Jesus, speaking of the rich young ruler to His disciples, tells us that when we care for the world, we won’t get the world. But if we pursue the Kingdom of God, we get the earth, too. Pursue the earth’s riches, and they die with you. Pursue Heaven’s Redeemer, and you get Him who died for you, and His entire world.

The world loves you, and it wants to give you everything it has. You just have to give up one thing: your soul. Two posts ago, we considered Satan’s hatred for your soul. He strives to steal away any seed that is sown. Last week, we took note of what suffering says about our hearts. Now, as we carry on with Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, we watch certain lives being destroyed not by lack but by abundance, not by suffering but by prosperity. Jesus explains what happens to the seed sown among thorns, “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19). Mark warns us of this lust for the world by highlighting four people.

The Rich Young Ruler

Mark 10:17-31 contains the famous interaction between Jesus and the rich young ruler. The young man is the poster child for what happens when you’re gripped by gold and not by God. Jesus’ words to the man call for loyalty to the Lord, not to the world, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor…” (v. 21). The sound of the man’s departing steps rings in our ears as a sober warning, “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions” (v. 22). In talking further with his disciples, Jesus remarked, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!” (v. 24). This young man could not loosen his grip off his money long enough to hold onto the Messiah. For if he had, he never would have looked down at the coins falling from his fingers. His riches deceived him into thinking that his money was his Messiah.

Judas Iscariot

Not wishing to lose the competition for most worldly, Judas most tragically tops the rich young ruler. In Mark 14:10-11 we read of the betrayal of our Lord by one of his own disciples. Judas “went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money….” The son of perdition was never a true son of the Son’s Father in heaven, for he loved the riches that his father from below acquired for him. Deceived by riches, his heart gave into Satan’s temptation, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). He loved the world and not the Word that was sown in his heart every single day for three years as he walked with the Sower.

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