When Winning Looks Like Losing

Hi, Burwood Church. My name is Jeremy, and I have the pleasure of taking you on this next step in the Just Jesus series. This week we find ourselves continuing in the Gospel of Mark. I really love what you’re doing in this series, because we get to see the same person, Jesus, through different perspectives.

If you’re into documentaries, the Gospel of Matthew is for you, because he carefully documents the events of Jesus’ life to show he’s the fulfilment of all the Old Testament prophecies. If you’re into sci-fi, Luke is for you. Luke is a doctor, and he shows that Jesus’ miracles did something supernatural that no medicine could ever do. If you’re into romance, John is for you. John always calls himself the disciple Jesus loved, and he often finds himself leaning on the chest of Jesus, snuggled up. Who better than John to say, “For God so loved the world”?

And here in Mark, we have someone who gets straight down to business. If you’re into action movies, Mark is for you, because he doesn’t waste any time. As Murray said last week, Mark uses the word “immediately” 41 times.

This week we’re in Mark 10. Wherever you are, on your couch, at your desk, or maybe even in bed, would you read this passage with me?

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

The disciples were amazed at his words. They said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children… will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age… and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

— Mark 10:17–31 (selected)

My title for this message is When Winning Looks Like Losing. Will you bow your heads with me?

Father in heaven, I ask that your Holy Spirit will be here, and that you’ll give me the words to say, so that these words might resonate in people’s households and touch their lives. This is an important message, because it shapes us for eternity. Help us to have the perspective to see what you want us to see, and open up your word so that we can encounter you for who you are. In Jesus’ name, amen.

I love to win

I don’t know about you, but I love to win. There’s nothing I like more than winning. I have a particular story from a camp where I was a mentor and leader at my home church. At these camps the groups have spiritual discussions, but they also compete in games over the weekend to see who the top team will be. The competitions get very competitive, and for me that brings out the not-so-Christlike character.

One game was called Heist. I won’t explain all of it, but it basically involves carrying a chest and hiding it in visible locations without holding onto it for more than a minute. My team wasn’t doing well. I was with a group of Year 9s, and I thought, at least I could secure one point for my team. So I pushed the boundaries of the game a little. I put the chest in my bag, which was already breaking a rule, because the chest has to be in a visible location, and I kept it there for the whole game.

Towards the end I saw a mob of teenagers approaching me, and I knew exactly what was up. They had found the chest in my bag, and they were so mad. “Look at you. You’re supposed to be a mentor. You’re supposed to be a leader we look up to and a role model, and you cheated us and ruined this game for us.” I felt completely terrible. Winning had become such a priority for me that I was willing to win at all costs.

Don’t worry, I was punished. They stripped my team of all its points, and I had to give an apology speech in front of everyone. It was completely humiliating.

For me, winning is everything, and sometimes it’s too much. A win-at-all-costs mentality gets me to do things I shouldn’t be doing and focus on things I shouldn’t be focusing on.

The man who had everything

Do you know those people who are good at everything? They have wealth, they’re smart, they’re good-looking, athletic, charismatic, musical and popular. People like that can frustrate you. Here in Mark, we see someone like that. We call him the rich young ruler. He had everything going for him: wealth, status, reputation, and religion too.

In our day, he’d have the wealth of Jeff Bezos, the athletic success of Michael Jordan, and the religious influence of someone like Steven Furtick, all in one. And he comes to Jesus asking, “Teacher, what can I do to inherit eternal life?” Essentially he’s asking, how can I win, not just in this life but in the next? He had ticked every box for winning in this life, and the next step was winning in the next.

Why do we like to win so much? I have a couple of ideas. Maybe winning gives glory to our image. It makes us feel accomplished and worth it. I know this well, because I’m an Enneagram Type 3, the Achiever. My basic desire is to feel like I’m worth it, and the way I try to get there is by setting goals and hitting them. That can lead to a lot of delusion in where I set my goals and how I live my life. I often get caught chasing the wrong things.

I don’t want to say winning is a bad thing, or that achieving is a bad thing. But we need to learn to win at the right things, the things that make a lasting impact, the things that go on forever.

What is worth it?

How do we know what’s valuable? I have a little story from my life. Back when AirPods were released and everyone was getting them, I thought, they’re cool, but they’re so expensive. I don’t want to spend 200 bucks on two little pieces of earphone. Surely there’s another way. So I found wireless earphones for 50 and thought, surely these can do the job. I’m saving money, right?

Eventually they died. So I moved on to another set, because I was still too stubborn to get AirPods. They didn’t fit my ear, and I stopped using them. You’d think I’d learn my lesson and buy something that would last longer, but no. I got another pair, and I thought, these are the ones I’ll use forever. Within a month they failed me as well. My brother said, “After all the money you’ve spent on these cheap earphones, you could have just got AirPods, and they would have lasted you all this time.” In that moment I realised I had stuffed up and hadn’t spent my money very wisely.

We know something is worth a lot by how long it lasts. The Bible says this too, in 2 Corinthians 4:18:

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

— 2 Corinthians 4:18

What is seen is temporary, and what is unseen is eternal. C.S. Lewis famously said:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.

— C.S. Lewis

The things that often go unseen, and do nothing for your image, are the things that will last. The small group you look after that no one sees, and the time and energy you pour into those people. The time you spend in prayer and devotion that no one sees. A kind deed for someone on the street that no one noticed. This is the alternative Jesus is posing, one that shifts our perspective from what is seen to what is unseen.

Why do you call me good?

I never understood this part of the passage. The man says, “Good teacher,” and Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good?” Isn’t Jesus supposed to be the embodiment of God, God in the flesh? If anyone is supposed to be good, wouldn’t it be Jesus? Some people say Jesus said this because in his humanity he couldn’t call himself God. Others say Jesus is actually affirming his deity by saying only God is good, so he’s more than just a good teacher.

Whatever the answer, I think what Jesus shows in this radical statement is his humility. It shows his willingness to let go of the goodness of heaven and take on the corruption of the world. Philippians 2:6–8 says:

Even though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

— Philippians 2:6–8

Here Jesus sets an example for the rich young ruler. If Jesus can leave all the possessions of heaven for the sake of this world, why can’t the man leave all the possessions of this world for the treasures of heaven? Jesus gave up his world to be part of our world, so that we can give up our world to have his. It’s a beautiful exchange. Can you believe that the God of heaven gave up everything so that you could have everything?

Jesus doesn’t only preach it, he shows it: becoming greater means becoming lesser. He turns the world order upside down by standing with the disenfranchised, the people marginalised by society. He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” His kingdom is for people who don’t have much. And later in this passage he says, “The first will be last, and the last will be first.”

It’s only when you learn to make yourself less that you learn the true meaning of success. That’s when you really win. Winning in life isn’t about creating a winner out of yourself. It’s about creating winners out of other people, making someone else the hero instead of yourself. We give up of ourselves in order to lift others up, not to put others down so that we can lift ourselves up.

When possessions possess us

I was also confused by this passage because Jesus asks the rich young ruler to give up his possessions for eternal life, and that seems to contradict what Jesus says elsewhere. Isn’t it by grace you have been saved, through faith, not by works? Isn’t faith the means by which we receive eternal life, not selling something? Imagine Jesus came up to me and said, “Jeremy, to have heaven you first need to give up your bike, or your car.” That doesn’t seem right. So why did Jesus put a work in front of this man?

Perhaps it was tied to a deeper heart issue. It was faith alone that would give the ruler eternal life, but Jesus knew this man’s faith could never be placed in him while it was placed in his possessions. His attention and priorities would always be divided between Jesus and his security here on earth. And that’s the problem for many of us. We’ve become so attached to the things of this earth that we have no room for the security of faith in Jesus.

I’d suggest the problem isn’t that we have possessions, or even a lot of possessions. The problem is when our possessions possess us.

Jesus looks at this man with love, a disappointed look of love. He saw the potential in him. This was the kind of person the church could really do with, a talented, driven man who could be a self-accepting, authentic role model and inspire others. That’s who he could have been, if he had just come and followed Jesus. But he turned the invitation down. It was an invitation to be with Jesus, to have communion with him, to walk with him. And the ruler said no, because his possessions possessed him.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have goals or ambitions. I’m saying there needs to be a shift in focus, where we learn to value the things that last. Not the possessions that will perish and fade, but the eternal things: your character, the impact you have on people’s lives, and most of all your relationship with Jesus. These go on forever, and it’s because they’re unseen that they last.

Living from a win

I know many of you don’t see yourselves in the rich young ruler at all. Maybe you’re at the complete other end of the spectrum, where you feel you’ve lost at everything and there’s nothing good for you in life anymore. I have good news for you. This journey of life isn’t really about winning. It’s about a God who has already won for us. We don’t have to live for a win anymore. We can live from a win.

Maybe you tried religion and failed at that. Maybe you tried to win at work and failed. Maybe you tried this thing called life and feel you’ve failed at that. Maybe you look at other people who seem to have everything going on, and look at yourself and think, “I’m completely worthless.” I just want to say, don’t look at them. They’ve projected an image, and you shouldn’t fall in love with it, because they struggle with worth just as you do.

I thank Jesus that, through what he did at the cross, we don’t have to tether our worth to something temporary anymore. We can tether it to something that will go on forever. Jesus won this cosmic competition between good and evil so that we can win too, and find worth in something eternally permanent: the cross of Jesus Christ.

It’s funny, because the cross was the vehicle by which we receive eternal life, and yet Jesus’ greatest win, the one at Calvary, didn’t look like a win. It looked like a loss. At that time he had no followers. No one believed he would rise again. Everyone went back to what they were doing and gave up hope. By worldly standards it looked like a loss. His so-called rock denied him, his treasurer betrayed him, and he was all alone. What kind of leader, what kind of winner, looks like this, in total humiliation on a cross?

But to have the greatest win of all time, he first had to go through what seemed like losing. And sometimes, to win in life as Jesus shows us, we need to lose everything in this world so that we can set our hearts and minds on the greater world ahead of us. That’s possible because of a Messiah named Jesus, who won the world for us, so that we no longer have to try and try and try to win at life. We can live from the win he has already won for us.

Would you bow your heads with me in prayer?

Prayer

Father in heaven, I thank you for Jesus. I thank you for what you showed here on earth: that winning in life, wealth, status, reputation and image are only temporary, and if we put our worth in them we’ll easily be disappointed. But thank you for something you gave us that has eternal significance and eternal relevance, the cross of Jesus. Help us to put our worth in that, and help us to know that we no longer have to keep trying to win, because you have already won for us. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Thank you, Burwood Church.