Living Honestly (Hope and Healing - Week 11)

What if the very thing holding you back is what God's asking you to release? Through the contrasting stories of two wealthy men—the rich young ruler who walked away sad and Zacchaeus who joyfully surrendered all—Shawn illuminates how authentic faith flows from childlike trust, not religious performance. Drawing from personal experience and biblical wisdom, he challenges us to identify our own "functional saviors" and embrace the simple yet transformative power of taking the next right step in following Jesus. Whether you're struggling with anxiety, comparison, or control, this message offers practical guidance for moving from complexity to surrender. Don't miss this invitation to experience the abundant life Jesus promises through simple, daily acts of trust.

Transcript

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you all in the room and to our spring breakers that are joining us online wherever you are. Good morning. Have fun. We're here holding down the fort for you.

It is spring break week, and hopefully, hopefully, you did not put away your snow shovel yet because you might need it later on this week. I kind of feel like maybe I jinxed us. I put all of our stuff away this last week, and so then I looked and I saw that there's snow in the forecast. So I apologize for that. That could be on me.

But you. We might need it later on this week. And we have our middle schoolers in the room with us today. Our middle school ministry kind of shuts down during some of those breaks, which means that my daughters are here and some other middle schoolers spattering through. And my daughter asked last night, addie, I'm sorry, I'm telling on you.

I don't think that you'll care. Oh, no, she just dropped her head. Moving on. All right. So she's like, last week, dad, I don't want to go.

Adult services are so boring. I was like, but I'm going to be preaching. He's like, I know. And I said, it's going to be a short sermon, I promise. Like, oh.

And then over there, I was showing her my sermon. I was, like, scanning through it, and she looked and she goes, I thought you said it was going to be short. Like, this is our life right now.

We'll move quick. All right? I promise. I read a story last week about a little boy who finally learned how to tie his shoes by himself. He had been practicing and learning, and his mom had been teaching him the bunny trick and over and under.

And the little guy sat down and he tied and he got it. And it should have been this moment of, like, jubilation, but instead of being excited, this little boy just broke down in tears. He started to cry, and his mom was confused, and she looked at him and she said, why are you crying? This is an exciting moment. Like, you are becoming a young man.

You are growing up. And he goes, I know. That's the problem. Now I have to do this every day for the rest of my life. And I want to tell them about the joy of Skecher slip ins.

I mean, these things are the best, but we get it, right? Like, growing up, it's fun. And there's a lot of good things that come with growing up. But then there's some hard things, like having to tie your own shoes and having to empty the dishwasher when your parents ask you. And having to go through difficult times and pain and school growing up can be hard.

And our text today starts in Luke, chapter 18, verse 18. And so if you have your Bible or a Bible app, you can turn there. We're going to be looking at this account of the rich young ruler. But I wanted Jim to start this morning with the text that he read, because I think that it's an interesting context for what we're going to be looking about today. Jesus talks about the importance of having a childlike faith.

And you think about, like, all the characteristics of a child. Like, there's a sense of wonder inside of them. There's a sense of excitement, curiosity. Everything is new, everything is fresh. They're experiencing things for the first time.

Kids are curious. Kids are dependent. They know that they need somebody else to take care of them. They trust that someone else is going to provide for them and protect them. And Jesus points to that, and he says that the kind of faith that inherits the kingdom, the kind of faith that receives the kingdom of God, is a childlike faith that has full abandon and trust in a good, loving and heavenly and loving heavenly father.

That is the type of authenticity, humble, trusting faith that we are called and invited to live with. And I think that when we first start following Jesus, many of us start out with that kind of faith. It's all new, it's all fresh, it's all exciting. There's this trust and dependency. I remember when I became a Christian, two weeks later, three weeks later, I found myself at Bible college.

I mean, it was a whole story and. And in Bible college that I went to, one of the things that they did the very first day is you kind of did this little entrance exam. And they used it as a benchmark to see, you know, how you grew and develop in your faith and knowledge of scripture over your time there. And so four years later, you would take it again and they would compare it. And five years later, in my case, and I remember taking that exam, 100 questions, and coming out of it going, yeah, I don't know anything.

All I know is. All I know is who I was and what Jesus is doing in my life now. And, like, there's just a purity about that kind of faith. And I think a lot of us start following Jesus like, yeah, we don't have all the answers. We don't need all the answers.

We don't have it all figured out. We don't need to have it figured out. All I know is I once was blind, but now I see. All I know is this is who I was, but this is who Jesus is making me. But then, over time, we begin to complicate things.

Life happens. Questions come up or come to us that we don't know how to answer. Doubts begin to creep in. We question, can God actually love me? Is grace really enough?

We know who we are, we know what we've done, but we also know what we continue to do. And we wonder, is God's grace eventually just going to run out? Is God going to come to a point where he just gives up on me? And we think that we have to perform to earn God's love. Like it's conditional, because that's what we're used to experiencing with other people.

And we think that God's going to be mad at us, that he's disappointed in us. And we live with this guilt and this shame.

And this wonder of childlike faith gets eaten up by other things in our lives. Grace gives way to performance. Fears grow stronger, and it makes walking by faith seem foolish.

And by putting these two accounts that we're looking at today, the Jesus inviting the children to come to him and saying, this is what faith looks like, this account of the rich young ruler. By putting these two accounts together, they may have happened chronologically, may not have. We don't know for sure from the text, but what we know is that Luke's trying to make a point here. Like the kingdom of God is not earned by impressive spiritual performance. It is received by humble dependence.

We can't earn our way to God's love. We can't earn our way to salvation. It is a humble dependence on the Father. It is a humble acceptance of his grace that he gives us. In our passage today, a man comes to Jesus who looks like he has it all together.

I mean, he looks great on the outside. And by all accounts, he's. He's a good man. He's moral, he's well respected, he's successful, he's wealthy. He seems like he takes his faith seriously.

I mean, it kind of seems like the guy I've been praying for my daughters to meet when they get older one day. On paper, he looks perfect. But Jesus is able to see through that veneer, through that facade. And he sees that there's still something inside of his heart that he's holding onto that's getting in the way of him living in full surrender and following Him. And Jesus loves him too much to just let him continue to hold that.

He challenges him to Lay it down so that he can follow him. So let's look at our passage, Luke 18. Starting in verse 18, it'll be up on the screens.

A certain ruler and other gospels tell us he was a rich young ruler. Asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It's a curious question, and it's a question that maybe you've asked, why do you call me good? Jesus answered, no one is good except God alone. He's making a point here by saying that.

And he goes and he says, you know the commandments. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder, you shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony. Honor your father and mother.

He points to all of the ten commandments that are on the other side of there's the first ones that are about loving God, and then there's this next one that's like loving God through how we love one another. And he points to all of these external things of how we live with others. And he said, all of these I have kept since I was a boy.

Then Jesus gets to the heart when he heard this. He said to him, you still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. Now, don't miss the point of what is going on here, because I don't think that Jesus is giving a universal command to all followers of his from that point all the way to eternity.

I don't think that Jesus is saying, if every person who wants to follow me, you have to sell everything, you have to give it to the poor and then you can follow me. I don't think that. That he's setting that expectation out. I think what he's doing is he's pointing to an idol that this young man has in his life. He's pointing to something that he has put his trust in over the Lord.

He's. It's robbed him of this childlike faith of. Of. Of dependency and trust in the heavenly Father. And what Jesus is doing is he is exposing this young man's functional savior.

I've used that term before. I just want to remind us what it is. Functional saviors are the things in our life that promise to rescue us, that promise to save us from whatever hell feels like. And so if hell feels like loneliness, then we might run to any relationship. Even if we know that it's not the best, that it's not the healthiest, we just know that we don't want to be alone.

And so we're gonn attach Ourself to someone. If hell feels like insignificance, then we might run to the functional savior of achievement. We might try to prove our worth through success and recognition. And hear me, there is nothing wrong with achievement or wealth or success or recognition. There's nothing wrong with that until we make it the God that we pursue to fill some kind of desire and void within us instead of turning to Jesus.

And that's when it becomes an idol in our life. That's when we begin to worship and trust it more than we worship and trust the Lord. If hell feels like rejection, then we might run to the functional savior of people pleasing, constantly trying to manage our image of how other people perceive us, wanting to put the best out there so that they think well of us.

If hell feels like insecurity, then we might run to the functional savior of money, believing that financial stability is going to save us from everything that we fear.

We all have these things. We all have these functional saviors, idols that we turn to. And Jesus knows what this young man's is, and he exposes it. He challenges him to stop looking to it, to find what he can only find in him and to follow. But the allure of this man's functional savior is too strong.

Verse 23 says, when he heard this, he became very sad because he was very wealthy. Mark's gospel, when he tells about this account, says that this young man, his face fell and he turned and he walked away. Have you ever received news that just like took your breath away? That, that, that just made you drop your shoulders and just go, oh? That's what this young man got.

He received. He. He wanted to follow Jesus. He wanted to be good in the eyes of God. But Jesus knew that he had this one thing that was higher than his trust in the Lord.

And when it came down to it, he just wasn't ready or willing to give it up. One commentary I read said that this is the saddest verse in the Bible. This young man seems to have an authentic, genuine faith, a desire to do what is right. He addresses Jesus with a title that kind of makes us realized that he knew a little bit more about Jesus to know that he was. He was more than just a good rabbi, a good teacher, but the cost of following him was more than what he wanted to endure.

And so he just walked away. He was unwilling to exchange what was temporary for what is eternal. And remember what Jesus said just a few verses earlier about receiving the kingdom of God like a child. Childlike faith, trust in the Father. It is Dependent on him and him.

But this rich young ruler had a divided heart. He wanted to trust God. But when Jesus told him what his next step of faith was, he wasn't actually ready to let go. He wasn't actually ready to trust. And so he dropped his head and he walked away.

Compare that to the text that we looked at last week, just one chapter later, the account of Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus. These are two wealthy men. They both had an encounter with Jesus, and there were two very different outcomes. One of them demonstrated a childlike faith. The other turned and walked away.

When Zacchaeus receives the grace of Jesus, he tears down his functional savior. He says, lord, here and now, I am selling everything I have. I'm giving half of it to the poor, and if I wronged anybody, I'm gonna make it up by faith, 400%. That grace of Jesus, that encounter of Jesus, it transformed him, and he made it right. In response to that grace, when Jesus exposes this young man's idol, he turns and he walks away.

The difference between them is not wealth. Money is amoral. It's not good or bad. The difference is that one shows a childlike faith of trust and dependence, and the other turned away. Zacchaeus ran towards surrender, and this rich young ruler walked away from it.

And here's the point that I want to make for us this morning. Everyone take a deep breath. This is not a sermon about money, all right? I'm not going to be asking you to give. It's not a sermon about money because I don't know that this is necessarily a text about money.

Money is a main character in it, but it's just a thing that was getting in the way of this guy's heart trusting and surrendering to the Lord. And if we're honest, we probably all have something like that.

We have something that is keeping us from walking in a deeper sense of faith and trust in Jesus. Most people think that the hardest part of following Jesus is figuring out what he wants us to do. We want a very specific roadmap of where we're supposed to go to college and who we're supposed to marry and the job that we're supposed to take and where we're supposed to live. And we want this roadmap. And God doesn't always give us a specific will like that.

But what he does do is he's given us his word and he says, no. If you want to know what my will is, read this, follow this, become more like Jesus. If we're honest, most of the time when it comes to walking in faith with this childlike sense of trust and dependency. The problem is not that we don't know what to do. The problem is that we know what to do, but we don't want to do it.

Yeah, I didn't get an amen at the 8 o' clock service on that one either, but amen. Right, because that's my story. I'm guessing it's probably part of your story too. It's not that we don't know what to do, it's that we know what to do and we don't want to do it.

Both a rich young ruler and Zacchaeus knew what their next steps were. But only one of them was willing to take that next step. And as we follow Jesus in our day to day lives, the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit in us does a few different things. It is a, a promise that is sealing our inheritance in heaven. I mean that is Ephesians 1, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.

The Holy Spirit in us comforts us in our weakness, comforts us when we go through difficulties and challenges, gives us the words to say in the moment. But the Holy Spirit also convicts convicts of our sin. And that's just as much of a gift as anything else that he does. And the Holy Spirit, as we are walking with Jesus, is constantly doing these course corrections, saying, mm, no, no, no, go this way. No, don't do that.

And he does it through his word. We know how to walk, we just sometimes don't want to.

And as we do these things, as we put them into practice, as we, as we find healing from our hurts and our habits and hangups, as something happens inside of us, grace begins to transform us. And that's what the Spirit's wanting to do. It's transforming us to take responsibility for our actions instead of blaming others, to quickly confess when we fall short, to make things right when we've hurt others.

And as we do these things or as we work these steps, like what we've been looking at in this series, we become less defensive and more humble. We are quicker to repent and more willing to change. We start to live a childlike faith of complete and continual surrender to God's grace.

That's really the heart of step 10 in recovery programs, regeneration, the recovery ministry that we're going to be starting in the fall. It states step 10 like this. We continue, that's an important word in this step. We continue to examine our lives. And when we sin, we promptly confess and turn to Walk with Christ.

Been said that step 10 is the one day at a time step. It's the next right step step. Step 10 would be if you look on the back of the shampoo bottle and it says to shampoo and then rinse and repeat. Like that's what step 10 is. It's the rinse and repeat step of steps one through nine.

Like, just continue to work the steps and they'll continue to work you. And like we've talked about all through this series, these steps are not just steps to recovery, they discipleship. They are steps to following Jesus. And so when we find ourselves reverting back to old habits, be quick to turn back to Christ. Like, this is how we develop a childlike faith of trust and dependence.

And following Jesus salvation. And following Jesus is more than just a one time moment of surrender. It is a lifestyle of confession and repentance. Confession and repentance. It's getting into the habit of saying, Jesus, if you point something out to me, man, I'm going to be quick to surrender it back over to you again.

So it doesn't take root in my life.

I think sometimes we make following Jesus more complicated than it really is. We get caught up in the things that we don't know about and we ignore the things that we do. And following Jesus with a childlike faith just means doing the next right thing that the spirit's nudging you to. It's maybe in the middle of an argument and your tone, you know, it's not good. And the spirit nudges you and instead of like, no doubling down on it, you just say, hey, I'm sorry, I know my tone's not great right now, can we start over?

Or if you catch yourself gossiping about someone in a conversation, you feel that nudge to say, man, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be talking about somebody else like that. That's not fair to them. It's not the kind of faith and follower of Jesus I want to be. If you're in bed scrolling on your phone instead of going to sleep, you're feeding your anxiety. It's eating away at your soul.

Maybe your next right step is to just put your phone down or put your phone in another room when you go to bed. And if you're like, whoa, that's a little extreme. Sell everything, give it to the poor, then come follow me.

But Jesus, I use it as my alarm clock. Buy a $10 alarm clock at Walmart. Follow me. But Jesus, what if an emergency happens? You'll hear it I don't know what it is for you.

I don't know what that next right step is for you. I think just in what I processed with you, I know what the next right step is for me.

But the question is, when he reveals it and he shows, are you going to be willing to step through it? Are you going to be willing to take that next step of surrender?

The Holy Spirit brings those things to light. Will you be Zacchaeus and run to grace? Or will you be the rich young ruler and walk away from it? Will you keep going your own way, doing your own thing? Or will you stop and start following him?

Several years ago, back at the turn of the century, 2001, which is forever ago for some of our middle schoolers in here, Bob Newhart was on a skit TV show called MADtv. It's kind of, you know, Fox's version of Saturday Night Live back in the day. And Bob Newhart played a discount therapist who promised to heal you in five minutes or less. And he was so confident in his approach that he only charged you $1 per minute for the first five minutes, and then everything after that was free. And so this lady comes to him in the skit and she is, like, just concerned, consumed by this fear of being buried alive in a box.

And. And Bob asked her if anyone has ever tried to bury her alive in a box. And she was like, well, no. Looking at him, kind of confused. Why would you ask me that?

And then he offers this advice. Let's check out this. I'm going to. I'm going.

To. There are some things in life that are more complicated, some struggles that require deep, meaningful counseling. I have benefited from that in my own life. But I also wonder if sometimes we just know what we're supposed to do. I know what I'm supposed to do.

And Jesus is looking at me and it's just like, sean, stop it. Stop it. And maybe you can relate. Like, I want to negotiate with him. I want to make it more complicated than it is.

And so if you find yourself doom scrolling a news app every night or having a news channel on every day, all day, maybe Jesus is looking at you going, stop it. It's not good for your health. It's not good for your mental health. It's not good for your spiritual health. If you're mindlessly scrolling through social media, stop it.

If you find yourself every night trying to numb yourself with alcohol or pornography or with some other chemical to take away whatever pain that you were experiencing that day, stop it. If you're constantly comparing your life to the online lives of others, stop it. If you're replaying that conversation that you had earlier in the day over and over in your head and you're thinking, man, if I just had another chance, this is what I would say to them. And they would be like, oh, you're right. I was so wrong.

I'm so sorry. Jesus is like, no, stop it. Stop it. If you're working yourself into the ground trying to prove your worth, stop it.

Living in a constant stream of negativity, complaining that poisons your relationships with others, relationship with God, stop it.

If you're avoiding prayer or time with God because you feel ashamed or like you've messed up too much, stop it.

We feel like following Jesus is this complicated puzzle that we have to put together when it's. When it's so much more simple than that. It's loving God, it's loving others. It is a lifestyle of confession and repentance and following him and becoming more like him, Jesus.

And we may know exactly what we need to do when it comes to surrender. That the problem isn't that it's not clear. The problem is that it sometimes feels really costly, that the cost of surrender is worth the life that we receive in Christ, the abundant life of following him. And so our question this morning as we wrap up is, what is Jesus asking you to surrender today?

What is Jesus asking me to surrender today? And for some, it might be the trust that you've put in money or status or control. For others, Jesus might be asking you to surrender your Instagram comparison bitterness. We all have places in our life where we trust something or someone to give us what only Jesus can. And today he might be inviting you to just stop it and to surrender.

Follow him with more of a childlike faith of trust and dependency. And it can be scary to let go. Too often I am like that rich young ruler and walk away. But Jesus isn't trying to take life from us. He is trying to give us abundant life, both now and for all of eternity.

So maybe today, I don't know what functional savior you have been chasing or looking to, and you've been chasing it, and it's just exhausting. Maybe it's led you to some dark and painful places. Jesus is inviting you to find new life in him, to find a fresh start. And you don't earn it. You receive it.

You receive it by coming to him like a child and saying, father, I need you. I can't do it on my own. If you're here today and maybe you're ready to take that step of faith and make that confession. We want to help you. We'll have some people around the room with lanyards want to pray with you and help you take that next step.

And maybe it's just confession and turning. Maybe it's baptism. You just need someone to pray with you this morning. That's why they're there and they want to serve in that way. And so here in a moment, we're going to have time.

Just some silence and some music. Go and find one of them, ask them to pray for you. We're going to come to a time of communion. We've got some stations in the front and in the back and boxes with little cups of bread and juice. As you take communion this morning and you take the bread that represents his body that was given on the cross, and you drink the cup that represents his blood that was shed.

And just spend some time asking, Jesus, what do you want me to surrender to you today?

What have I been putting in front of you?

He gave himself for you so that you could have abundant life. And just spend some moments saying, jesus, man, I want to receive that abundant life again. Let me pray for us, Jesus, thank you that you love us enough to challenge us, to convict us of the things that we put before you. Those functional saviors that promise to deliver us from whatever hell feels like, that typically just drag us deeper into it.

And so, Lord, I pray that whatever it is, we will lay it down once again. And it's a lifetime of this. So there's this continuation and ongoingness to this step. Lord, may we lay it down again and to say, I choose you, Jesus. I choose you.

Thank you for making a way for grace. Thank you for the love and forgiveness that we can receive. And if there's anybody in here today, God, that is tired and they are weary, God, may you be rest to them. And maybe even in these moments they'll take a bold step to find life that is in you or that you'll just meet them where they are, just restore and revive their souls. Today I pray it in Jesus name, Amen.