We are getting into two very famous stories in the gospels. Let the children come to me and what is most commonly known as the story of the rich young ruler. It’s hugely significant that the three gospels that include these two stories all put them back to back and in the same order. These stories are meant to be taken together so that’s how we are going to take them. We are going to look this week at how they fit together and next week focus more on the Rich Young Ruler. These stories go together because they tell us something about the love of God. 

I said last week that divorce and singleness was not the topic I would have necessarily chosen to jump back in with after my heart attack. The love of God though…that’s more like it. Most of you know I had a massive heart attack on December tenth and came very close to dying. I’m kind of an optimist by nature. I figured, “I’m in a hospital. This is what they do. Surely, I’ll be fine. There were a few moments when I knew things were not good. When my heart almost stopped beating and they put the defibrillators on my chest. Not good. When I was being rolled back for my procedure and I saw my ER doctor brother crying. Not good. Then my cardiologist ran out of the room in the middle of the procedure to figure out what to do with the other doctors because my blockage was so severe. Not Good.

Some of you have been through something like that and you know that you can’t go through that and be the same. I know how to teach good theology, but there are times when you just feel the doctrines of the Bible more than you think them and the love of God is at the top of that list. Not just because he let me live, but because he gave me a glimpse at how fragile this life is and how big he is. 

The love of God is an extremely fluid concept in our society. You see people struggling with very difficult circumstances in their lives and doubting if God really does love them. You see people who have messed up horrendously wondering if God will ever accept them. We also see people claiming that God is so loving that he will love and accept us no matter how we live our lives. Even when our lives show non signs of repentance or submission to his will for us not realizing that they have essentially created a god in their own image as a way of loving themselves, not God. 

And all this comes together in this passage. In the story of the Rich Young Ruler, we have Jesus not accepting someone the disciples thought he would accept and in the story of the children we see Jesus accepting people the disciples did not think he would accept. And in these stories combined, we see a lot about the love of God through Jesus who is the perfect manifestation of God’s character. In these passages, we see that God loves all people, but he only has saving love for those who love him. 

1. God loves all people

The idea of God loving all people is actually more controversial inside Reformed Evangelicalism than it is even among non-Christians. We can have this idea that God only loves those who have repented and put our faith in him and that God hates all who have not. 

Let’s start with the story of the Rich Young Ruler. Again, this story is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Rich Young Ruler is the only example we have of someone coming to Jesus with genuine questions and not being healed or saved. We know from all three stories that he is young, he is wealthy, he has some kind of worldly authority and he asks Jesus what he needs to do to have eternal life. Now this was a common question back in Jesus’ day. Who inherits the kingdom to come? Who gets eternal life? Who benefits from it? And the standard answer in that culture was to obey the law. The problem with this is that different Jewish sects had different answers about how to do that. 

The most common way to understand how to obey the law in that day was the teaching of the Pharisees. They made the law more complex to feel like they were obeying it. The law says obey the Sabbath. Well, how do you do that? So the Pharisees added all kinds of smaller laws like how many steps you could take on the Sabbath and what constituted work to make them feel like they were obeying it. The law says not to murder. Well, what kind of killing constitutes murder? So they added more laws to clarify that. These weren’t laws that God gave them to help understand the law more, they were added by men to make them feel like they were doing what they needed to do to inherit or earn eternal life. 

And Jesus’ first question for the Rich Young Ruler initially sounds odd. Jesus says, 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.” - Matt 19:17 But Jesus then seems to put a pin in that and he moves on to something that would have made more sense to this man. Jesus says, “Obey the commandments.” But instead of making them more complex, Jesus makes them very simple. Jesus asks him about the sixth commandment (murder), the seventh commandment (adultery), the eighth commandment (stealing), the ninth commandment (bearing false witness), but instead of then going to the tenth commandment (you shall not covet what others have), Jesus goes back to the fifth commandment (honor your father and mother). Then, Jesus finally goes to Leviticus 19 which says to love your neighbor as yourself. 

Well, this man feels good about all those commandments because the system set up by the Pharisees made him think he had done all those. But what about the tenth commandment that Jesus skipped? Jesus knew this man’s heart. He knew this man covetted his possessions. Jesus knew this man would never empty himself of his worldly riches to help other people in need. So now Jesus circles back to the heart of the tenth commandment by asking him to sell his possessions and give them to the poor. The Rich Young Ruler says he can’t possibly do this, proving that he doesn’t love his neighbor as himself. 

This doesn’t mean that selling your possessions is a requirement to be a Christian. There are plenty of wealthy Christians in the Bible. It means that this man can’t see his own sinfulness. He can’t see that the law is condemning him, not justifying him. All of us stand condemned by the law because none of us can accomplish the law. Now, Jesus' odd comment at the beginning makes sense! By this definition of good, none of us are good! 

What Jesus is doing is in itself an act of love. We have to see our idols and repent of them before we can ever touch the kingdom of God. And Mark, in his account of this story, makes this abundantly clear! 21 And Jesus, zlooking at him, aloved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, bsell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have ctreasure in heaven; and come, follow me. - Mark 10:21

Jesus said this before he ever repented and knowing he wouldn’t repent. So you can say that in a general sense, God loves everyone. He has a general love for everyone who bears his image. And if you make the case that God does not in some sense love unbelievers, but we clearly can, then that makes us more loving than God! This is why we care about the unbelieving poor, about the unborn, about injustice in our society. It’s isn’t just because we hope they will see the gospel through us (although that certainly is a hope). It’s because these are people who God cares about as his image bearers. 

This raises an important question though. If God does have wrath toward unbelievers because of sin, how can God love us and have wrath at the same time? I’m drawing from D.A. Carson here, but our problem is that in our human experience, wrath and love normally abide in mutually exclusive compartments. Love drives out wrath and wrath drives out love. But this is not the way it is with God. God is not just some being full of blind rage. God’s wrath is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against his holiness. But, this can happen at the same time as his love wells up because his love is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. So, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at the same time. God in his perfections must be wrathful against his rebel image-bearers because they have not loved him back. We have not recognized him in our hearts for who he is. So, his wrath is actually an extension of his love. 

The closest we can possibly come to understanding this (and this analogy does break down at a point) is a wayward child. The more wayward they become, the more sad and angry a parent may become, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love them. In many cases, you hurt because you love them so much. But, if their waywardness is intense enough, it does cause the relationship to stop working the way it was designed. There is not the blessing that was intended between the parent and the child. You can feel two intense and opposite feelings at the same time. Our sadness and our anger stem from our love. 

My grandfather was a worldwide sportsman in the 1950s and 60s. If it walked or swam in the Western Hemisphere, he probably killed it. People like him are why we have endangered species now. He told me a story once about how native Africans would catch monkeys. He said that they would carve a hole in a hollow tree and put some food or a nut the monkeys liked in that hole. Then they would come back the next day and check the holes and they would find monkeys with their arms caught in the hole. The reason they couldn’t get their arms out of the hole is because they would not let go of the bait and the hole was not big enough for their closed fist to come out. 

This is a picture of the Rich Young Ruler. His riches are what he is holding onto and as long as he is unwilling to see that, as long as he loves his riches more than other people, he can never enter the kingdom of God. He is like that monkey caught in the tree. Basil, the fourth century Bishop of Caesarea wrote of this passage “Indeed, those who love gold do not mind being bound with handcuffs so long as those handcuffs are made of gold.” Jesus is lovingly trying to show him this, but until he sees it, he will at the same time be loved and under God’s wrath. So, the Rich Young Ruler walks away sad because he wants the kingdom of heaven, but he wants to be the king.

We have to see that God is love. It’s who he is. He loves us and he loves his glory. That can sound prideful and arrogant if he were anything other than perfect. If God is love and if God is perfect in every way, then he should love his glory supremely, which is a very good thing. My Alabama football friends are reeling right now from all their players transferring away because they find joy in the glory of Alabama football. They are happier when Alabama football has national glory. This is why UF football fans are so much godlier. They aren’t tempted by the glory of successful football. If we agree though that we find joy when we are connected to something larger getting glory, then how much more joy then will we find in the glory of God? We should want God to love his glory because it is right and in his glory, we find our joy and satisfaction. 

So, God then MUST rule the universe in a way that brings himself the most possible glory. And because of this, he must also judge sin or he ceases to be both loving and perfect. Imagine someone stole your car or, worse, broke into your home and harmed someone you love. The perpetrator gets caught, arrested, and at his court hearing, the judge says that he feels like being loving and decides to let him go with no trial. How would you feel? Would you feel loved by the judge? Would you feel like that judge was a loving judge? No. You’d want him removed! We can’t be naive enough to make God into that same kind of judge. That would take his glory away. 

God does judge sin and the way he judges sin is with his wrath. Wrath is not core to who God is. We don’t say that God is wrathful. We say that God has wrath. The core attributes of God are the attributes that always were and always will be. There was a day when God was not giving wrath. Clark was telling me that a few years ago there was a big Twitter debate on whether God was primarily Father or Creator. The answer has to be Father because he was Father before he was Creator. He created out of an overflow of love that he has as Father. He relates to his creatures as Father first, even wayward ones. God is God whether there is a creation or not. But there was never and will never be a day when God is not loving. He would not be God without his love. 

Love is core to who God is. And because he is loving, his wrath is actually an extension of that love. Dane Ortlund says the closest we can come to understanding this in human terms is loving a child who is being taken by cancer. The more the cancer takes the child the more our love for the child produces wrath for the cancer. 

So let’s pull on this cancer thread a bit. Think about chemotherapy. I’ve watched my wife go through chemo. Many of you have walked with people through chemo. Some of you have received chemo. One day we'll look back at chemo as barbaric. Chemo is basically giving our body poison in the hopes that it kills the cancer before it kills the body. But the cancer has to be killed before it kills us. Sin is different though. It isn’t only in our body, it’s everywhere. Our bodies, our minds, our souls. Its in our very person. in our identity.The wrath of God will come for all sin because he is loving. Our sin keeps us from loving God back and his love for his own glory and for his creation must drive that sin out fully. But, because God is loving, he’s also patient. He’s patient because of his love for his glory and his love for us. 

That’s heavy and heady. I know. But we have to see that Jesus is not calling this young man away from treasure but towards treasure. A treasure we see in the story of the children. The reason these gospel writers put this story together with the story of the children is to show us this. And this brings us to the second part…

1. God has saving love for those who love him. 

The children were brought to Jesus and in Matthew’s account, we are told that they do this for Jesus to lay his hands on them and pray for them. I’ve already said this, but what’s interesting is that the disciples don’t think these children should be received by Jesus. They actually rebuke Jesus. But Jesus not only says to let the children come, he says to such belong the kingdom of heaven. Remember this is the main question the Rich Young Ruler is asking! So, the kingdom of heaven doesn’t belong to the Rich Young Ruler, but it does, in some way, belong to these children. How is that? Well, Jesus told us just one chapter ago. “Truly, I say to you, unless you uturn and vbecome like children, you wwill never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 xWhoever humbles himself like this child is the wgreatest in the kingdom of heaven. - Matt 18:3,4

It’s not about what we do, it’s about coming to Jesus with the same disposition as these children. This isn’t saying children get in and not adults. It’s also not a proof text to baptize babies. Jesus is showing us the disposition we must have to enter the kingdom of God. Those who will enter the kingdom must love him back. And the way we do this is in humility and simple, child-like trust in Jesus. Jesus came not to simply help us avoid the wrath of God, but to take it in our place on the cross that we might be made into something completely new. And all this comes together on the cross. 

There is a song we sing often called In Christ Alone. And there is a line in that hymn that says, “On the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” The PCUSA, that is the Presbyterian Church in the USA, updated their hymnals a few years back and they wanted to change that line to say, “As Jesus died, the love of God was magnified” because they didn’t believe that God has wrath. Well, if there was not wrath on the cross as Jesus died, then what did his love accomplish? It would be like me wanting to show how much I love my kids by jumping off the top of the Suntrust building. That doesn’t accomplish anything and it isn’t loving at all! But, if one of my kids were about to fall off and saving them meant that I fell instead, that would be love. By taking the wrath out of the cross, you take the love out of God.  DA Carson says, “Do you want to see God’s love? Look at the cross. Do you want to see God’s wrath? Look at the cross.” It all comes together there. 

The disposition of the one who enters the kingdom is one who sees that we are sinners deserving of God’s wrath, admits that, and sees Jesus as our only hope. It doesn’t mean we become perfect, but it means that we desire his glory more than ours. It means that we are willing to sell all that we have to buy the field with the treasure in it because that treasure is worth so much more than what we sell. 

But God is so loving that he knows that we can never love him back on our own. This is not some niche theological view, this has been central to orthodox Christianity for 2000 years. Because our sin has infected every aspect of our being, we can’t even see our need for Jesus, much less love him back, so he has to overcome our inability to love him through the work of his Spirit. This is why Jesus said, 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me qdraws him. - John 6:44. This is why Acts 13:48 says, 48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and sglorifying theword of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

God loves people in general, but there is a different type of love that saves us. A love that was set on us before the foundation of the world. A love that motivated God the Father to send God the Son for us. A love set before the Son that caused him to not only go to the cross, but stay there as he satisfied God’s wrath for us. A love that is consistent with the love God has for both his glory and our good because on the cross our sin is dealt with, not overlooked, as God’s wrath that we deserve is laid on the one who does not. A love that motivated God the Spirit to open our hearts to see his love for us in Jesus. A love that lavishes Jesus’ righteousness on us causing us to love him back and desire to live the rest of our days out in love for him. That is not a general love, but a saving love. In the words of Robert Jackson, “Things can be two things.”    

The Rich Young Ruler couldn’t empty himself of his belongings to bless the poor around him, but the children didn’t have this hindrance. A childlike disposition can see Jesus, the True Ruler, emptied himself by leaving heaven and taking on flesh that the poor in spirit would be eternally blessed. And that blessing is that we become a new creation with a genuine love for God. A love that transforms us. A love that longs for God’s glory. A love that causes us to love others as we do ourselves. To inherit the kingdom of heaven means to put ourselves under the sovereign reign of God and let go of anything that keeps us away from him.