No One Is Good Except God Alone

Luke chapter 18. We start reading with verse 18 and we'll read till verse 30, including verse 30. This evening we speak about the goodness of God and that no one is good except God alone. Luke chapter 18, verse 18. A certain ruler asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus answered. No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony. Honor your father and your mother. All of these I have kept since I was a boy, he said. When Jesus 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. When he heard this, he became very sad because he was a man of great wealth. And Jesus looked at him and said, How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Those who heard this asked, Who then can be saved? Jesus replied, What is impossible with men is possible with God. Peter said to him, We have left all we had to follow you. I tell you the truth, Jesus said to them, No one has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God. will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life. Lord and Heavenly Father, as we read these words, we know that these words are not our words, but your words. That this is the word of God. Pray now that you would open our hearts and ears that we may hear the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it's in his name that we pray. Amen. When we speak about the goodness of God, or when we speak about goodness, there are basically two points of view. Let me illustrate these two points of view. The story is told that after the 1959 Cuban Revolution in Cuba, Fidel Castro went to a school, an elementary school, and he said to the boys and girls, close your eyes and ask God for some candy. And so the children closed their eyes and they asked God for candy. And when they had finished praying, when they had finished praying, he said, did you receive what you asked for? And they said, no. So he gave them candy. And he said that if you ask the Communist Party for something good, you will receive it. That's the first point of view. A view of goodness which mocks God which robs God of His glory and which, in one way or another, seeks to show that man is good. However, allow me to illustrate also the other point of view. Two weeks ago, I was in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, visiting with students who I teach and Pastor Jose Arias had an example about a lady in his church. She's an elderly lady and very poor. One morning she woke up and realized really she did not have any food in the house. And so she went to her window and opened it and asked God to give her some eggs and bread. Y café con azúcar, coffee with sugar. And while she was praying, there were some, there were some juvenile delinquents, let's call them, around the corner and they heard, they heard the prayer. So they were going to pull a fast one on her, so they went to the corner store and they bought the eggs and the bread and el café con azúcar. And they went to her and they gave it to her. She prayed again. She says, Lord, thank you for answering my prayer today and using these brats to do it. You see, that's the second view. That's the second view. That's the view that sees goodness in the light of God. That sees that goodness always comes from God. Because God is good. All the time. I have the privilege of going to Cuba in about two weeks. It will be my first visit, and as I work with different leaders, I'm not going to be speaking about Fidel Castro if I want to stay the length of time designated. But I will be speaking about the goodness of God. And I hope that the students will see that the little bit of goodness that Fidel Castro and the communist government has been promising. If goodness has come from that system, it comes from God. But much more importantly, that the heavens are open to the spiritual goodness that God has for us and His people and also for those in Cuba. And that no one can stop the prayers of God's people. And that we may always ask, and we may ask for all good things according to God's will. For God is always good, and you may ask all good things from God according to His will. What a wonderful God we have. Now this evening, we will see that our mission is not to promote human goodness, but the goodness of God. Through the good news, the good news of Jesus Christ who took our place on the cross. Because if only God is good, that means we're wicked. If only God is good, that means we're evil. If only God is good, that means we're not good, however you want to call it. But thanks be to God that through the transforming gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, His goodness is shed into our hearts. We become instruments and channels of His goodness. also in the world. We will see tonight, as we go to Luke chapter 18, the verses 18 through 30, but concentrating especially on the first part, that Jesus has a view of God's goodness and He shares that with us. And in the view that Jesus expresses about God's goodness, He contradicts the view which the rich young ruler has. We will see that He exposes their, or His, pardon me, His and our false, presumptions as far as the goodness, as far as goodness goes. And then Jesus will establish once and for all the definition of goodness and the standard of goodness that God supplies and then will show us that in the church this goodness is multiplied over and over again. First of all then, tonight we see that the Lord exposes the false presumptions of the rich young ruler By the answer which Jesus gives to the question of the rich young ruler, at least three false presuppositions are exposed. And the first one is in the very first part of the question that the rich young ruler asks. He says, good teacher, good teacher, why did he call Jesus good? We see later on that this good teacher gave him some instruction, but he did not listen to the good teacher. He disobeyed the good teacher. And so, why did he call him good teacher? Well, it could be simply to associate, name association we call that, to associate with this great teacher who he had heard about. Outside of Christianity, there's a lot of name association with Jesus. Islam, the Muslims, the Koran says that. That Jesus is a good prophet, but they do not accept one teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they reject Him. Name association. The Mormons, in order, yeah, they too believe in Jesus. But the Jesus they believe in is not the Jesus that you and I believe in. Their God is Adam, who has become Elohim. That is, man became God. And we've become gods. And so God is dragged down to our level. Even in the United Reformed Church, we think we're good. Because we're associated with good doctrine. And with truth. But I tell you, my friends, even though I thank the Lord for the last synod that we had and celebrated here and we thank you for your hospitality and wonderful love that you've shown for the church and for the Lord and your cooperation. But when we talked about doctrines, especially on Thursday, I was shaking in my boots. We were voting one thing up and another thing down and up and down. I mean, it's as if our doctrines were based on votes. You know, I'm from Florida and I get scared when you talk about votes. our doctrine is not based on democratic votes our doctrine is based on revelation that which was once and for all revealed to us in the scriptures it is written, it is objective that which was demonstrated to us personally by God in Jesus Christ and that which is confirmed spiritually to us by the Holy Spirit. That, my friends, is true doctrine. And in the United Reformed churches, it behooves us to be very humble in our association with truth because we are but babes. And so am I. The way we were handling truth at Synod, it's like, what do I do with it? It is time we humble ourselves before the Word of God and know that the only truth that exists absolutely and ultimately lies with God. And unless we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we can have doctrine in our heads and we can even be obedient to the law as the rich young ruler was obedient to the law. But if we do not respond by faith to Jesus Christ, if this is not loving obedience to the Savior and to the Lord, All this fine doctrine is of no use. For we see that when the rich young ruler, he obeyed the Ten Commandments, praise God, he walked away sad. Because he left that which was most important behind. Believing in the teacher. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so name association, The presupposition, the false position of just name association being associated with Christ was not enough. Christ requires personal obedience. The second false presupposition was, or has to do with human ability. Notice in the question, the rich young ruler says, Good teacher, what must I do? That should signal he wants to do something. And so the Lord gives him something to do. You know, what the Lord gave him to do was very gracious. All he had to do was sell everything he had and follow Jesus and he would have had eternal life. Now just imagine, if the Lord were here today and he gave us the same order and he said, Hey, sell all that you have and follow me and you're in. Wouldn't you do it? No, you wouldn't do it. In fact, you can't do it. He didn't do it because he could not do it. You see, we are called. The disciples did follow the Lord. Peter says later on, hey, look, we follow. That's because we need to be drawn by God. We need to be called. And God has to give us the power. God has to give us the power in order that we may truly follow Him. Paul speaks in Romans 7 about the desire to do good. What I want to do, I don't do, he says. And what I don't want to do, I do. There's a desire to do good, but the ability is not there unless God gives it to us. And so we see that Jesus did not appeal to the rich young ruler. Did not appeal to his goodness. There was no intrinsic goodness to be found in him to appeal to. Because he says in his answer to him, only God is good. So why should Jesus appeal to the goodness that is in the young man? He doesn't have any. Only God is good. Yet, and Mark, the Gospel according to Mark, says something very interesting. When the young man said, hey, but I've obeyed the law. Jesus looked at him and loved him. You see, there was something good about this rich young ruler. Not that he was good in himself, but that he obeyed the law. And the law is good. You see, the law is from God. And God is good. God doesn't contain goodness. God is goodness. And all that God does is good. And so when God gave the Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments are great. They're good. And so when he was obedient to the Ten Commandments, he was participating in goodness. That's why he was a good boy. But it wasn't his goodness. It is a borrowed goodness. It is, as Luther would say, an alien goodness. The law comes from God, and the law is just and holy and good. But the law is good because it comes from God who is good. Even Adam and Eve, before sin, were created as dependent image bearers by nature. And if they were to be good, they would have to obey God and His commandments and His mandates. Because that's how we are made. We're image bearers. Goodness is not to be found in us. The only goodness that can be found in us is when by faith we are obedient to God. The rich young ruler left sad. But we can be glad. I thank God every day of my Christian life that I'm not saved by my works. I thank God that He does not judge me with my thought life, with my intentions, With my sin of omission, where I don't give thanks to God in all things, where I don't glorify Him, where I'm selfish, where I'm carnal, I fall into temptation. And I'm under the influence of the evil one. That is part of the Christian life. We struggle with these matters. But thanks be to God, we are not left with the bad news. He gives us the good news. It is true that we are able, in Christ, who gives us that ability, that we are able to resist sin. We are able to check our thought life. We are able to resist the temptations of the world, and we can tell Satan to get lost. And so our mission is not to glorify the goodness of man, which God does not glorify. Our mission is to show God's goodness and His ability and His riches. There is a bank, if I may use this illustration, God's bank of Christ's merits, which are filled to overflowing. And all who believe in Him may draw from the merits of Christ of His perfect life. All that Jesus accomplished in His 33 years, that perfect life of Christ, you may draw from. The account of God or God's account in Jesus' name. And you may draw upon it. In fact, you must draw upon it. For that is the nature of good works. It's not that we produce them, but God by His grace and His Spirit produces Christ's work in us. For we are His workmanship. And our works are created and are made in God. And so we are people of prayer. And we ask all things, great and small, from God. For only God is good. And if we seek to do that which is good, we must go to God. Our human ability will cause us to simply walk away sad. But if we rely upon the ability of Christ, God's ability, God's possibility, as we will see later on, we will be glad. Finally, the third false presupposition that's found in the question of the rich young ruler is in the third part. Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He figured he was going to inherit eternal life. He thought an inheritance was coming to him. Perhaps he thought it was for his moral obedience of the law. Or maybe he thought he had an inheritance coming because he was Jewish. He had a very small view of inheritance. But the inheritance which Christ has, the inheritance which Christ has is far greater than the inheritance of Israel alone or salvation just for ourselves. The inheritance of Christ is found in Psalm 2. Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance. The ends of the earth your possession. And so all the nations of the world are the inheritance of Christ. Not just America, not just Israel, but all the nations of the world. And you and I, if we are in Christ, if we live by faith, we have the right to represent Christ among the nations. Thank God that here in California, God brings the nations right to California. I mean, they are just waiting to get in. Sometimes they don't wait. But the nations belong to God. In a couple of weeks, I go to Cuba. Now, I've already sent my books, my textbooks and notebooks to Cuba and they were rejected. They came back. So now I've got to figure a way, and probably I'll spend this week working, putting my materials on disc. And I'll put one disc here, and if they take that away, I'll hopefully have another disc here. You see, one way or another, we will get that information in order to teach about Christ and God's goodness. We'll get it into Cuba, Lord willing. Why are we so bold? Why is it that Ed Marcus and others who work in Mexico for years and years were not allowed to enter as missionaries, and so they went as very, very religious tourists? Why are they so bold? Because they know that the nations belong to Christ. There is an inheritance. We're not just merely talking about the new heavens and the new earth. That'll be great. But when Scripture speaks about the inheritance of Christ, it begins here in this world. And the nations belong to Christ. I have the opportunity of working in several different nations. Part of my work is to go periodically to visit forum study groups, train leaders, and hopefully these leaders will train others. That's the whole idea, that they will train their own members and leaders in the church. And the Lord has blessed it. And I'm amazed that He's still giving me strength and health and ability to go forth and do this kind of stuff. From one place to the next. It's incredible. At the end of this week, we're going to be driving up to Canada. That'll be a family vacation. Then I go to Cuba, come back, go to the Dominican Republic, come back. we'll be going to Quito, Ecuador we'll be going to Honduras we'll be going to Costa Rica we have work here in Los Angeles as well and so the Lord opens the door when you ask and you say, Lord, would you make it possible if it's according to His will and His promises He opens the door according to His will, His timing, of course if it is God's will there is a way if it is God's will there is a way and so we see how the Lord in his answer to the rich young ruler exposes the false assumption in the question of the rich young ruler but now he also establishes his own position in the second place we see that the Lord declares that only God makes goodness and salvation possible What is impossible with men is possible with God. Now let us also say that only a good God can save us. Because what are we saved from? What is opposite of good? Evil. We're saved from evil. And so the God who saves us must be good. And Jesus, of course, identifies God as the only one who is good. And so we cannot save ourselves from evil. But we must go to God. So that he, in his goodness, would be able to deal with evil and bring in goodness. Only God's goodness can overcome evil. Martin Luther identified the three great enemies of God as the flesh, the world, and Satan. But thanks be to God that when Jesus Christ came into this world, yes, he was tempted by Satan and he overcame Satan and crushed his head, as Scripture would say. Crushed his head on the cross and overcame Satan. And he overcame the temptations of the world. All these world systems, whether it be religion or culture or politics or the masses, be it what it may, he overcame them. And on the cross, he took your place and mine. He who was righteous died for the unrighteous so that you might become righteous, so that he might declare you righteous. Now, notice that Jesus did not say to the rich young ruler, Hey, you didn't answer the question right. Why don't you come back and just accept me as your Lord and Savior? He did not pursue. He did not pursue the rich young ruler in his state of rejection. As you and I might be tempted to do. Rather, Jesus died rejected. He took upon the rejection. Of all those who walked away from Him. Of all those who spit on Him. Of all those who cried out, crucify Him. Of all those who ignore His saving work. He takes upon Himself. Not only our rejection. But the greatest rejection of all, the rejection of the Father. God, our Heavenly Father, rejected the Son on the cross. That was part of the wrath of God poured out upon the Son. But all of that rejection is accepted by the Savior, so that we, by His power, can be accepted by Him. You see, the goodness of God comes to us through the evilness of the cross. For the cross is evil, it's terrible. But God used that evil instrument of the cross in order to bring goodness to you and to me. Reverend Blakely was shot a year and a half ago in Miami. He was senior pastor at the Central Baptist Church. He worked with homeless people and one of the homeless persons who he was ministering to came during Christmas vacation, came into his house and started shooting. Killed him and wounded another family member. His daughter is a friend of my daughter. and so we became personally involved in what happened there but the testimony of Mrs. Blakely and her daughter was incredible she said that Reverend Blakely if he were alive today would still minister to the same homeless people regardless of what happened why did she say that? Because her definition of goodness, God's goodness is not conditioned upon human evil. It's not conditioned on anything human. It is always from God. God is always good. All the time. Not only in the good times, but also in the bad times. And that's especially when you and I find out where our faith is. When things go wrong. When we are victims. When we're victimized. Yes, evil always victimizes. then we find out that God never victimizes. He's not the author of evil, but He is so powerful, He's able to turn the worst of crimes, even the crime against His Son, He turns it around and He uses it for good. For all things work together for good. All things, good and evil. All things work together for good for those who love the Lord. You see, God is above it. He works through it, but He's above it and He never changes. Praise be to His name. And so we see that in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, the goodness, the salvation, and that possibility, what is impossible with men is possible with God. The possibility of God is made clear. Now our third consideration tonight is that the Lord declares that only God makes, pardon me, the third consideration is that this goodness is multiplied through the church. This goodness is multiplied through the church and there is comic relief here, there really is. When Jesus has said this incredible statement, what is impossible with man is possible with God, then Peter said to him, hey look, I'm using my own words, We have left all we had to follow you, like the rich young ruler couldn't leave it all, but we did. Typical Peter. Saying what comes to his mind. But what he said was true. It's true that they had left all and had followed Jesus. Not because Peter was such a good person, which he wasn't. But because God is so good and called Him to it. You see, this evening, as we have gathered together this evening, I praise God for every single person in this room. Because you are a demonstration of the goodness of God. You have followed Jesus Christ. You have followed Jesus Christ. We're not perfect in our following of Jesus Christ, and thankfully there's Peters in the Bible like that. Of course, we're not perfect in our following, but God's perfect. But the goodness of God has been multiplied in us and through us and in the church as we follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, listen to what the Lord says. I tell you the truth, Jesus said to them, no one has left home or wife or brother or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come eternal life. You see, he asked, Jesus asked the rich young ruler to give up his possession and his family relationship in the sense that he was going to now relate to Jesus and follow Jesus. He asked him to come to himself, to come to Jesus and be transformed. And possessions and family relationships in this transformed state would be given back to us, but in a transformed way. You see, we are different. We are following a different Piper. We are following a different Lord. Christians are different. We're going in a different direction than the church. Pardon me, than the world. And part of that direction led you here tonight. And I praise God that this church has two services. In Miami, we're visiting a church because we don't have a United Reformed Church. Well, they have two services in the morning. But there were no evening services. And as a minister of the gospel in the United Reformed Church, I didn't feel good about that. So you know what I did? After I heard that Reverend Blakely got shot by a homeless, I thought, well, why not work with the homeless? And so on Sunday nights, there is a group from the church that goes and gives food to the homeless. And so I do some street preaching. and then, because I'm not always there, I'm often traveling, we have about three or four brothers who preach. See, the direction which the Lord is leading you is a different direction than this world leads you. That's because He has worked the possibility of God in your life. He's called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. And His goodness is being multiplied through you. Multiple people, multiple talents and gifts, multiplied through the church and sent into the darkness of the world so that Jesus may be glorified in all the nations. I give thanks to God when I go and work in different places because everywhere I go, I have different brothers and sisters. And you know, the family of God is closer than my own family. My siblings live in Alberta and Northwest Territories and Benin, Africa. I hardly see them. But you know, you and I tonight, we're together. We're brothers and sisters in the Lord. That's a wonderful blessing. That's, again, part of the possibility that God works out as He fulfills His promises. I thank the Lord for mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters in the faith. The wonderful, wonderful family of God. And I am grateful to know you as family of God and that we can work together. And I hope that we can work together. My particular calling in life is to work in the Spanish language. I started speaking Spanish when I was 30. And I'm still learning. But God's used me in that area. And there's a lot of Spanish-speaking people here in California. And I leave the challenge open to this congregation tonight. I'm willing to come and help train leaders and do what it takes in Spanish in order that we could have a Spanish United Reformed Church. Spanish-speaking, that is. United Reformed Church. I would pray. I ask God. I'm going to the bank tonight. I'm asking God. I'm saying, Lord, if this is your will, would you grant it? Because the church is for all God's people. You see, the family of God is so great. It includes all who come to Christ, regardless of what language they speak, regardless of what background they come from, and regardless of what kind of documents they have. The church of Christ is far greater than all these things. And the church needs to be the place where we see that. Where we see God fulfilling His wonderful, wonderful promises. In conclusion, what are we doing with the goodness of God, which we have received through the good news in Jesus Christ? First of all, the fact that you are here tonight means that you want to worship God. And that's the most important. We need to recognize where that goodness comes from. We need to go to the source from which it comes from. And we must give God all the glory. If there's anything good in us, it's because God is working. If there's anything evil, that's us. That's our responsibility. but all the goodness that God has granted upon us be it in the temporal sense or the eternal sense be it whatever it may all goodness comes from God. Where does your path lead you this week? Mine is a strange path tonight or tomorrow morning at one o'clock in the morning I take a red eyed flight back to Miami and I need to sit down and talk with my daughter. Last week one of her friends now this is the second time this has happened to her one of her friends, her brother got killed. Shot in the neck. Living a reckless life. We don't know all the details, but he's dead. Can anything good come from that? Thankfully, Katrina, who just graduated from high school, loves the Lord and sees the goodness of God. But I need to talk to her and I hope I have a chance to speak with the family as well. Then we go to Canada and we enjoy that family vacation. It's so good to be with our family, Christian family. And then off to Cuba. And then to the Dominican Republic. Where's the Lord leading you this week? Will you praise Him? Will you give Him the thanks? Will you go to Him when you're confronted with evil? When you see the evil in yourself, would you let the Gospel take care of it? but when you see goodness, would you praise God for it? For you see, only God is good. Only God is good. And He's good all the time. All goodness comes from Him. All goodness is for Him and to Him. God and God alone is good. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, what a privilege tonight just to spend a few moments thanking upon your goodness. Thank you for the Word. The Bible speaks about your goodness. Thank you about Jesus who puts it in such simple language that it is unavoidable the message that only God is good and that with His life He showed that goodness by dying on the cross. so that we, through faith in Him, might crucify the evil that's within us and resist it all around us and seek the only fount of goodness, which is found in you. I thank you for this church. Be with us as we go forth this week. May we experience your goodness. May we overcome evil. And may we give you all the glory. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.