Hinge verses: Matthew 19:25-26
{We finally made it to the New Testament!!}
Jesus is making His final rounds as He's making His way to Jerusalem. In just two chapters, He will make His triumphal entry before His crucifixion. Chapter 19 starts with Jesus being followed by large crowds, and He healed many there. Of course, the Pharisees have been persistently following Jesus His whole ministry, asking questions, trying to trip Him up.
In the crowd on this day is someone known to us as "the rich young ruler". He runs up to Jesus and asks "Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?" Jesus's answer "Why do you ask Me about what is good?" may seem confusing to us, because we know Jesus is good. We are reading this all in hindsight, but the man is living it. I believe Jesus is prompting the man to think about why he is asking Jesus about good. Surely the man knows that it is God who is good, so why would he ask Jesus unless he is <so> close to understanding that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh?
So Jesus answers him--If you want eternal life, keep the commandments. The man is thrilled because he HAS kept the commandments since he was a boy. (The commandments Jesus listed are the ones that address how we interact horizontally, with each other. He did not mention the commandments that are vertical, our interaction with God. Jesus does all things well.) The rich young ruler says "What do I still lack?" Jesus tells him to go sell all he has, give it to the poor, and that will be proof that his treasure is in heaven. Then follow Him. Seems easy enough. But the man is grieved, because he had many possessions.
I have written in the margin of my Bible: "The man is grieved because he thinks the riches could come, too. I picture him with a bag full of his stuff, like Santa Claus, trying to get through a needle's eye." The disciples were astonished and asked (and I can kinda hear the snark in their voices.) "Then who can be saved?"
Jesus looks at them and said:
"With man this is impossible, BUT with GOD all things are possible." (emphasis mine.)
Robert Gilmour LeTourneau was born in 1888 in Richford, Vermont. He dropped out of high school at 14 to be an apprentice to an ironworker. He learned many skills during his time as an apprentice, and took some basic mechanical engineering correspondence courses. Over the course of his early working career, he learned welding, auto mechanics, farming, wood cutting, mining, and carpentry. At the age of 32, he started his own earth moving business. His business barely survived the great depression, but quickly gained after. During World War II, LeTourneau's factories supplied approximately 70% of the earthmoving equipment used by Allied forced. He developed the first portable offshore drilling platform in the mid-1950s.
RG LeTourneau, the man known throughout the construction world as the "The Dean of Earthmoving" was also a very devout Christian. A man with over 300 patents gladly told anyone who asked what guided him--one principle "God runs my business." He struggled to decide whether to be a preacher or a businessman, until his pastor counseled him--"God needs businessmen, too." LeTourneau set aside 90% of his salary and company profits for religious donations, living on the other 10%. He once said "I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back. But God has a bigger shovel." When LeTourneau was featured on a radio show hosted by Robert Ripley, Ripley told him "You have made the word of God a glorious, practical reality." Then turning to the audience, Ripley said "And of such is the work of faith...believe it or not."
RG LeTourneau wrote an autobiography called "Mover of Men and Mountains". A line from the book:
"For 25 years or more, I've been traveling this land of ours and a few foreign countries trying to teach and preach by word of mouth and example, that a Christian businessman owes as much to God as a preacher does."
What did RG LeTourneau understand that the rich young ruler did not? Based on a quote original to John Wesley, but one that RG LeTourneau adopted and popularized--RG understood this:
"It's not how much of my money I give to God, it's how much of God's money I keep for myself."
He knew he could give everything to God, and God was faithful to bless him with what he needed. RG didn't give because he wanted to get, he gave because he knew the word of God was a glorious, practical reality. The rich young ruler thought what he had outweighed what he would get as a follower of Christ. BUT GOD--THEOS--the name Jesus called Him in verse 26 means God, the Creator and owner of all things. With man, to give everything away is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.
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