Hello, my friends. Welcome to another follow him favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I'm here with the amazing John by the way. Hi John by the way.

I think I think you're amazing John right back at you. We are going to cover one question from this week's lesson and John the question that we have this week is it simple to be rich because Jesus says in Matthew 19

after having this exchange with a rich man who couldn't sell his possessions he says oh.

Very I say to you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

Then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God and the apostles are like oh goodness who can be saved.

So John what would you say to someone who thinks Jesus is saying it's sinful to be rich.

It's a good question and we can play doctrinal ping pong with this one a lot but yeah that fact is it's not what's in your wallet it's what's in your heart.

I've known people and you've known people who we would call rich I didn't think I was rich until I went to the Philippines on my mission and then I came home and went wow rich.

It's what the scriptures teach over and over again is not so much that you have riches but if your heart is set on your riches instead of your heart set on God.

And I love that Jesus didn't say it's impossible it's hard it's hard and then when the apostles said well who can be saved he said well with God it's possible because God can do things to people's hearts that they don't set their hearts on the riches they set their hearts on God.

So what you were thinking absolutely John I think one of the things that you hit on early in your comment was who's rich because yeah when I think of other people I'm like oh yeah they're gonna have a hard day rich yeah yeah they're rich they're really gonna struggle if we look across the history of the world and what most if not all of our listeners have you are definitely in the top percentage of what you have possessions that you have I think we all need to read this as if we are the rich where the rich.

We have multiple changes of clothes we have food in our refrigerator right now change in our wallet and he who has eternal life is rich you have the riches of eternity the scripture say so that's exactly where to start what do you mean by rich exactly because once I realize I'm the rich man yeah then all said I'm worried John I've heard it said that there's a gate into rusal called the eye of the needle have you heard that.

Yeah kind of a fable I mean the idea sounds kind of oh I see a camel has to shed all of its possessions and kneel down in order to get through this gate so somebody made that up but the scholars that I know that no Jerusalem say no no such thing existed Jesus was just using some hyperbole yeah that used to be in scholarship that was something in the early 1900s lay 1800s that was thought to be true afterwards some Spanish.

So I use to ask my students if that's not true what is Jesus saying can you get a camel through the eye of a needle and they're like no I'm like well sure you could it's going to hurt the camel but if you had a pretty heavy strainer you could get a camel through the eye of a needle so I like this idea that you brought out John that he is saying on their own you can't you're not going to get into heaven but if you'll turn your life over to God and your riches over to God for whatever he wants you to do with them.

Yes with God those things that seemed impossible are possible.

Yeah it's a good warning for us because like you said when we start to count our blessings it will surprise us what the Lord has done and we'll have to go yeah we've got a lot so we have to be careful that we're focused on the right things too.

Now Paul said the love of money is the root of all evil we've really got to check that maybe that's one of the purposes of typing is to make sure I can tell the Lord I love him more than money and I get a chance to do that every month the law of consecration do you still love me more than money yes I do yes I do.

We hope you'll join us on our full podcast we're with Dr. Matt Townsend this week and you're going to love what he has to say about these chapters and then come back here next week we'll have another follow him favorites.

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