The Hundredfold Blessings of Following Jesus (Afternoon)
Download MP3My name is Joseph Ray. I'm the discipleship pastor here at Redeemer. And if you're new, if this is your first time or you're not regularly part of our church, we've been going through a series on the life of the apostle Peter. And so we've taken some time to look at Peter's life to see what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Now within that series, last week, we began kind of a mini series within it, specifically on the church, which is the community of people who are disciples of Jesus.
Joseph Rhea:And so this afternoon, we're looking at a passage that talks a little bit more about that. Last week we saw Jesus teach on confrontation and forgiveness, which are two vital practices for a community. If a Christian community doesn't confront sin or deal with conflict honestly and openly, and if people practice bitterness or kind of emotional warfare instead of forgiveness and reconciliation, then they can coexist, but they're not gonna be a church. They're not gonna be a community together. And so those practices are foundational for community to be created.
Joseph Rhea:And today, we're gonna look at another dimension of what God's community looks like. And we're gonna look at that using two texts. So Mark four Mark chapter 10, sorry, verses 17 through 31 is in your worship guide, or you can find that in your bible. So And we're gonna look at Mark ten first. But I'm also gonna read Acts chapter two verses 44 through 47, and we'll discuss those verses along the way as well.
Joseph Rhea:So this passage, as we're gonna see, at first it doesn't seem to be about community. It starts with a man who's asking about salvation. But as Jesus and his disciples kind of interact after this encounter takes place, we come to see that salvation and community are intimately tied together. That trusting Jesus for salvation means being brought into Jesus's community, which is the family of the church. And so we're gonna see that as we look at our texts today.
Joseph Rhea:So first, Mark 10 verses 17 through 31. And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.
Joseph Rhea:And he said to him, teacher, all these I've kept from my youth. And Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him, you lack one thing. Go sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.
Joseph Rhea:The disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. 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. And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is impossible but not with God for all things are possible with God. Peter began to say to him, see, we've left everything and followed you.
Joseph Rhea:Jesus said, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. And now, Acts chapter two verses 44 to 47. It reads, and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
Joseph Rhea:And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we see here in this text that coming to follow you requires a transformation of our hearts.
Joseph Rhea:But when you make that transformation and when you bring us into your kingdom by your grace, it brings us not just into a smaller world, it brings us into a much greater world than we could imagine That includes the life of heaven one day, but also includes just riches of blessings in this life through your family, the church. So I pray tonight, Lord, that my words would would do honor to these words, that you would speak to us through your scriptures because these are the words of life. And I pray that they would change us. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Joseph Rhea:So back in 2010, when I was single, I was in seminary full time. I was working part time for minimum wage as a barista. Redeemer, I was a member of Redeemer back in that day, we had a common meal. Now, it's kind of hard to imagine if you've come to the church relatively recently, but back in 2010, Redeemer had about a 100 people coming on a Sunday. No more than that.
Joseph Rhea:We wouldn't have filled this bottom area here. And common meals were done potluck style. So everyone would sign up to bring a dish and come to the common meal. And, that night, that common meal was celebrating mission partners we had in India and Kazakhstan. So they decided to have Indian and Kazakh food for this common meal.
Joseph Rhea:Now if you're wondering what is Kazakh food, I have no idea. I still don't remember. I barely knew what Indian food was, and so I just signed up for one of the recipes that they emailed out because I was a single guy and they wanted to serve and benefit us as well. I didn't know my way around the kitchen. So I signed up for this chicken recipe, and then I went and I bought more chicken than I had ever bought in my life.
Joseph Rhea:Remember, I was part time barista, full time grad student, single guy. It was the thick of the great recession, and so I was wondering, I'm like, I'm gonna overdraft my bank account buying chicken for this meal. So I spent the money. It felt expensive, and then it was time consuming too. It was like a couple hours of prep on Saturday and then an overnight marinade and then grilling it on Sunday afternoon before church because we only had church at 04:00 in the afternoon back in those days.
Joseph Rhea:So I remember thinking more than once, I hope this is worth it. Know, I hope this is worth the sacrifice. Fifteen years later, I still remember that common meal. Now, I kind of vaguely remember the cost and the time and all that stuff, but I vividly remember eating so much delicious food, far more than I would have had had I just made chicken for myself that night. So did I give to make that common meal happen?
Joseph Rhea:Yes. Sure. I gave. It was more than I usually do for a meal like that. But I received far more than what I gave in that time.
Joseph Rhea:Now that's a picture of what we're gonna look at tonight. See, this story that we read from Mark is usually framed as being about the cost of following Jesus. So this wealthy young man asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, and Jesus tells him to sell everything that he has, give it to the poor, and to follow after him. And this young man goes away sorrowful because he's just not willing to give up his life, to give up his wealth. So he won't sacrifice on earth to have treasure in heaven like Jesus says.
Joseph Rhea:Now that's not a wrong way to frame the story. That the story is about that. And last year, Matt Francisco preached on this text, he really dove in on that. And so you can go back and listen and hear kind of a deep dive there. But Jesus has this conversation with Peter after this incident that shows that there's something else going on in the story.
Joseph Rhea:It's not just about sacrifice on earth received in heaven. The life of heaven does require sacrifice on earth, but Jesus tells Peter that the life of heaven begins on earth here and now. Yes. We have hardship, we have persecution, but there are blessings that Jesus says his people will have in this life. And so he promises Peter some of these blessings.
Joseph Rhea:And then in Acts two, we see those kind of come to fruition. We start to see what that looks like when Jesus' kingdom starts to grow on earth. So tonight we're gonna look kind of briefly at the cost of discipleship, which this young man isn't willing to pay, but we're also gonna look at what we gain as disciples of Jesus even in this life when we follow him. See, Jesus is getting ready to set out on a journey. This young man interrupts him, so he runs up, kneels before Jesus, and he says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Joseph Rhea:This young man's words and actions communicate genuine respect. So he's not someone trying to trap or to trick Jesus. These seem to be good faith questions. He's more polite than Nathaniel was, and Nathaniel became one of Jesus' disciples. So he's like kind of already on a human level up above someone who's following Jesus, you know, at this moment.
Joseph Rhea:But even though he's respectful, and even though it says in verse 21 that Jesus loves this young man, their encounter ends with him going away sorrowful instead of joining with Jesus. To see why, let's look at what Jesus says in verses twenty one and twenty two. Jesus tells this young man, you lack one thing. Go, sell all that you have, give to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. And disheartened by the saying, the young man went away sorrowful because he had great possessions.
Joseph Rhea:See, Jesus says, yes, you've kept those commands that we mentioned. Don't murder. You've never committed adultery. You've honored your parents. You've never defrauded someone.
Joseph Rhea:He doesn't push back on him in that. But he says, there's one thing you're missing. I need you to trade in every earthly possession you own, and then come follow me. See, it sounds like Jesus is asking this man to perform a task. And this is actually a task that Jesus never commands anyone else to make.
Joseph Rhea:Jesus never tells anyone else, get rid of everything you have so you can follow me. So that's not what Jesus is doing at this moment. It's not just laying on another task. What Jesus is doing is Jesus is exposing the posture of this young man's heart. Jesus is saying, you've got great wealth.
Joseph Rhea:Can you release that to follow me? And this young man, even though he was respectful, even though he was moral, he can't do it. He realizes when he hears that command, I can't follow that. My heart can't let go of my wealth. And then he goes away.
Joseph Rhea:That's because salvation requires changing our heart's posture toward everything that we have. It means our heart changes from mine, from this holding on mentality that holds what we have to ourself, and it turns to God, and it opens its hands, and it says, it's yours. Whatever's in my bank account, whatever income, whatever possessions I have, God, they're yours. My time, whatever I have to give for that, it's yours. My energy, my gifts, my home, Lord, they belong to you.
Joseph Rhea:They don't belong to me anymore. That's the heart posture of a disciple. That's what Jesus is asking this young man, challenging this young man to take up. And this young man figures out that he's not there. That that's not the way his heart responds.
Joseph Rhea:The heart posture of a disciple of Jesus is, my hands are totally open. Whatever I have, God, I'm laying it on the table, and it's yours. Just tell me what to do with it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who came of age a little bit before the Nazis took over his country. So Germany in the nineteen twenties and then thirties.
Joseph Rhea:Dietrich was from a wealthy, well educated family. So they had connections in the German government, they had kind of houses and property that sustained them, they had prestigious jobs, they had the means to travel and even to live abroad. A lot of their friends went in for Nazi propaganda wholesale. A lot of their friends also just kind of put their heads down and didn't really say anything and just tried to like ride out the wave of whatever came. But the Bonhoeffers were known for being outspokenly against Nazism, and Dietrich was as well.
Joseph Rhea:As a result, he was banned from being a state sponsored pastor, So he couldn't get on the government payroll for ministers, and so it hurt his livelihood and his prestige. It meant that eventually he was forbidden even to teach or to write publicly, so he couldn't build up his reputation as a theologian. He wasn't allowed to teach people in his own country. He was under constant threat of arrest, and he actually left Germany twice over the nineteen thirties. And each time, he felt convicted that God's call on his life was for him to live in solidarity with the German people and be a pastor and a shepherd to them.
Joseph Rhea:And so those actions ended up resulting in Dietrich and in one of his brothers being arrested and ultimately executed for resisting the Nazi regime. So the Bonhoeffer's family's obedience, their obedient faith, it led them to the sacrifice of two of their children. They gave up as part of following Jesus. So Jesus says for a rich person, for a rich family like the Bonhoeffers, to be able to make sacrifices like that, to let go of what they have, it takes a miracle. He says it's like a camel getting through the eye of a needle, And there's kind of speculations and theories about what that might mean, but it really sounds like Jesus is talking about a literal camel going through the eye of a literal needle.
Joseph Rhea:That a giant animal easier to get a giant animal through a teeny tiny pinprick hole than it is for a wealthy person to get into the kingdom of God. He says it's impossible apart from God's work that it takes a miracle. So following Jesus means laying everything on the table. It means saying, my hours aren't my own. If someone needs them in service, then they're theirs.
Joseph Rhea:I'll give them. My house isn't just my own anymore. If someone needs a roof, or someone needs a table or a living room together, I'll provide it. My money isn't my own anymore. If there's someone who needs it more, it's theirs.
Joseph Rhea:And so the cost of discipleship challenges us to ask ourself, is there something in my life that my heart is holding on to? Is it saying, no, you can't have that, like the young man was saying with his wealth. I've heard one pastor say, if your life is a house, is there a room that's locked to God? That God isn't allowed to go behind that door because whatever else he may have, he can't touch that stuff. That's my stuff.
Joseph Rhea:Is it a relationship? God, you can't you can't have that. That girlfriend or that boyfriend, that's mine. Is it time? God, you can have Sundays and Wednesday nights, but the rest of it has got to be mine.
Joseph Rhea:Is it money? I'll give 5%. I'll give 10%. But the rest is mine. God, don't touch it.
Joseph Rhea:So if there's something like that in our life, then at minimum, we won't experience all the goodness that God has to offer us. And it may mean that like this young man, we're missing God's kingdom altogether. So that's a question worth searching our souls about is does my house, the house of my life, have a locked room? That could be the end of the story, that this young man goes away sorrowful, they have this lesson about the dangers of wealth and the cost of discipleship, and then we move on to other things. But God bless Peter, he says the thing that has got to be on all of the disciples' minds.
Joseph Rhea:So it says in verse 28, Peter says, hey, we've left everything and followed you. And the Gospel of Matthew, which also tells the story, it adds that Peter asks, what then will we have? And so Peter sees this encounter, he sees this man walk away, and then he tells Jesus, hey, we have left everything. Right? What do we get?
Joseph Rhea:You might think that Jesus would rebuke Peter and say, you're completely thinking about this the wrong way, but he doesn't. If you look at Jesus's response starting in verse 29, he says, truly I say to you, there's no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. Now, if I'm honest, I've tended to kind of skip over the first part of verse 30. I've tended to read this as Jesus saying, yes, in this life there's sacrifice, there's hardship, there's persecutions, and then in the age to come there's eternal life.
Joseph Rhea:So we sacrifice here, we earn there. We receive there. But that's not what he says. In verse 30, he says, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. So he says when God works the miracle of making you someone whose heart can open its hands and say, God, these aren't mine anymore, my life is yours.
Joseph Rhea:When a camel gets brought through the eye of a needle, God works that miracle. He brings us into a world that's bigger on the inside than it looks like it is from the outside. What does he mean? Let's think first about houses. That's what he mentions first.
Joseph Rhea:Peter, his family had a house, and he left that house to follow Jesus. He had a lot of nights where he probably didn't know where he was gonna sleep at the end of that day. His house is his. It's his comfort, his control, his possession, he's in charge of it. But as Peter followed Jesus, he stayed probably in more houses around Judea than he would have stayed had he left.
Joseph Rhea:And then he went on to stay in other people's houses all around the Roman Empire receiving the hospitality of Jews and Gentiles from blue collar workers to high ranking military officials. Peter receives hospitality in more homes than he would ever have known had he not followed Jesus. What about family? Peter, we know he's married. He leaves his father and his mother and his brothers.
Joseph Rhea:Now he doesn't leave his wife. Sin might break up marriages, but Jesus doesn't. But in Acts two, when Peter preaches at Pentecost right before the passage we read, God saves 3,000 people through Peter's preaching, and they become his brothers and sisters. That's what Christians call one another. And so when Peter writes letters to Christians who live a thousand miles of travel away from him, the letter that we call first Peter, he refers to them as brothers and sisters.
Joseph Rhea:And he says you're part of a brotherhood now, and he means it. The Apostle Paul says the same thing, that we become part of God's household when we come to faith in Christ. And then finally, land or possessions. Peter's family owned a fishing business. That would be kind of like a family that has a small, maybe contracting or plumbing business here, where you have a truck, you have tools, and it generates income as you show up for work.
Joseph Rhea:So you do jobs, you get paid for the jobs. Peter gave a lot of that up to follow Jesus, that when he was with Jesus, he wasn't working to earn income for himself or for his family. But when he's received into people's homes, he receives the hospitality at their table and their food as well. Now does Peter experience persecution? Yes.
Joseph Rhea:He's thrown in jail, he's beaten, he's ultimately crucified. So it's not that those things didn't happen. Jesus said they would happen and they did. This isn't what's called the prosperity gospel, which is that if you turn your life over to Jesus, he makes you rich, he guarantees your health, and all of those things. That's not how it works.
Joseph Rhea:But Jesus says, if you become the kind of person who comes into God's kingdom with open hands, you'll receive the open handed generosity of the heavenly father and his family. That's what we see in view in the acts two passage that we read. It's a snapshot of this family life, of what Jesus's promise looks like when it's fulfilled. So these brand new Christians, they start welcoming one another into their homes for meals. They worship, they eat, they celebrate together.
Joseph Rhea:They also share each other's burdens to the point of people liquidating property to give the money to those in need. In Acts four, it says that the early Christians had no lack because of how they were caring for one another. There are tons of institutions that we take for granted in the Western world today, like public education, like hospitals, senior living facilities to care for the elderly, that those things essentially they began inside Christianity. Because people took the natural care that you're gonna give to your own children, to your own family members, and they started offering or extending those out to others. And those gradually became the institutions that we know as things like hospitals today.
Joseph Rhea:It's because people started offering family life to others. These are all pictures of people taking the care that we naturally offer our family. Maybe we would offer our extended family if we're close, and then throwing that out wide to fellow Christians as brothers and sisters in Christ. My family moved, here to Birmingham to take this job. We've kind of left the state and come back a couple times.
Joseph Rhea:It's complicated. But our most recent move back was September 2023. So right after we moved here, we ordered this huge wooden playset for our kids for Christmas that was going to come in boxes, and we were going have to assemble it. I knew it was going be a lot of work. Within weeks of making that order, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that attacks muscles.
Joseph Rhea:It wrecked my life for about four to six months. I couldn't physically get out of bed without help. I couldn't lift my arms over my head, let alone build a big wooden playset. And so in December 2023, December that year, we still hadn't gotten my condition under control with medication, which where we are now, we're very thankful for. So over three days in December, which is not a month where people have a lot of free time.
Joseph Rhea:You know, December's a busy month. But over three days, some men came out to build this play set for our kids at our house and in our yard. Some of the people who did that work were my dad and my brothers, and so they came out and they helped me. But a lot of the men who came out were guys that I only knew through Redeemer, some of whom I met basically when they came out to do this for us. They heard that there was a member in need, and they came out to serve alongside my biological family.
Joseph Rhea:And so my family have lived this family care. We have received more meals than I can count from people as we've had kids, as we've been sick. Just more people have provided meal trains and food for us than I could count if I tried. We've lived in a couple of different states. So we've lived in Indiana, we've lived in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Joseph Rhea:We have no biological family in either of those places. But if, like God forbid, some disaster happened and we just rolled into one of those cities without means and needing help, there are multiple families in each city that would at least take us in for the short term and keep us under their roof to help us get back on their feet because they are our church family and have been brothers and sisters in Christ to us in the past. So we have experienced the family blessing of having multiple homes we could access in multiple cities because of our spiritual brothers and sisters. It feels almost embarrassing to talk about all of the ways that we feel like our lives have been enriched with me as a pastor. Has belonging to God's family made my life harder?
Joseph Rhea:In some ways, sure. Yes, absolutely. But the blessings I've received just in this life outweigh them a hundredfold. So have I suffered for the gospel? Sure.
Joseph Rhea:Have I been blessed by the church the family of the church? Far more abundantly. If we had time tonight, we could just open the mic and let y'all tell stories about ways that you've seen the church be family to you. Because we've heard, we hear so many stories of these same kinds of things happening. You've had people visit you in the hospital when you were sick.
Joseph Rhea:You've had people bring you meals. You've had people counsel you, pray for you, encourage you through hard times, not because you're related, but because you're family in Christ. When God transforms our hearts from a mine posture to a yours posture, that makes us into the people who live this way for one another. That's what the church is. It's a group of men and women who have said to God, everything I have is yours.
Joseph Rhea:And then they've looked around to the people that God has put in their life and they said, well, what do they need? What do I have that I can give? What do I have that I can offer to them? Who needs my time or my home or my money more than I do in this moment? This is what our home group leaders do when they invite people into their houses every week to show them hospitality.
Joseph Rhea:And then they open their hearts and invite them into that too by sharing their joys and also their sorrows and their burdens and their struggles. It's what our home group members do when our staff or elders hear things like, hey, Ben and Morgan Powell had their baby. They're doing great. We visited them in the hospital, and we've already set up a meal train. Just wanted you guys to know.
Joseph Rhea:We hear that our church is taking care of itself. Our home groups are taking care of one another. They're showing this family love to each other. The life of a healthy family is getting extended to brothers and sisters in Christ. So if you're here and you've experienced those blessings, if you felt the love of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers in Christ, give thanks for that.
Joseph Rhea:It may even be worth giving someone a phone call or a text or scheduling a time to sit down and just say thank you. Tell them how they've been family to you. It'd also be helpful to ask God, who were the family members around me who might need my help? Who could use a meal from me? Who could use a word of encouragement?
Joseph Rhea:Who could use a prayer request or some time together? What could I do to offer that care to my brothers and sisters? How could I be family to them? And if you're here, and either you're not a member of Redeemer, or you are a member and you don't feel like you've experienced these blessings, if you feel like something's missing, then it may be worth asking, is there something I haven't let go of yet? Is there some way that I haven't let go of time to serve?
Joseph Rhea:Is there a struggle on my heart that I haven't let go of enough to confess so other people can encourage me and show God's grace through offering forgiveness and accountability? If so, then pray over that and ask God, to help you take it to your community. If you're not part of our community, then come talk to me after because I'd love to discuss that with you about how we could make that happen. Following Jesus means giving up control. It means letting God change our heart posture from mine to yours, to his.
Joseph Rhea:The young man wasn't willing to do that, and he missed out on following Jesus and on the family blessings. Peter and the other disciples, they didn't do it perfectly. They had issues. They had things that it turns out that they were hanging onto along the way. They had to learn to do this over and over again.
Joseph Rhea:But as their hearts were willing to let go of control, they started to become the family that we see in the book of Acts. We'll close by considering where we get the power for this. How does God change our hearts to let go of control and become family? When Jesus was crucified and he was dying on the cross, he saw his mother Mary standing beside John, who was one of his disciples. By that point, Joseph, Mary's husband, had died and so Jesus as the oldest son was responsible to care for her.
Joseph Rhea:He had biological brothers and they hadn't become followers of his yet, and so they weren't part of his spiritual family, but they were his biological family. But Jesus looks at Mary and he says, woman, behold your son. And then he looks at John and he says, behold your mother. While he is dying on the cross, Jesus uses one of his last sayings to create a new family. It says that from that hour, John took Mary into his house, as if she were his own mother and took care of her.
Joseph Rhea:When we take communion, we say that Jesus gave his body to create a body. You could also say that on the cross, Jesus lost his family briefly, that he experienced forsakenness from his heavenly father to create a family, to create the family of the church. The apostle Paul was an unmarried Jewish man. He wrote to Gentile Christians at Corinth. They called them brothers and sisters.
Joseph Rhea:And he wrote that Jesus, even though he was rich, became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich. He didn't mean that we'd get physically wealthy here, but he meant that we would receive not just the bounty of the new creation one day, but we would receive the goodness of God's family in the church. When we reflect on our spiritual poverty, so our sin and the judgment that we deserve, and we reflect on what Jesus gave up to bring us into the riches of God's kingdom, that helps us relax our grip. Because what's a free weekend compared to eternity? What's a vacation compared to the new creation?
Joseph Rhea:What's a little extra quiet compared to a house full of brothers and sisters growing in Christ together? See, beholding the grace of Christ given to us and understanding the incredible bounty of God's kingdom enables the spirit to open our hearts, to open our hands, to receive the kingdom of heaven and become part of the family of God. Pray with me. Heavenly father, we're here ultimately because of your grace. Because Jesus, you were willing to give up the riches and the wealth of heaven to experience abandonment and forsakenness from your own heavenly Father, so that we could be forgiven of our sin.
Joseph Rhea:And so that we could be reconciled to God and brought into the life of heaven. And that life of heaven begins now here on earth, and we find it in the church, which is a place full of imperfect sinful people who have plenty of selfishness and plenty of things that we're still holding on to, tempted not to let go of. But that is learning because of your grace to open our hands and to give to our brothers and sisters and those in need. Would you help us see the goodness and the riches of your grace? And would that move us to be brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers to one another because of our common hope and our common savior.
Joseph Rhea:We pray this Jesus in your name. Amen.
