SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 8 September 1934, Page 14 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By

the Rev. J. D. McL. WILSON

THE GREAT REFUSAL STORY OF RICH YOUNG RULER. APPLICATION TO MODERN LIFE. And when the young man heard the saying he went away sorrowful; for he was one that, had great possessions.— Matt. 19-32; Mark 10-22; Luke 13-23. Here before us is one of the most familiar and pathetic stories of the New Testament. Its central figure is amongst the most interesting and tragic of all the varied Biblical characters. To his own generation, the rich young ruler must have appeared the beau ideal of manhood. He was the unspoiled son of wealthy parents—simple, unaffected, of serious turn of mind, and of easy benevolence. That poise of life and contentment of spirit from which noble minds derive an ordered and well regulated existence must have been his. There was also an earnestness and a moral courage about him which was truly enviable. The comparison between him and the cautious old ruler Nicodemus is all to the advantage of the younger man. In the early days of Christ’s ministry, when curiosity and romance hung about the Galilean prophet, no stain attached to his fellowship, and no pains and penalties were consequent upon discipleship, Nicodemus, as though ashamed, creeps to Jesus under cover of darkness.

At this later period, when Jesus was in disfavour, condemned by religious leaders and sought by the authorities that they might stone him, at the time when to associate with him was to incur suspicion and denunciation, this young man comes openly to Jesus. There was none of the languid indifference of the rich about him. He runs, we are told and with respect and reverence he kneels, saying, “Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ?” And Jesus loved him. His heart went out to him. He was deeply touched at this pure, enthusiastic, unspoiled, if unproved life. Why did he come ? What moved so excellent a young man to such an attitude and confession ? He had come to realise what all earnest seekers after the highest learn sooner or later—that morality, culture, education, position, do not answer the interrogatives of the soul, and do not reveal the way. of life and the secret of happiness. Eternity is in the heart of man, and only the Eternal can satisfy that. He had also come to realise that Jesus, in sortie strange way, possessed the true oracles of God. So he came, kneeling to him in lowly homage, with noble quest upon his lips. We should have thought that the Master would have treated him differently; would not have forced a crisis; would have kept him at His side, until he was able to make the great surrender. But sometimes it is necessary to be cruel to be kind. There is such a thing as deep love’s severity. This young man was in the position of one who goes to ' his medical adviser, complaining of a slight uneasiness, which he supposes a tonic or a change of air will cure, only to learn that his sickness is of a cancer or a fateful heart disease. We, alas, see faults and failings in our children, the beginnings of unwise courses and evil habits, and take no notice; refuse because of false affection or moral cowardice or volitional laziness to restrain or punish them; and many a boy and girl lives to curse the memory of parents, who were too weak or too sentimental to reprove and to pull them up.

Jesus gently probes this fine young man’s life! “The Commandments,” he asks ? “What about your relation to them ? The honouring of God and your father and mother ? What about that ?” “All these things have I observed from my earliest years,” replies the young man.

"Well,” says Jesus, exposing the secret infection which shame would hide, “your possessions, what of them ? They are what come between you and God. The fatal malignancy is there. If you would enter into life eternal, get rid of them. Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow ■* me.

Have any of you seen that moving picture of .Watt’s on this subject? What arrests you'there is the shadow on the young man’s face, and the haunting look as he turns sorrowfully away. - He might have been another Apostle, but the price of such a life was too high for him, and so he made the great and pitiful refusal.

This is not a unique happening. The Christian comes to one of these crises in his soul, every time he hears God’s voice speaking to him in conscience or in some other way, and spying, “This is what you should do; this is the stand you ought to take; this is the policy you must adopt; this is the sacrifice you are bound to make.” If hearing such a word he refuses to obey the summons, then he is repeating over again the tragedy of the rich young ruler. Further, every time the man outside Christ feels within his heart he ought to surrender himself to the Everlasting Father who loves him, and to the Eternal Son who has redeemed him, and to the Holy Ghost Who has promised to guide, direct, and empower him through life, and does

not, he is repeating the tragedy of the man in the story before us. Now it is not easy to make portentous decisions. They mean a complete upheaval of the whole being. They stir personality to the depths, and fundamentally affect every relationship of life. But believe me, unless you come to right decisions in these crises, unless you are willing to make the complete surrender, you cannot enter into Eternal Life; you cannot find deep peace and true happiness; your life will steadily decline through mediocrity to uselessness. Eternal life or even happiness is not achieved by you; goodness is not something that may be won. It is the very texture of your soul. Such a state of being is the inevitable sequence of the entrance of God’s spirit and grace into your hearts— through. a humble believing faith in Jesus Christ the Lord. When your life is harmonised with the mind and will of God, then there comes that peace exceeding human comprehension. But Christ alone is the Author of it. And we need not that long line of mighty men such as Dr. Geike gives us in his “Life of Christ”—Shakespeare, Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, Milton, Goethe, Carlyle, etc.-to tell us so. It is enough to repeat Gladstone’s words spoken a little before his death:—“l am asked what a man should chiefly look to in his progress through life, as to the power which is to sustain him under trials and enable him to manfully confront his afflictions. I must point to something which in a well-known hymn is called ‘the old old story’; and taught with an old old teaching, which is the best gift ever given to mankind. The older I grow the more confirmed I am m the belief, that Jesus Christ is the only hope of humanity.” . Our hearts are seduced from their high decisions and profound submissions by many things; in youth, pleasure and ambition; in age, desire of the flesh, sna possession. And let uS say that of them all no passion is so tenacious as covetousness. To the great Florentine, as to most others, with experience of life, avarice is the inveterate invincible foe. Man may win past the leopard of pleasure and the lion of ambition; but the wolf of avarice will drive him step by step into the darkness. Of the end of this promising young man little is told in the Gospels. The curtain falls abruptly on the sad scene. He passes swiftly from the stage with gloomy portents about him. Almost all believe, that from that day, his life steadily declined until shameful death snatched him and hid him from sight in oblivion. Dante (according to. customary interpretation) gives us a glimpse of him in the after world. Outside the gates of hell he‘ sees a useless, restless, and accursed crowd, always on the move. They are continually bitten by wasps and hornets, and painfully stung to seek some place of relief, which is never found. Amongst these denied of heaven for their base refusal, spurned of hell for their mean neutrality,. and disowned alike by God and the. devil, is the rich young ruler. When some among them I had recognised, , , . I looked, and I beheld the shade of him Who made through cowardice, the great Refusal. This is a story for all, whatever your state of soul and life. Do you, knowing the highest, love the lower or the least ? Have you, by any chance, left your Father’s house and His good pleasure to exploit some far country of your own desire ? Are you deluding yourself that you can successfully love God and Mammon, Christ and the world? If you would see what right decision means, look at those two young men in the New Testament, the one before us and Saul of Tarsus. Both were in the pride of early manhood when they came into contact W’ith Jesus. Both were rulers with all that that implied socially and ecclesiastically. Both were lovable in disposition. Both were rich. The point of decision in both men was the same—the necessity to abandon a supposed righteousness. The touchstone .to sincerity in both was the same—their readiness to abandon wealth for Christ. But to them the place of decision became a watershed of separation. The one departed, sorrowful, for he had great possessions; the othercounted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. “As once toward heaven my way was set; I came to a place where two ways met. One lead to Paradise, and one away; And fearful of myself lest I should stray/ I paused that I might know, Which was the way wherein I ought to go. But at the moment—l espied A footprint bearing trace of having bled, , j And knew it for the Christ’s, so bowed my head, And followed where He lead.” “And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, one thing thou lackest: go, sell whatever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow Me. But his countenance fell at the saying, and he went away sorowful: for he was one that had great possessions.”