In this teaching Pastor Aaron goes through a few stories in Mark chapter 10 helping people to see if there is something that they are wrapped up in that is keeping them from being the loving presence that God is calling them to be as they serve others. Life is Jesus is always other-oriented and Jesus empowers us to lay down the things that keep us from living into this. 

Everybody, welcome back to the Pine Hills Church podcast. My name is Aaron. So grateful you are gathering with us wherever you might be, catching the conversation. So grateful you're tuning in and hopefully you're reading through the Gospel of Mark with us. If not, that's the invitation.

Pick it up and begin to read it. If you've read through it, read through it again. Maybe do it at a different pace because you can always notice new and different things every time you step in and read scripture. Because the Holy Spirit is working to illuminate the word of God to us, meaning we'll notice new things each and every time. And then we're always different when we step into the scriptures again.

And so every day that invitation is on the table for us to come to the word of God, to interact with God through his word, through the scriptures, to learn deeply about who God is and how this changes our life and it shapes who we're becoming, and it helps us to step into all that God has for us. So be reading with us. And as I was looking through the different stories that we're going to hear today and mark, it made me really think about when I was a kid. I think I had a greater capacity for excitement than I actually have today. I remember the first time I got to go to a Texas Ranger baseball game when I was young.

I grew up in the Dallas area, so of course I should be a Texas Ranger fan for all of you haters. Like, that's okay. This is where I, this is my home city, Dallas, Texas. This is where I did life, where I was shaped for a long time. And so naturally, I like the teams around there.

And so I remember going to the game for the first time with my family and going up to the upper level seats because that's what we could afford. And that's okay because that was a sacrifice for my family. So I'm really grateful that they sacrificed for us to be able to create those memories. And I remember coming kind of through the tunnel and then kind of the stadium opening up and being able to see down the stadium, to see the field and to see how big the stadium was. From my perspective as a young kid, seeing all of these fans kind of starting to pile in to essentially watch the Rangers lose because it was the nineties and early two thousands, they weren't going to win.

That was okay. I was young. I was still pumped just to be there. It didn't matter if they won or lost because this was a gift to be able to actually get to go. And I know, as I've grown into adulthood, that ability to get excited on that level is kind of waned a bit.

Things that once were just so amazing have become more commonplace. I don't know if you felt that in your life, but excitement isn't the only emotion that I struggle to feel as an adult. Sometimes I struggle to wonder. Sometimes I struggle to hold the ability to have mystery in my life. Sometimes I struggle trusting people outside of myself because I've.

I've grown a little hardened by life or by other people's choices or when I've been disappointed or when I've made very disappointing choices myself. And so all of that in nature may be to protect myself a bit. I've lost the ability to do that. And I kind of wonder if God can help with that. I wonder as we turn to God and bring our emotions and bring everything to God and just begin to learn to receive God for who God is, whatever that might be in our life, and begin to respond in gratitude, I wonder if we get to pick up some of this again to recapture that excitement from when we were a kid.

And as we go to Mark, as we turn to that, we'll be in Mark, chapter ten. We're going to turn to a few different stories that continue to challenge our view of who Jesus is and Jesus's place in our lives. And if we're open to new possibilities, maybe we can see that Mark shows us a way back to something that was so easy for us earlier in life. But because of all the stresses of adulting, maybe we've lost that bit. Maybe there's a path back through Jesus.

So let's pick up the first story. It's about Jesus in Kid ministry, mark 1013 16. Just to summarize the story, parents brought their kids to Jesus, wanting Jesus to lay hands on them and to bless them. And the disciples, as they saw that the kids coming, the disciples actually began to scold the parents. And jesus sees this playing out, and he actually gets really upset at the disciples.

He says, no, allow the kids to come. I want you to stop stopping them. I want you to allow them to come to me. And he says, anyone who doesn't receive the kingdom of God like them, will never enter it. Jesus again.

He makes the children the examples, which I think is profound and beautiful. Remember a few weeks ago, we looked at what children, how they were viewed in their culture, which were more viewed as kind of a problem or a nuisance and not a blessing at times. And so Jesus is like, no. Like, we need to welcome the kids in. We need to treat them well.

In this story, he's making them examples. We need to receive the kingdom of God like them, and if we don't, we can't actually enter it. And what does that mean when you think about how children actually receive things? Like, last weekend, my family, we got to go up to do some apple picking a few hours north in northern Oregon. It was really amazing.

Time to go pick fruit. And so we wanted to do the full fall thing to go enjoy some time away as a family, just for a night, this super small getaway. So we knew we were going to go apple picking. We were going to go hang out in hood river for a bit, hit the. Hit the river there, make sure that we get some ice cream because it was a bit warmer, and then hit a few more spots on the way back.

And so we, we booked because we didn't want to come all the way back that same day. So we just got a pretty inexpensive hotel near Mount Hood. And so what was amazing is we told the kids what was going to happen. And so weeks leading up, they're really pumped about going to pick fruit and to stay at a really expensive hotel. It's not a resort by any means, right?

It was just a really small getaway trip, pretty inexpensive for us. And so I remember them being so excited, and I'm just thinking, like, this is, it's, you know, staying at a. Not the greatest hotel, like just a normal kind of thing, but their ability to get so excited about that, so pumped about that. And it makes me want to recapture that again. And it makes me want to just receive the gifts that I get from God.

Because sometimes I think as an adult, like, all this has become so commonplace, and a lot of these good gifts that we get, we treat as commonplace. And so when it happens, we lose our ability to actually have gratitude, which means we lose a lot of that excitement, the wonder, the mystery, all of that stuff, because it's all suppressed by our ungratefulness, if I could be really honest, maybe our spoiledness. And so if we're going to receive the kingdom of God like children, we need to receive the kingdom of God like, we see children receiving gifts, we need to just be pumped about it, excited that God would bless us with anything, excited that God would look down and give us just whatever that might be. And so we need to recover that a bit, like, with gratitude, like children. Because Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God belongs to people who receive him like children instead of, like, people who maybe put expectations on God that are just kind of maybe unfair.

Maybe they're unspoken expectations where we're always disappointed by God because we not actually sat down and thought about, what is it that I'm actually expecting of God? And begin to name those things and begin to process with God. If that's a fair expectation that we have on him, if we even trust that maybe he's saying no to certain things for a specific reason, it's actually an act of love and grace in our life, whatever that might be. And so the first question that the story is going to ask us is, how are you openly receiving what God has for you, whether that's big things or small things? Oftentimes we really want the big things from God, and we really look over all the small things that God is doing.

And so next story is a man gripped with lesser things. From Mark, chapter ten, verses 17 through 22, Jesus is traveling towards Jerusalem because the narrative has been building that Jesus has been doing all this ministry, and all of a sudden there's that movement towards Jerusalem where Jesus is going to go give his life in Jerusalem. And so Jesus on his way there is approached by this man who asks, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Verse 17. Jesus answers, you must not commit adultery.

You must not murder, you must not steal, you must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone, honor your father and mother. Jesus rattles off a few of the ten Commandments that you can go find in Exodus, chapter 20, given to the family of God to live into their identity as children of God. And so this is a list that's just kind of abbreviated by Jesus and the man saying, okay, no problem. Like, I have not struggled with this, right?

I've not murdered people, not committed adultery, not stolen, not testifying falsely. I'm being honest. I'm not cheating anyone. Like, I'm honoring my father and mother in whatever capacity that he was able. So he's like, no big deal.

Like, I completely get this. I got it. Mark, chapter ten, verse 21. Looking at the Mandev, Jesus felt genuine love for him. There is still one thing you haven't done.

He told them, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. We need to be really clear, because this is a hard message, even to us in our culture. Jesus isn't advocating that everyone needs to do this. Jesus is simply putting his finger on the one thing that is ultimate in this man's life, money and possessions.

And the man was ultimately motivated by these things. He couldn't imagine life without these things. Money and possessions were essentially his God, which is problematic because there is only one true God. It isn't money. It isn't possessions.

God is the thing behind everything. And every other so called God is just something created by the things that God has actually given us. And so Exodus chapter 20 is where we find all these different commandments. And some of the commandments that Jesus left off the list you can find there, but two that are really important. Commandment number one, you must have no other gods but me.

Commandment two, you must not worship created things or what the Bible calls idols. So the first commandment, you must have no other God but me. Commandment two, you must not worship created things. Exodus 20 describes God as a jealous God who will not tolerate sharing affections with other things. I want to ask you, how do you feel when someone else gets the credit for something?

Maybe you've been at work, you've been busting your tail, going above and beyond, doing all these different things, and then someone who just seemingly is barely trying, they're the one who gets all the kudos in the staff meeting when it happens. What do you think? You're like, man, like, I'm the one doing all those things, and yet they're the ones getting the credit. So imagine you have created all of humanity and given them everything to sustain life, and they in turn, take something you have given them and form something with the creativity you have actually embedded in them, and they begin to give all the credit to that created thing. How would you feel?

I think God has every right to be jealous and frustrated in that situation. And so this is what Jesus is pointing out, that this idol, money and possessions he's actually worshipping created things over the creator. And so he puts his finger lovingly on that idol. We need to give up the idol so that you can experience the trueness of God, and then you can follow after Jesus, who leads us to goddess. Exodus 22, it says, I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.

In Exodus 20, before God gives the ten base level ways of living together in community, he reminds them of who he is. He is the God that has led his people out of slavery, and he is the one that has gifted them freedom. Their response is to live in recognition of what he has done and to live under his authority of the one who has given them this new life. Right? Like, he should get all the credit.

He's done all this amazing stuff. He's brought us out. He's brought us freedom. We should then live under his reign. And true freedom only comes when we recognize that he is the only God and that life and freedom are only found in living life under his way of doing things.

Everything else is slavery. Everything else is bondage, and yet he's offering true freedom. Who else can lead us out of slavery? No one. Only God.

How can money and possessions lead us out of slavery? It can't. It can only further enslave us. Only God can lead us out of that. You might be thinking, well, Aaron, that's a pretty profound story.

It's inspiring. But I wasn't a slave in Egypt. So what are you talking about? Well, you're kind of right, and you're also kind of wrong. See, Egypt is a metaphor in the Bible that represents spiritual slavery.

And Mark has been showing us Jesus as this new Moses. In the Old Testament, Moses was the one used by God to help lead the people out of slavery, to Egypt, into this new life and into freedom. And Mark has been portraying Jesus as this new Moses, this new person sent by God to lead us out of spiritual slavery, that we might enjoy life in relationship with God, that we might find freedom from the oppressive slavery, that we find ourselves under slavery to sin, slavery to other things that just can't suffice. They're never going to fulfill. They're never going to accomplish the things in our life that we think they're going to accomplish.

Only God can fulfill. Only God can sustain. And so Jesus is inviting this man to give that stuff up that will never sustain and define new life, to find freedom in God. See, God alone frees us and gives us this new life, which is why God alone reserves the right to be the only God in our life, which is why God alone reserves the right to define how life should be. And Jesus had lovingly identified that idol in the man's life that doesn't have the capacity to fulfill this in this life, doesn't have the capacity to actually buy his way into right relationship with God.

And Jesus is inviting that Mandev to lay down the thing that can't fulfill for the only thing that actually can. Money and possessions end up being the thing that has just too much of a hold on this man's heart. He ends up not being able to walk away from it, to give it up, to actually find freedom in God. Maybe he feels safer and more in control with this God of money and things, and he can't see that God will offer him more security and that God will provide for all of his needs, the option is money and possessions now or a life fulfill, a fulfilled life now and life eternal. Like, what are the options to have immediate gratification now for with this money that you think is going to buy you happiness?

And we see that story play out for thousands of years. It just never does. Or to lay it down and find life in Goddesse and find that he actually fulfills. And the man, he takes the money and the things, he takes immediate gratification, he walks away. And this breaks the heart of Jesus.

See, regardless of the idol, only those who recognize God as the only God are the ones who will inherit the kingdom of God and the benefits of the kingdom of God. God will give us over to the things that we ultimately value. He won't force you to follow him or recognize him as God, but he also won't be content with sharing God's status with anything else in your life. Like he's God and he's God alone and he deserves that recognition. Why?

Because he's provided everything that we have in life. He's offering the ability to leave whatever slavery we might be under to experience him. He is the thing that's on offer, freedom from slavery, from the oppressive things in our lives. And he's going to give us power and direction, wisdom, encouragement for the journey. Meaning, not one day will we walk alone because we'll get to be with him every step of the way.

We have to receive that gift as a child would for whatever that might be, with all the goodness, for however that shows up in our life and whatever season we're walking through, we need to receive it like a kid. God, I know you're in this moment and I know you're providing for me and I know you're with me. And so whatever you have for me today, I know you're going to provide for my need to get through whatever I might be going through. So I'm going to receive you as a child would. And the disciples begin to think, we have all this stuff.

We have a lot of stuff that just grips our heart, like how in the world can any of us actually be saved? We all struggle with this stuff. And in Mark, chapter ten, verse 27, Jesus looked at them intently and said, humanly speaking, it's a, yeah, possible, but not with God. Everything is possible with God. I should be words of life to you.

Everything is possible with God. But it requires that we trust God above all things, that we trust him above money and possessions. Now, we trust him beyond whatever thing in life we're ultimately trying to go after thinking it's going to provide security or peace or fulfillment or happiness or whatever that might be. We need to trust that only God can provide that. And the beautiful thing is, when we allow God to do that and we get to trust him and we get to just receive all that he has for us, he frees us to actually enjoy all the other good stuff that he's going to bring about in our lives.

And we get to enjoy the people and we get to enjoy the moment instead of always stressing for the next better thing that we think is going to come along. That's just a rat race. We'll never win. It never works. And so we need to trust in his way of doing life.

We need to trust in his values. We need to trust in how he defines that we should live. And so the question we need to ask, is there something you need to lay down to receive God as the greatest gift? Maybe you've been trusting in money and possessions, and you need to lay that trust down to begin to trust God as your God, as the source of your provision and everything that you might need or whatever that idol might be for your life. And that's not a small thing.

It's actually a really big sacrifice. In Mark 1028 through 31, it talks about these big sacrifices. The disciples started thinking, oh, I've given up so much to follow you, Jesus. I've made sacrifices in my life. I've recognized that you're God, and I'm going to give everything to begin to follow you and recognize that you'll provide everything that I might need.

But we've actually given up jobs, we've given up our home, we've given up our relationships, we've given up everything to follow in your footsteps, Jesus. And Jesus tells them that whatever they think that they're sacrificing is actually nothing compared to what you're going to gain by actually following him. We always receive way more than we could ever give, which might be a good reminder for you, because maybe you've been living life, like, going a particular way and thinking, man, I just want to find, like, just joy in that, maybe even going after good things. But you just need to remember that whatever you're sacrificing that Jesus might be asking you to sacrifice, you'll always get more. You always receive more than you could ever give.

This man could not understand. The rich man could not understand that, like money and possessions, like, I give all of that up. He thought, it's just this massive sacrifice. And clearly a businessman. So he's thinking return on investment.

If I sacrifice that, he did not see the return of God as the bigger investment. And so we need to recognize that whatever we give up for God that God might be leading us into, we'll always get more from him, that he's always the better thing, that Jesus is always the thing that's going to satisfy the thing that we're looking for anyway. And when we find life within the kingdom of God, under his reign and under him, we get to find that we get to truly enjoy everything else. That's the gift. So we can never out sacrifice Jesus.

Jesus is always given more. He's given us his life. Mark, chapter 1032 through 34. He begins to continue to talk about how he's going to give his life for us. He's going to sacrifice and that's going to be the key to unlocking the potential redemption of the world.

Can you imagine that one sacrifice is potentially going to unlock redemption that's going to be made available to the world? Whoever would receive Jesus to recognize we can lay down this stuff that's oppressing. We can lay down all this other stuff and find life and freedom in Jesus and he's the better thing. And we can't actually out sacrifice Jesus because he's given his life for each and every one of us. What do you think the sacrifices Jesus leads you through has the potential to do in our world?

Don't you imagine that Jesus asked you to sacrifice something? If Jesus's life, him laying that down, like opens up the potential redemption of the whole world, like, what does that mean when we give Jesus whatever thing that he might be asking us to lay down, like, what does that have the potential to do in other people's life or even our life? Because I'm so convinced that whatever Jesus asks of us is actually always for our good and always for the better. My money and possessions has its way of just working in our life and our heart and like working as a toxic poison in our life and poisoning us to other things and other people. And when we actually live life following him, like, we're freed from that and that's such a better life and it's so much more enjoyable.

And when we lay down things, we actually get to become a better person. Like maybe in laying down the money and possessions, this man would have been a much better person. Maybe he still would have had wealth, but he would have had the ability to be generous at that point with so many other people because he didn't value money and possessions. As the God, he knew where the, he knew where all the provision came from anyway, from God himself, and so he could freely give to everyone else. You see how, like, that sacrifice ends up working to bless so many other people?

Like, what thing is Jesus asking you to set down? And how could that be a potential blessing not only for you, but for a lot of other people? Because to follow Jesus is to lead a life of sacrifice for others, to truly love them. Mark 1035 through 45. What's amazing is verse 42 begins like this.

So Jesus called them together and said, you know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those underneath them. But among you, it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

And so Jesus, who very well, like, should have had all the authority. Jesus is king, and, like, he deserves all the praise and all the glory and all the honor. And yet he comes, and he lays that all down to show you the way to truly do life with God and to give his life as a ransom for all of us. Because each and every one of us, man, we just deserve the different faith than Jesus is actually offering us. We actually deserve the death that he took for us, but yet he gives us life, the thing that we don't deserve.

And he invites us into the family, and we get to live completely free. Like, he buys our slavery, like, he buys us back. And he has the power to actually, like, break the chains of slavery off of us, whatever they might be, because he rose from the grave. And so we have power from the past to walk into a completely new life. This is the ransom that Jesus was willing to pay for us, the sacrifice that he was willing to give, because he didn't view his life as something to, like, hold on to, but he was going to invest it in everyone else.

And so that's what we need to be able to do as well. If we're captured by the way of Jesus, we live the way Jesus lived, and we do the things that Jesus did, and we can do that because we trust that God is a good father, that he's going to provide for his kids. And so we freely give to other people. We're super generous because we know he's going to provide for us. We don't need the world's affirmation because we, the affirmation of God, like his words, matter more.

We don't need the world's things, because we know that goddess is so much better than anything this world can actually offer us. And that frees us from having to focus on ourselves and frees us to truly love and to serve other people. And I think that's the thing that a lot of us are wanting anyway. We want freedom from ourselves. We want freedom to be able to focus on other people, to love other people, to serve, to care for, to live a life of purpose and meaning that's so much bigger than us.

I think a lot of us want that in our life. It's only truly found through Jesus. So my last question is, who is the one, the one person that as you follow God, he's calling you to love and to serve? Who's your one? Who's that one person that even the Holy Spirit's bringing to mind?

Now that you're free to love and to care for other people, because God is freeing you from your ability to have to focus on yourself, from your ability to try to earn it all yourself, he's going to provide for you. You get to live just free. Let that settle in for a second. You could just breathe because God's with you, and God loves you, and God affirms you, and God's walking with you in this journey. And anything that he might ever ask you to set down, like it's a, it's a sacrifice that might feel big, but you get so much more in return.

And when that happens, we get to live life the way God has created us to live, which is outwardly focused. Care to love other people so that other people can get to come to know him, too, so other people can experience the goodness of the kingdom of God. That more and more people, when they're around you, they're like, taken aback, like, why you're a Christian. Like, you're a follow of God. I thought followers of God acted like this or did this, but around you like you're a breath of fresh air.

Like, I love being around you. I want to be around you. I want to spend time with you because you're living the way that God designed you to actually live. And so who's the one that God is calling you to love and to serve? And so just to summarize, because it's a few different stories that we blitz through all along the way, but Jesus has given his life for you to find freedom from the things that feel like they enslave you.

And he fulfills you unlike anything earthly. And he enables you to live outwardly, focused on loving and serving other people. And all you have to do is to say, jesus, I want that life. Wherever you might be in your Jesus journey, maybe you're still exploring the way of Jesus. Maybe you begin to practice his ways.

Maybe you partnered with him on mission, whatever that might look like, wherever you might be, there's an opportunity to continue to say, jesus, man, I want you. You're my person. I want you to define life. I want you to be my God. I want to lay down every other idol, every other lesser thing, thing, whatever thing has gripped my heart, whatever thing is defining my life, whatever I thought has been ultimate.

That's not ultimate. Jesus, would you be ultimate in my life? Would you lead me? Would you guide me? Would you help me in every day here forward?

And he's going to be with you. And if you've not ever prayed that prayer, you still have a lot of questions about what does it look like to follow Jesus. I want you to go to pinehillschurch.org, reach out to the connect tab, send us an email, let us know. Like, hey, I made a decision to follow Jesus today because we've got some other conversations to send you, to help guide you into what this looks like and to celebrate with you and just to be a partner in the spiritual journey with you. But for everyone else, just to recap those questions that we look through throughout the teaching, how are you openly receiving what God has for you today?

Is there something you need to lay down to receive God as the greatest gift and who is your one that God is calling you to love and serve? And so you might be thinking, okay, that's helping me to process a little bit. Like, I need God's help to recognize his work in my life. I need to lay these things down that have been viewing as God and they're actually not God. And I want to recognize Goddesse as the true thing in my life, to define my king, all of those things.

And as I do that, Jesus is going to ask me to love and to serve other people. Guess what? Even if you made that decision for the first time today, he's going to invite you to love someone else. Like, go read story after story. There's this story even in Mark about this man who's filled up with all of these demons.

And Jesus sets him in his right state of mind and heart, and his very next thing he tells him to do is to go tell other people about what God has done in their life. He doesn't say, hey, continue to go to church until you have it all figured out. He doesn't say, hey, go get a Bible degree or whatever that might be. He says, hey, go and tell people what I just did for you. And so that's the same thing with who's your one?

Wherever you might be with Jesus, go tell other people to love, to care for them, to deepen the relationship, and just to say, hey, here's what Jesus is doing in my life. I don't have all the answers, but this has been profound and amazing for us. So all of us, we can apply what Mark's telling to our life. Bye. Recognizing that we all need Jesus to orient life around his practices, specifically sacrificially serving and loving other people, trusting God with all that he provides in the moment that he's providing whatever it is today, and to remember that we always receive more than we could ever give.

And so Jesus, I just pray for whoever's listening or watching on YouTube that you be with them. Help them to lay down every other lesser thing, to pick up the greatest thing ever, help them to receive your provision and to see your provision in their life. Even if it's just small things getting through the next thing, a little bit, encouragement along the way until they get to the next big thing. When you profoundly move in a way that only you can in the midst of whatever that might be, it might be trial or hardship. Help us to stay outwardly focused, to love and to care other people to represent you really well, that other people could come, come to know you as God and find life in your kingdom, because that's the only way to life and freedom.

In your name we pray. Amen. Well, just thank you for engaging in conversation with us today. Can't wait to see you in the next episode. Have a great day.

Bye.