Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me.”  But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.   Matthew 19:21-22 NASB

It doesn’t matter if we are extremely wealthy or extremely poor, we all love the idea of getting something for nothing, right? We love a good bargain. Yesterday on my way home, I passed a big name outlet store that is known to have really good bargains. I just couldn’t resist stopping by there and checking out their sales.

People enter the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes in hopes of getting lots of money for doing nothing. Years ago, I owned a set of apartments. I had placed an ad for an apartment that was available. I received an email that a woman wanted to rent the apartment for her son that was going to be attending Lousiana State University which is 45 miles away from my apartments, this was my first red flag. This woman claimed to live in Switzerland, but had a person here that was going to help get her son settled. She wanted to send me a check for $2,000.00 above the price required for him to move in and wanted me to forward $1200.00 back to her. Now, of course I immediately recognized this as a scam and ceased communication with her. But people often fall for these things because they see it as an easy way to make extra money. We all want something for nothing.

In our scripture passage today, this young man went to Jesus to know what He must do to have eternal life. Jesus first told him that he must keep the commandments. This young man was able to say that he did keep the commandments, however, when Jesus told him to sell all that he owned and give to the poor, that was too much. This made the cost of eternal life too great for him to bear. Let me say this again, this made the cost of eternal life too much to bear. How can eternal life be too expensive or too great a price for us to pay? Think about it, it’s eternal, it’s forever.

Whatever we pay here is a mere pittance for what we get in return. But we must understand, our salvation comes at a price. There are things that we will have to give up. I spent many years of my life unwilling to give some of these things up. There is an old line from a song that says, “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right”. Often times we are unwilling to let go of our sin in order to obtain eternal salvation.

But you must be very careful. You see your sin purchases something for you as well. It purchases a ticket to hell. So you really must ask yourself what it is that you intend to purchase here. When you go into a restaurant and intend to pay for a meal, you carefully select something that you want right? Why would you pay good money for something that you don’t like or don’t want to eat? That just doesn’t make sense. Now where we run into a problem is that sometimes we see a picture of the food and think it looks good, but we get it and find that it just doesn’t taste good and we are disappointed.

Well, that is how sin is. It looks good. It looks like something that we’ve just got to try, but then we find that we are miserable in our sin. Sin brings death and destruction. Obedience to God brings peace and joy and eternal life.

So, today, please consider that we never get something for nothing. There is always a price to pay. So, you can enter into sin and get some temporary enjoyment followed by misery or you can give up your sin and be rewarded with peace and joy here on earth and eternal life. It sounds like a no brainer, right? But I will admit that it took more years than it should have for me to finally get a grip on this.

One thing I can honestly say, though, is that for every sinful thing I have given up, I have gained so much more through Christ. I have not missed my sin. I have truly gained a peace that passes all understanding. It makes me feel sad for those that are struggling in sin with no peace in their lives. I feel sorry for those that live in chaos and turmoil and don’t seem to understand that God could fix that for them.

I have lived in the chaos and turmoil that sin provides. I have lived in the peace and joy that an obedient life in Christ provides. Trust me, sin cost me a whole lot more and what I got was not worth it. We never get something for nothing, but when I pay I want to get good things. So, if you are going to pay a price why not pay for something good that is everlasting, just sayin’.

Have a great day!