, complete, lacking in nothing. Here's the way you would do it. The word points to this idea of everything you've been waiting for is just one step of obedience away. The problem is that that step of obedience required full surrender, which was the point in the first place.

This young man has been wanting this internal sense of peace and wholeness his entire life. Certainly, his young career was building towards, hoping for it. He had been working so hard to achieve it, and he had never received it.

Before he could receive it, Jesus needed to show him that receiving it is the only way to experience it. You can't do some achieving and then ask Jesus to fill in the rest. It's either you work to achieve it or you actively receive it.

The task to sell everything and give it to the poor, living in light of the kingdom of heaven, was too heavy a burden for him to live. Because he still wanted a life that he was largely achieving. Jesus did not ask other people to do this.

We just spent some time with Nicodemus, who was a person of significant wealth a few weeks ago. Jesus didn't ask him to do the same thing. But He knows, like a precision surgeon, exactly the part of the heart that the rich young ruler needs to see surrendered.

He wasn't after this man's money. He was after his heart. He could see that his material wealth had gotten in the way. The rich young ruler walks away grieving for a few reasons that I want to highlight in our time.

The first reason that he walks away is he met the real Jesus. In the words of the late, great Tim Keller, Jesus demands more and offers more than we ever dreamed or imagined, right? Jesus is offering him something he can't even calculate, and He's asking something of him that he can't possibly imagine.

Jesus cannot be contained into a comfortable or convenient part of your life. He's not a moral mascot. He's the God of the universe. He will be the one that calls the shots in your life. And that's the way you would want it anyway.

Second, he saw the real gospel, at least in part. See, his version of Christianity was something he could add to his life, something he could do in his power. When the gospel is something that we try to achieve, it will only ever create more striving, more turmoil.

But for us, when we see Jesus flagging that in the life of the rich young ruler, I hope He flags it in us too. The gospel offers full surrender to a real Jesus for a real hope.

Let's be careful not to let our faith become an identifier that serves us and not an identity that shapes us. I know in a moment like this for Christianity, in our moment where it's moved from being subversive and kind of underground to something that's even potentially worthwhile in the culture around us, for you to be like you're going to drop it on your LinkedIn profile this week, be careful that you don't jump into the same boat as the rich young ruler, thinking that everything you're achieving just needs a little bit of the seasoning of Jesus and the gospel.

That is a misunderstanding of what it is He offers. Finally, the third thing that the rich young ruler walked away because of is that Jesus saw the real him.

See, Jesus had seen through all the performance management, the moral relativism, the resume building, everything that he had done up to this point, and He got personal really quick. Jesus kind of like rope-a-doped the rich young ruler.

If you don't know what that is, it's a boxing term that was made popular by Muhammad Ali. The idea is that you have an opponent that you're letting think that they're getting to you. You're taking a bunch of hits, but really you're waiting for the perfect moment when your counter-strike is going to have the greatest impact.

Jesus does that. He offers the second tablet commandments so that the rich young ruler can go, "I think I'm close. Like, this is amazing. I'm almost there." And then Jesus goes for the gut.

He attacks the very heart of the problem by identifying the deeper issue for the rich young ruler. Jesus didn't want the rich young ruler broke. He wanted him free, just like He does with you and me.

When we are convinced that Jesus is a good moral teacher and not our necessary savior, we have a rich young ruler problem. There was no more hiding behind good works, the right family, excellent schools, the right job, even philanthropic work. God wasn't grading on a curve, and He still isn't.

His standard was aimed so high for a very good reason. But for this rich young ruler, I think one of the challenges is that he had a dream that if we're not careful, we have too.

The rich young ruler had a dream that he wanted a life that could be entirely self-constructed. He could do it. He could achieve it and still get into heaven. So he's asking this question, "What do I have to do? How could I experience a life of success without God and still end up in the kingdom of heaven with God?"

Jesus' answer is pretty simple: you can't. It's not possible. You pick one or the other. If your vision of faith is aiming at the bare minimum to get into heaven while still doing all the things in your life on your own terms and according to your plan, you have got a rich young ruler problem.

You're not the only one. I would say as I look around right now, Silicon Valley has a rich young ruler problem. We have co-opted the inspirational loving message of Jesus and left everything behind that doesn't align to our current cultural values.

We are a place full of builders, achievers, dreamers, people who are desperately hoping that they can self-construct a perfect life and still get eternity thrown in as a bonus. Jesus will not share the throne of your life.

And you wouldn't want Him to anyway. It requires full surrender to experience the full life that He has for you. That sense of growing in greater surrender allows greater freedom, that the life we live is not so that God will love us, but because He loves us.

In a culture where everything is about what you achieve, you are here because you are really good at that game. That's why you live here. That's why you're in the job that you're in. That's why you live in the place that you live. You're really good at that game, but Jesus isn't playing that game.

He's not playing it in the culture, and He's not playing it in your life. God's rescue mission for you and the plan of the world, don't forget that the gospel is always received, never achieved.

If you're pushing back in your own mind and heart right now and going like, "Well, how much do you really mean?" I mean like all the way. It's 100% received. It's 0% achieved.

See, Jesus models a pattern for us where He further explains Himself to a smaller group after difficult teaching. But this time, it had to feel even more heightened.

See, the disciples had just watched this guy walk away because Jesus demanded that he give all of his money away. Here's the thing, the disciples are probably like, "Jesus, if you were going to ask this guy to give all of his money away, maybe ask him to give his money to us next time, you know?"

I'm sure they wanted to make a pitch for their Hope for Everyone first-century edition, you know? Or they're like, "Please let us eat tonight campaign." They had a pitch. They were ready, but Jesus was unfazed.

The rich young ruler came with the wrong question, but after he leaves, Jesus provides the real answer. It's the real answer then, just like it's the real answer today.

Since moving to Silicon Valley, I've learned a lot about startup culture. I get to meet lots of startup founders all the time, people that work for startups. I'm really intrigued by the essential premise of kind of a young company that needs help but often has to over-promise and communicate in a way that makes it feel like they don't really need help, like they don't want to come off too thirsty, too desperate, right?

It's like the pitch is, "Hey, we're good, but like, if you want to get on this really cool train towards nothing but success, I guess we can make room for you." That's like what it feels like to me. It's so funny, right?

Oh, well, everybody kind of knows that the person or company that would be funding them has the financial resources and the wisdom to help them break through to the next level. That's a weird part of Silicon Valley. It's like a speed walking course where you're watching people that are looking like they're not running, try to walk as fast as possible.

I just feel like I'm watching that all over the place. As interesting as that is in Silicon Valley, it's a little bit of what we see here in the rich young ruler. He's like going, "Jesus, I mean, I'm not trying to brag, but I'm basically crushing it. What's the extra thing I need to do to finally get it over the top?"

Now Jesus bursts his bubble and explains this dilemma to His disciples once the rich young ruler walks away. Jesus said to His disciples, "Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven."

If you're listening as a Westerner in the 21st century right now, your ears should perk up because even if you don't consider yourself rich, you are. He says 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." Uh-oh.

When His disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?" But Jesus looked at them and said, "With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible."

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly distressed. Now, before we can understand their distress, we have to understand why. Like, what about this makes this this way?

In their headspace, in the culture of the time, if you had material blessing, if you were rich, they theologically believed that God loved you more and blessed you more. That was why you were rich.

For the disciples, they grew up in this culture, and now everything was getting challenged, right? If you were rich, it was because God loved you more. Well, not now. They had just watched someone with moral and financial wealth walk away because Jesus turned what they thought was a blessing from God into a barrier to God.

They were still trying to put the pieces together. Remember, they pushed the kids away that could do nothing for them, and Jesus said, "No, we'll make time for them." And Jesus pushes away the rich young ruler.

Now, Jesus elaborates in case they weren't sure yet that it was easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven.

A lot of people have done a lot of work to try and make this mean something different, but it's designed to be like this. It's designed to be this silly picture of, like, that doesn't work, Jesus. That feels really difficult.

As a matter of fact, there was writing at the time that commentators believed that Jesus was adapting, where they would talk about an elephant going through the eye of a needle as a silly impossibility. That was the whole point of it.

So it's like Jesus, maybe they're even looking at a camel, goes, "Hey, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven." Jesus was saying, "It's more than difficult, it's impossible."

Then, if it still wasn't clear enough, the disciples are asking, "Well, hey, if this guy, the guy that we would have thought has every chance in the world to get into heaven, if this guy can't be saved, who can be?"

Jesus says, essentially, "With human effort, no one can be saved. But with God's intervention, anyone can be saved."

It's such a contrast, even from what the disciples had thought to this moment. He was setting the table in His ministry for the idea that the gospel, the good news of Jesus, was never going to be achieved by them.

It would be achieved by Him so it could be received by us. The posturing and performing that Jesus could add one more teaching, one more blessing, one more tweak, it was wrong, and it would never work.

That one is good, you know, that idea of the good news of Jesus, it actually starts with bad news. The bad news is that no one's good, not even one.

That all of us are like wayward sheep who have gone our own way. That we are all deeply deceived, even to ourselves. That no one is righteous in the world, not even one. That all have sinned and fall short, and that before Jesus, we are all dead. We need everything from Him.

Jesus is not offering medicine to cure the disease of sin. He is bringing the paddles of life to bring the dead back from the grave.

You are simultaneously created in the image of God with infinite dignity, value, and worth. Because of the rebellion that we all walk in as humanity, we are without hope apart from Him.

Now, those ideas are not the ideas that brought the rich young ruler to Jesus. Remember, he thought he was just a few tweaks away. He was like, "Jesus, where should my philanthropic efforts go? How should I be more ethical or kind in the way that I show up at work?"

He was trying to do it all right. Here Jesus is trying to help him see that there was no way, no way that this life he was trying to construct without God could ever get him to God.

Too often we settle for optimization rather than transformation. We do it because we aren't sure we're really this bad. Like we think, "Well, I know God's got some things to do in me, but is it really this bad?"

So we don't need everything to be different. We just have a few areas that if God and I could talk, I'm sure we could get that stuff nailed down this week, right? Just the things that need to be improved, especially as we're judging ourselves usually by the behavior of those around us rather than the standard of a holy God.

The rich young ruler hadn't been listening to the Sermon on the Mount. Otherwise, even the second tablet commandments, those ways that he showed up to people, he would have been failing at even those.

He's coming to Jesus and thinking, "Hey, I'm pretty good." I think sometimes we can have the same approach today. As a matter of fact, in our world, we call it secular humanism, which is the belief that humans can be good without God, that we can lead moral, meaningful lives using reason and compassion instead of religious belief, that you can get everything you need apart from God.

For the rich young ruler, he thought, "I just need a little bit to get all the way across the finish line." Maybe some of you, that's what you think.

Right now, I see lots of our culture trying to blend secular humanism with a spirituality of faith that gives a nod to Jesus, measures its performance against the worst examples, embraces only the parts of Jesus' teaching that align with their preferences, and sacrifice the presence of God to actually change them in the process.

When we try to live as people who perform for God, but we only accept what we prefer from God, we will live without His presence in our lives.

So what about you? Is your faith just a kind of a partial gesture, or are you living fully surrendered lives? Are there parts of your life that if Jesus said, "Before you come follow me, take care of this," before you come follow me, "get rid of all that," before you come follow me, "address this relationship," what's the one that would be the most painful?

Because that's your rich young ruler magnifying glass. If the gospel is really something that we receive and not achieve, then we should want the powerful presence of God that comes with it and respond accordingly.

So I want to leave you with a few questions to process either yourself personally in the next few days, or maybe you're going to do this with your life group this week.

But here's the first question: What plans am I holding on to too tightly? Sometimes when I pray, I'll say, "God, I'm opening my hands in this decision, this relationship, this opportunity. God, it's sitting there so that if you want to bless it, you can bless it. If you want to take it, it's available for you to take."

But oftentimes, I think we can hold too tightly, and God has to pry open the fingers of our will to get at it. Some of you, you feel like your company will fail if you don't put in a hundred hours. That your child can't succeed if they're not in that super premier club that overextends you financially or overextends your time, or that top school choice is a non-negotiable.

Second, ask yourself, what dreams about my future don't include God? See, God longs for us to experience a full and fruitful life, but that might not look like the dream you have.

The really good news is, whether you believe this or not, the dreams that God has for you are infinitely better. So, sacrificing your dream doesn't mean you're giving up dreams for nothing. It means you're surrendering your dreams for God's dreams for you. And they're better anyway.

Finally, what has surrendering to Jesus cost me lately? This one's painful because I think for a lot of us, when we're trying to achieve salvation, what we do is we follow Jesus up till the point that it hurts.

We follow Him up to discomfort, up to pain. But what we see over and over again in the lives of Jesus' followers early on in the New Testament of your Bible is they follow Jesus through pain. That's actually the marker that they are a follower of Jesus.

So for you, maybe those are three questions you process and think about this week. For me, when I was pretty young, I was invited into a Boy Scout troop. If you don't know this, I had a pretty complicated home life. So it was something I leaned into pretty heavily.

It became a safe place for me to learn and grow as a person. I quickly climbed the ranks, literally, and I got all the merit badges and ranks that I could. By 14, I had achieved Eagle Scout, which if you're like, "Phil, I knew you were a nerd. I didn't know you were that big of a nerd." You're welcome.

But it actually wasn't till years later. Like I thought I've kind of gotten everything I need out of this experience. It wasn't till years later that I learned kind of the merit badges and the ranks. Like they were fine. They were fun. But the real value of it were lifetime friendships.

It was people that invested in me and cared about me that were there the whole time, regardless of the ranks that I got, regardless of the merit badges I achieved.

For you, maybe you need to understand that while your accomplishments are amazing, Menlo, they aren't the goal. Your time in prayer, your diligent investment in community, your financial generosity, your spiritual growth, they're what you do in response to the gift of God, not in hopes of achieving it.

I hope for you, no matter what this week looks like, no matter what you're facing in your own life, that the prospect of surrender, of really saying, "God, I want to experience the love that you've extended to me as an undivided follower, letting you have access to every part of my life because it's for my good," can be something you experience in a whole new way.

Let's pray that God changes the rich young ruler in all of us.

God, thank you. Thank you for this incredibly powerful story about an interaction from thousands of years ago that can still show up and refine us today, that can still show up and point at some of the obstacles in our own self-driven faith in life that can get confused as all kinds of sort of religious things that we mix and match, that we try to do all on our own.

God, would you help us to have a greater appreciation of your work on our behalf that even now as we sing to you and we reflect for a few minutes, that God, your love and the presence of that love by the power of your Holy Spirit, it would be unshakable.

It wouldn't even just be something that we experience over the next few minutes, but in the coming days, in the coming weeks, as we get ready for Easter, God, would you grow this like something inside of us that you really do want to change?

You're not trying to tweak us, God. You're trying to transform us. So, God, give us the conviction to surrender it all to you that you might do just that. In Jesus' name, amen.