Transcript (plain) — 2026-10-25 — Mike Harris

Matt: Well, good evening and welcome to Crowd Church. My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you this evening. To my right, uh, is the beautiful man known as Mike Harris. Mike, how are we doing?

Mike: I'm doing very well. I am chuffed to be here.

Matt: As always. You've just been sat there for the last few minutes while I've been trying to figure out how we get microphones to, to go louder. Um, but so

Mike: it's been almost like you've been speaking a different language. It has, absolutely.

Matt: Which is what we have been doing. It really is. Um, and on my, how should we call it, my virtual left, um, in fact, Ade, you could be anywhere. How you doing, Ade?

Ade: I'm doing very well. Thank you. Lovely to be here.

Matt: Well, it's good to have you, uh, all the way from sunny Wales. Uh, so if this is your first time with us here at Crowd, a very warm welcome to you. My name is Matt Edmundson, and I'm part of the team here at Crowd. Crowd is an online church. We livestream every Sunday at 7 PM, and we just really enjoy what we do, don't we? We just, we have a big time doing it. And so wherever you are watching this from, if you're watching on YouTube, do say hi in the comments. Be good to hear from you. In fact, let me load up the comments on my screen so I can see them. But Say hi in the comments. Let us know where you're watching from. Of course, we also have a new feature called Live Lounge, and Live Lounge is where you can watch the same livestream, but in the Zoom room, which is hosted by my beautiful wife Sharon tonight. You can go and join the guys in there. Big warm welcome to everybody. We've got Joe, we've got Sonia, we've got Talita, Mary, Catherine, Kezia, Angelica. I think I've mentioned Most of them, a very warm welcome to you in Live Lounge. If you want to know the URL for Live Lounge, it is go.crowd.church/livelounge. Um, I'll put that in the Zoom, uh, now. But whilst I do that, Mike, why don't you just sort of tell people what we're doing tonight?

Mike: So yeah, great. Well, tonight I'm going to be speaking. I am talking on a passage that is in 3 of the 4 Gospels. So it's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Uh, there's a few differences, um, between the 3 stories, but, um, lots of similarities. And I'm gonna be talking about the rich young ruler. Um, so we're going to be looking at his interaction with Jesus and what we can learn about Jesus and what— how that might impact our lives. Um, so yeah, interesting topic, I think. Um, a little bit about money, a little bit about Elon Musk.

Matt: Oh,

Mike: um,

Matt: not contentious then.

Mike: No, not contentious at all. And, uh, yeah, I've enjoyed prepping for it. Hopefully, um, brilliant, thought-provoking.

Matt: No doubt. Uh, no doubt. We've got Ade in the comments. Uh, Matt Crew watching from his sofa. Matt's the best place to watch from. Uh, Alicia's on YouTube as well. Hi, Alicia. Everyone is doing well. So yes, it's all going on. Oh, I see lots of people joining Live Lounge now. So, uh, welcome to those that are joining, uh, Live Lounge. Like I said, I put the link in the comments, uh, go.crowd.church/livelounge if you want to come and join in there. Basically, in Live Lounge, we play the same stream, uh, and so you get to hear us in the Zoom room, and then after a little while, we close the stream down here on YouTube and we carry on the conversation in YouTube. So if you want to, uh, in Live Lounge, uh, get it the right way around, uh, if you want to come join us in there, you'd be more than welcome, uh, and come meet people and say hello and hi. Ade, have I forgotten anything?

Ade: No, I don't think you have.

Matt: My checklist is all clear. Very good. That's the main thing. Dan wasn't ready on the switch then.

Ade: It was me. I muted myself and I wasn't respecting your question and I wouldn't have my finger over the buzzer.

Matt: You've all got to be on it, boys, tonight. Uh, we've got Dan on tech as well. uh, busy pressing buttons to make sure we're all on the right screen at the right time. So all of that said, thank you so much everyone for joining us. Uh, Mike, should we get into it? Should we get straight into the talk?

Mike: Yes.

Matt: Uh, should I pray first? Yeah, let's do that. And then we'll, um, we'll jump into it. If you're comfortable praying, uh, do pray along with us. Um, it'd be great to, to have you pray with us. But Lord, we thank you for the live stream. We thank you for all the tech, all the ways it can go wrong and all the ways it can go right. And we just put the whole thing in your hands tonight. Pray for Mike as he, uh, speaks to us, and pray for all of us, Lord, that we would have ears to hear what you say to us tonight. Amen. Go for it, Mike.

Mike: Amen. Great. Well, um, yeah, so what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, um, read the passage out, and then once I've done that, I'll, I'll share some thoughts, uh, ideas around, um, the passage. So the passage is found In Mark, it's chapter 10, and I'm just going to read a little bit of it. It's basically from chapter 10, verse 17, all the way to 22, something like that. I'll just read that out. As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good? Jesus asked. Only God is truly good. But to answer your question, you know the commandments: You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone. Honour your father and mother. Teacher, the man replied, I obeyed all these commandments since I was young. Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. There is still one thing you haven't done, he told him. Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. At this the man's face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Okay, so as I said before, this is a story that is found in 3 of the Gospels. It is a story about Jesus. It's a story about grace. It is a story about a man who I have said is young, rich, powerful, and loved. And that is who we're going to talk about. So before we do that, just on— I want to bring up Elon Musk. So the first trillionaire, apparently. And I did a little bit of Googling and I found some facts about his wealth. And one of the facts that I found that I thought was quite interesting was the average household income, right? If you live on an average household income, it will take your household 11 million years in order to earn a sum of money that is the equivalent of what he currently owns now. So 11 million years of your household earning income. And by the way, you'd have to not spend a penny. So you'd have to spend 11 million years not spending a penny and you'd get somewhere close. So yeah, I just thought that was quite interesting. But here today we have a rich young ruler who comes up to Jesus and there's a few things that I wanted to say. First of all, he comes running. That is unique to Mark's Gospel. He comes running and he kneels before Jesus. He asks, he says, there is one thing. He knows that he is lacking something. He knows that he's lacking something. He says to Jesus, what one thing do I lack? Jesus turns to him, and it's quite interesting because he says, well, first of all, he says, no one is good. Why do you call me good? No one is good. This is a comment that he's making to this rich young ruler. Because this rich young ruler is coming to Jesus because he believes he is good. Jesus is saying, before you give me your list of everything that you've done, know now that nobody is good. Nobody. He then says to the rich young ruler, you know the commandments. He lists 6 commandments. From doing a little bit of reading, the commandments can basically be split into 2 what they call books. You've got Book 1, which is the first 4 commandments, and they are all about our relationship to God. Then you've got Book 2, which is the 6 following commandments, which are our relationship to our neighbour. Jesus quotes the second book of commandments. He quotes the 6 Commandments that relate to our relationship with our neighbour. Now, the rich young ruler responds to Jesus with, I have followed each of those commandments. All of the commandments that are to do with me related to my neighbour, I have followed them. And Jesus says, but this one thing you lack. Go sell all of your possessions, give the money to the poor, and come and follow me. You see, what Jesus was saying is, you followed book 2, but the one thing you haven't yet done is followed book 1. You've followed all of the commandments to do with your neighbour, but the first thing you must do is to follow me. Timothy Keller says this. He says that when you look at the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler comes to Jesus saying, I have followed all the commandments, and Jesus effectively turns around and says, okay, well, let's start with commandment number 1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Let's start with that one. Let's see how far we get with that one, because what Jesus sees in this young man is that there is an idol in his life. There is something in his life that he values and treasures more than God. And yes, he has been able to act in a moral way for all of his life, which is great. There's nothing wrong in that. But the thing that occupies the greatest percentage of his time, of his dreaming and thinking and planning, his emotions, the thing that occupies most of his time is not Jesus, it's not God, it's his wealth and it's his possessions. You see, because Jesus knew that, Jesus said, We've got to deal with that. We've got to rid you of that idol so that you can have life in all of its fullness, so that you can live in the freedom that I want you to live in. You see, Jesus loved this man and he loved him so much that he wasn't prepared to leave him the way he was. And so the way he dealt with him seems quite drastic. Jesus doesn't say this to anybody else in the whole Bible, but he does say it to this rich young man. He says, you need to give up everything. He deals with him almost like someone would deal with an alcoholic. Your god is your alcohol. Now you've got to completely rid yourself of it, and it's only when you do that that you find freedom, and then you come and follow me. That you're going to find life in all of its fullness. I was reading in 2 Corinthians, Paul was talking about possessions and money and generosity, and I just thought he has a very radical way, if you like, of thinking about generosity, which I'll come to in a minute, but just before I get there— Back in that day, in Jesus' time, this rich young ruler will have believed a few things that may be slightly different to how we think about things today. One of the prevailing thoughts at that time was that if you had a lot of money— and this rich young ruler probably inherited his wealth. He was young, and back then you couldn't be rich if you were young, really, unless you'd inherited wealth. But if you had a lot of wealth, then usually that was a sign that God was blessing you for the life that you had led, the noble, gracious life that you'd led, and you'd been blessed. These blessings, this money, all the possessions, were a sign that God was blessing you for living a righteous life. Jesus wants to deal with that. He wants to Let the rich young ruler know that it is only through him and his grace that you can be saved, and that none of your good deeds are going to amount to anything ultimately. Now, just to come to Paul in 2 Corinthians. I just want to share this because I want you to see how radically different this guy Paul how he thought about generosity and possessions and things like that. So in, um, in 2 Corinthians, um, I'm just going to read this. So it's 2 Corinthians 8:12-14, um, and it says this. So this is Paul talking to the, the church in Corinth. He says, whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly And give according to what you have, not what you don't have. Of course, I don't mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be Equal. Now, I just think that's really interesting because from Paul's perspective, when he's thinking about possessions and he's thinking about being generous, he's thinking— he's listened to what Jesus said about love your neighbour as yourself, and the way I believe he's interpreted that when it comes to generosity is this: if you have lots of possessions and you have a friend— Paul's talking about people within the church who are poor— but if you can see someone who is poor and you give out of your surplus in order to meet a need of someone who is poor, it's generous, but it's not the type of generosity that Paul's talking about. What Paul is talking about is making things equal. So if you've got more than somebody in your church. You give until there's equality. So you give until that person is of equal standing to you. And he finishes by saying, so that all things are equal. I just think, wow, you know, how could I do that? How could I give? So that not just I meet a need that somebody worse off than me has, but how can I give so that that person is— the interaction is finished with me and them on an equal standing when it comes to my possessions and things like that? I thought, what a completely radical way of thinking about wealth and thinking about possessions and things like that. And that then started me thinking about lots of other things. If you have lots and lots of possessions, how do we make sure that they don't become an idol in our life? I don't think today that Jesus is asking you to go and sell everything that you have, give the money to the poor and come and follow him. I don't think he's asking I don't think he wants any of us to do that today, but I do think he wants to be the number one person in your life. He wants to be your King and Saviour, and if there's anything in your life that is replacing him, then he is going to deal with it. He is, and he's not going to stop until it's been dealt with. You see, Paul, when he was talking about possessions, he wanted equality. He wanted things to be equal. How do we get to a position where we think about our possessions like that? Well, the way that we do that is we look on Jesus, and as we look on Jesus, we trust in the power of the Holy Spirit that as we fix our gaze on Jesus and we look at his generosity, that the Holy Spirit will do a work in our heart to slowly, day by day, change us more and more into the generous, people that Jesus is returning for. You see, as we look at Jesus, Jesus had everything, and rather than seek equality, Jesus gave up everything so that we who deserved nothing could have everything that he deserved. It says in that passage, And the one that I'm going to read in a second from Ephesians, that through Jesus' death we have been adopted into God's family through Jesus Christ, and we share in Jesus' inheritance. Jesus, unlike Paul, didn't seek equality. He gave up everything, and as we dwell on what Jesus gave up for us, The Holy Spirit is able to do a work and transform us, conform us into the likeness of Jesus day by day, step by step. I just want to finish by reading that a little bit from Ephesians, but before I do that, Jesus looked at this rich, young, powerful man knowing that he had an idol in his life. Knowing that there was something in his life that was more important than him, and Jesus looked at him and loved him. If you are sat there today and you're thinking, there's this in my life and I just can't give it up, whatever it might be, I can't give up this, I can't give up that, I just can't do it, you need to know that Jesus looks at you even with that thing that you don't think you can give up, and he loves you. He absolutely loves you. With or without it, he loves you. But he is not going to leave you there. He's not going to stop pursuing you. He's not going to stop bringing this up because he wants to deal with it with you so that you might find the freedom that he knows is on the other side of this, so that you can be drawn closer to him and live in greater and greater freedom. I want to finish just by reading a bit that I've been reading today. I think it was, or it might have been yesterday. It's Ephesians 1 and it's verses 4 to 8. It just talks a little bit, I think, about God's love. So I just wanted to finish with this. Where are we? So Ephesians 1:4, let's find it without my glasses on. Okay. Even— it's all right. Thanks anyway. Even before he made the world— am I reading it right there? Yeah, let's go with it. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is the bit that I really like. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Before the creation of the world, God looked at you with all of your faults, with all of your abilities, with all of your strengths and all of your weaknesses. With it all. He who knows you best, and He chose you because He wanted to, and choosing you gave Him great pleasure. You are absolutely and utterly loved by a very, very jealous God who is jealous for your heart, and He will not stop until He has it all. So rest secure in the fact that you are loved. But know that you serve a jealous God who will pursue your heart until the day you die.

Matt: Amen. Amen. So thanks, Mike. I take it you've ended because you said amen.

Mike: I did.

Matt: Yes. I don't mean to talk over you.

Mike: The Christian sign that this is over.

Matt: Yeah, that's it. I'm out. I'm done. Amen. That's how we do it in the church, isn't it? So yeah, we're going to get into Mike's chat. We've got me, we've got Aid, we've got Mike. We're going to be talking about this. We're going to get through your comments, see some interesting comments and questions already. Uh, you can obviously write your questions and comments in the YouTube comments. We will try and get through those. And if you're watching on Live Lounge, you can also write your questions in the chat on Zoom. And for the next 10-15 minutes or so, we're going to talk about those questions, comments, and Mike's talk here on Uh, YouTube will then end the livestream and we'll all pile into Live Lounge. Um, if you want to know more about what Live Lounge is, if you've joined us since the start, it's basically where we livestream into Zoom and we get to chat with each other. And it'd be great to see you in there, but we do stream the first part of it onto YouTube. Uh, so Alicia says great talk, by the way. Uh, I see that in the comments.

Mike: Thanks, Alicia.

Matt: One of your biggest fans.

Mike: Wow.

Matt: So Ellis said right at the start, I was convinced about this passage, Mike. Uh, oh no, sorry, convicted about this passage recently. It's easy to think that the rich people are people who have more money than me, that it's them, not me, that find it difficult to give up things. Um, that's a really interesting point, isn't it? I think you, you're kind of touching on this a little bit.

Mike: Yeah, I think it is. It's a really interesting point, and I think You know, it it it can be anything, can't it? Giving things up. You know, I'm a creature of habit. I do not like anything to change. I like to know that things are reliable and that things will be the same day after day. Some people find it boring, but I don't. But you know, we just become comfortable with the the general things in our lives and things like that, and. Um, you know, I think for me, my reputation is really, really important. And so when I was reading this, that's what— that's where my mind was going, was, you know, could I give up my reputation? You know, even with people who I don't really know very well, you know, when I hear of the potential for me to have my reputation ruined or whatever in some kind of way, It sends me into a spin that it doesn't for other people. Um, and so when I was reading this a little bit like, is it Ellis?

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Um, I was thinking more about that than, than about money, I suppose. Yeah,

Matt: it's interesting. Well, Ellis followed on by saying, really, I'm rich compared to many, many people worldwide. Ade, do you want to jump in here?

Ade: Uh, yeah, I think, um, The more you have, the more you can get by on your own. And the more sense of— the more easy it is to have a sense of self-sufficiency. And I think as humans, we often gravitate towards being able to do everything ourselves. And I think the danger here is we have too much and we take the focus off God and we put the focus on us.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And that self-sufficiency is the thing that kills us.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: And that's the, that's the thing that, um, you know, that's the thing that Jesus came to destroy, isn't it? You know, chiefly among the Pharisees who believed that it was their, their good acts and their long prayers and things like that that, that, that meant that they would be saved. But for people who have wealth, as Ade dead right said, you know, you do become self-sufficient, don't you? But, you know, which is why Jesus goes on in that passage to say it will be harder, um, for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it would be for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Um, you know, it, it's a challenge. It's, it's really difficult. I know, you know, one of my favourite books, um, is the Book of Job, and I owe, you know, quite a lot of my understanding about the Book of Job to The Bible Project, if you ever get a chance to watch it. Brilliant, or listen to it. But they talk about Job as being the final book of a trilogy on, on the wisdom literature. So you've got Proverbs, you've got Ecclesiastes, then you've got Job. And as a sort of very, very quick summary, when it comes to, you know, what you have in possessions, you've got Proverbs, which basically says if you live morally, then you are going to be blessed. In a nutshell, then you've got Ecclesiastes that comes and says, actually, I've found a chink in the system here. I've found good people living right and dying young, and I've found people who don't live honourable lives and they get blessed. Then you've got Job, who starts by living as Proverbs, so he starts living righteously and God is blessing him. Then he has everything taken away from him, and, um, you know, he's sent into a, uh, you know, a real sort of battle, um, with his friends and with God. And eventually he turns on God, and God takes him up and just shows him how big God is. And he doesn't tell Job why he's suffering, why he's lost his family, why he's ill, why his, um, home and cattle and everything have been taken away. And, um, but he shows him how big God is, and eventually Job repents and he comes back to earth.

Matt: Hmm.

Mike: Then you've got, okay, so what is Job going to do now? So what Job does now is he lives in Proverbs again. So he lives righteously, but now he knows that everything he gets is a gift.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: It's not because of the way he lived, because God took it all away. He now knows that everything he has— and in Job, he goes on to be 7 times richer than he was at the beginning, but now he knows it's a gift. And what God— God is not against us being rich, but when we are rich, he wants to know that this is a gift from him.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: And that this is an act of grace, and that he is still the king. And Job knew that by the end. Um, which, which I find quite profound.

Matt: Yeah. Uh,

Mike: and quite challenging.

Matt: Well, it's the Christian story now, isn't

Mike: it?

Matt: In many ways, you, you know, you could, you, you can talk about, um, I mean, going back to Elon Musk, who would be obviously a very famous self-made, whatever that means, man, right, in terms of his wealth. Um, and we can criticise that. We'll come back to that point. Um, I think probably the, the mind shift that I— and I don't have his wealth, obviously. I mean, it'd be great if I did in many ways, but I— it, it's one of those things where, where, like, I'm, I'm a bit more like Job, you know. I've sort of gone from the, oh, I can make money, which was my whole drive when I was younger before I was a Christian, to actually everything I have is a gift. And it— when you look at it through the lens of grace, And that the the cattle on a thousand hills belongs to God, right? I remember once sitting in a multimillionaire's office. Actually, he was a billionaire. This was in a previous life of mine, work-wise. And he said to me one day, "He said, Matt, you don't seem that bothered by my money." And I won't tell you who it was, but I was. He said, "You don't seem that bothered by my money." And I said, "Well." I'm not really. And he said, why is that? I said, well, the Bible says the wealth of a sinner is stored up for the righteous. I said, you're the sinner and I'm righteous. It's all mine anyway. And so it was obviously very tongue-in-cheek, right? It does actually say that in the Bible as well. Um, but the point of it is, uh, it didn't bother me because God meets all of my needs, right?

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Now this is a really interesting point when you bring it back to this idea of what Ellis said about we view others as rich, but we are the rich person. So I think of Elon Musk and I immediately think of, is it Billie Eilish? Eilish? I don't know how you pronounce her name, that criticized how much money he had when she herself is a multimillionaire. Now, granted, she has given, I think, about 20% of her wealth away, maybe something like that, or pledged to give 20% of her wealth away. And I definitely am not criticising Billie, but I think when it comes to giving, A bit like when it comes to tax. Not— I don't want to get too political, but it's easy to see the responsibility, um, to be in the hands of somebody who's got more than me.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Right. So you've got more than me, therefore it's your responsibility to give to the church roof fund or to help Aunt Sally out or whatever it is. Right. Because you're the one with the money. And, and by doing that, we immediately pass the buck, which is the exact opposite of what Paul was talking about would— and it's the exact opposite, I think, of what grace would ask. It's the, the question of responsibility is like, what's my response here, right? What, what is my response to the need of my Christian brother and sister? Not is— I can't concern myself with what's your response, right? But I, I have to concern myself with what's my response. I see that over here they have a need. I have something. I don't have everything, but but I have something that I can give towards meeting that need. Is that what I should be doing? Um, and I think it's a much more powerful question.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Because it's a question of responsibility rather than— and don't get me wrong, I think we should have questions about what should people like Musk do with that amount of wealth, but that doesn't excuse me from the conversation which is probably more important, which is what should I do with my money? What's God telling me to do in response to my brothers and sisters.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Is that fair enough?

Mike: I, I think it's fair enough. Yeah. Um, well, that's good.

Matt: We'll carry on the conversation.

Mike: I, I quite practically, um, as a sort of practical challenge, I suppose, what one of the thoughts that I had was, you know, I'm, I'm, I, you know, I'm sure I have idols in my life and, and and God is wanting to deal with those. Um, but when it comes to wealth and possessions, one of the ways that we can, um, you know, punch that sort of self-sufficiency and that self-protection in the face is by being generous.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: With, with what we have. Um, and you know, there's, there's nothing better— there's, there's no better punch to that greed and self-sufficiency when you when you go out of your way to, to give something— your time, your possession, your talent, whatever it is— to somebody else in need in such a way that, that you get nothing back from it. Um, it gives it a real, real punch. Um, and so one challenge I have, um, is to think this is, this is just about your possessions and in particular just your money. So I'm thinking, is the Is the percentage of your gross income that you give away, is that percentage year on year going up or is it going down? It's unlikely to be staying the same. And so one way that you can punch this greed and this self-sufficiency is by maybe being accountable to one or maybe two other people and just say once a year, 1st January, September, April, whatever it is, Um, is the percentage of my gross income that I give away to people who are less well-off than me, is that percentage going up or is it going down? Um, and that's just one way, you know, I, I, I think it's important we, we are practical as well.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Um, and so, you know, that's one challenge. Um, we don't like to talk about money in this country. We're a bit, um, we get a bit nervous about it, but But, you know, maybe thinking about it yourself, thinking about it with another friend, a trusted friend, that's, that's one idea. But that's just money, isn't it?

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: And, you know, this is— this conversation's about much more than money, but, you know, that's just one practical idea.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. It's, um, Ellis has put in the comments about the widow that gave, uh, 2 mites. Yeah, gave him more than the person that put in loads. And it's interesting how God viewed that.

Mike: Yeah,

Matt: yeah. Um, hey, Joe, any thoughts on this, on what Mike said?

Ade: I'm going, you know, going back to— you mentioned the word grace a number of times, and I think this, like many of Jesus's teachings, really pulls out that difference between the law and grace. So you have this guy who's saying, I've, you know, I followed all the laws, I've kept every single one of them since I was a child. And you think, okay, on the surface, yeah, there's, there's a lot of box ticking there, and, you know, he's clearly ticking boxes. But this is the same guy who led the entire conversation treating salvation like a commodity and something that can be bought. So whilst he may have followed the law all of his life and ticked all those boxes, he's missed the point. You know, the law is there to guide, to prevent people from sinning, to even expose those sins, but he's used it as a self-justification exercise and completely miss the whole concept of grace and that salvation isn't something he can buy like everything else being a really rich guy. It's something that is given freely. It's taking away from that transactional mentality. It is a pure gift. It is not, if I do this, then I will get that.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. And I, I love that grace is not a transactional mentality, um, which I'm very grateful for because I'd be— I think I'd be in a bigger problem than, than all of us. Um, let me just quickly go into some of the comments, uh, if I can. Um, this is a much-needed perspective, says Talita, but where I, where I live, I'd say that there is a hard focus on prosperity Christianity, and sometimes I struggle with that, especially when it's more individualistic. And I think that's a fair point, uh, Talita. I think, I mean, if I'm honest, I came out of the prosperity gospel. Um, was I ever really in it? I don't know. It's— I don't— I have never really thought about it too much, but I, I definitely enjoyed the teaching, um, of that. And I think actually, if I'm honest, some of the teaching is really good and really sound. If you don't know what the prosperity gospel is, it's basically the belief that God's going to make you a millionaire. Um, taken to extremes, that, um, we take this idea that God's going to meet all our needs, which Philippians 4:19 says God meets all our needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus— well, we take that idea and we sort of somehow make it go, God's going to give us everything that we want. And we've translated the word need into want. And so the idea that God's going to give me a new car because I prayed for it— now don't get me wrong, I have no issue with you praying for a new car, and God will sometimes bless you and give you a new car. I just don't think it's a Christian right, if that makes sense. And I think some of the teaching in the prosperity gospel then goes to that extreme, right? And it's all about how much God's going to give me, which misses the part of the teaching which is actually The critical part, which is not how much is God going to give me, because he's already given me everything according to the Bible. Um, it's what am I going to do in response to what he has given me? You know, how shall he not with us give us freely all things? Uh, Paul says in Romans, um, because, you know, he— what was the exact phrase? Uh, you know, he's delivered Christ up for us all, so how shall he not with him freely give us all things, right? Yeah. It's that kind of—

Mike: yeah, yeah.

Matt: He's given us everything. Um, his Son Christ. The most famous Bible verse, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he did what? He gave, right? And I think that has to be our focus. If God loved the world that he gave and gave his Son, in other words, he gave his best, our focus should be on the giving and not on the getting. I think the focus— and I think actually I've seen God do crazy things to people who are generous. And I have more stories than I can count. Um, but, you know, again, some of the prosperity teaching, which, you know, if I give a pound, God's going to give me 100, you know, the hundredfold return and all that sort of thing. I think I get it. I see it in the Bible. I just wouldn't form a theology out of it necessarily. Um, but at the same time, I feel like God loves a cheerful giver. Uh, is what Paul says in Corinthians. And I think the focus should be more on what we give than what we get, um, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know if you've got any comments on this, Mike.

Mike: No, I think, I think you're dead right. And I think that's easier to do, as you said before, if you think that everything you have is a gift anyway. You know, I was, um, I remember being given a bike, an expensive bike, by, by a friend of mine. And, you know, I've had this bike for a fair while now, but I already— the way I look at that bike is very different to the way that I look at other commodities that I have. I would much— I would feel much more confident about giving that away because it was gifted to me.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Even though I still feel like it's one of my possessions. One of the things that I was thinking, though, Matt, as you were talking, Is back in, um, I don't know, you might find this interesting or not, but back when the Bible was written, the authors of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, they would write in such a way that they would often put the most important thing in the middle of what they wrote.

Matt: Yeah,

Mike: rather than at the end. We tend to write it—

Matt: There's a posh word for that.

Mike: Is there?

Matt: I can't remember what it is, but it's like, it's like where you take a— I know what you're saying. It's when you take a verse, isn't it? And you in the middle of that verse is, is the key bit that you need, and the sort of the, the start of the verse leads up towards it. You get the key bit, and the end of the verse kind of repeats the start of the verse. There's a name for it. It'll come back to me.

Mike: It'll come back to me.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Mike: Um, and so they were very well versed in that. Plus, when they wrote something, it took a lot of effort, and they wanted it to be memorable. So given all of that, given all of that, this is my point. Randomly, the most— what, what is most popularly described as the middle verse of the Bible is Psalm 118, verse 8. Now, I think if Jesus was to— was to be told, right, you can come back to Earth, but you're only allowed to say 10 words and then you've got to disappear again, right? Hmm. I think this is what he'd say. Because this is what Psalm 118:8 says. It says, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than put your trust in man.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: And you see, when Jesus spoke to the rich young ruler, what he was saying to the rich young ruler is, he said to him, one thing you lack, and then he gives him 3 things to do. He says, you've got to sell all your things, You've got to give that money to the poor, and then you've got to come and follow me. And what he's saying is, you need to come and make me your refuge.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Mike: At the moment, your money and your possessions are your refuge, and I need to be the refuge. So you've got to give everything away so you've got nothing, um, no security blanket or nothing, and then you need to come and follow me. And you need to make me the thing that is your refuge, not all the money.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: And, and stuff like that. And, um, you know, so there you go. That, that, you know, where, where do you go when things are scary? Where do you go? Do you go to your bank balance? Do you go to your things? Um, or do you, you know, do you go to God? And that's— that is as much of a challenge for me as it is for anyone else.

Matt: That's a fair point. Ade, do you want to chime in?

Ade: Um, yes, I had a thought. It's on the tip of my head and then it just melted away.

Matt: And now it's gone. Do you want to start a new thought? Um, what do you think to this idea of equality? This has come up in the comments as well.

Ade: I think it's, uh, a lot of it comes down to the heart of the giver. Isn't it? Yeah. I think, you know, in the case of the rich young ruler, we think about it that we've got many examples of Jesus meeting people where they're at. So for the blind man, rather than just saying, you're healed, he actually put mud in his eyes, and so the guy could tactilely feel something happening. And so I think with, you know, with the rich young ruler, he knew that a significant heart change had to happen, and for him to make that heart change, it was a case of, yeah, flog all your stuff, give it to the poor, and come and follow me, because that is the only way your heart will be able to change. Because as Mike was saying, that was a fairly, say, drastic response and nothing we've seen elsewhere in Scripture. But it's all about heart. And Jesus could see exactly where this rich young man's heart was and what was necessary to change it. And so I think for all of us, Jesus can see where our heart is.

Matt: Yeah.

Ade: And exactly what we have to do to change it. And what he's going to ask me to do or has asked me to do in the past will be different for you and different for Mike and different for everyone else.

Matt: Yeah, no, it's so true. So true. Uh, we are, uh, getting close to ending the livestream. We're going to go into Conversation Street and join all the guys on Zoom and carry on the conversations there. Uh, just pulling up on a few comments. Alicia in the comments, thank you so much for plugging, plugging, plugging. Plugging and blogging. Um, What's the Story, uh, which is the Crowd Church podcast. Um, Alicia said that, uh, I've lost it. Here we go. Um, I watched a What's the Story podcast episode where the interviewee had basically lost everything materially and in terms of her marriage as well, but God rebuilt her life and in doing so rebuilt her relationship with her husband. It's amazing how those things can go hand in hand, uh, quite often. Um, but yes, side note, What's the Story is another one of my favourite Crowd resources. Thank you all for that as well. Nice. Thank you for the plug. If you don't know what What's the Story is, uh, check out whatsthestorypodcast.com or just go to the website crowd.church. Um, that's a podcast that we put out on not every week, but, you know, every now and again, although it's gone crazy. Recently, uh, people applying to be on the show. We've got like a load of people coming on the show, uh, where people just tell their story, their sort of, uh, story of faith really, and what, what God sort of brought them through. Sharon's put in the comments, I heard an interview with Benny Hinn talking about the prosperity gospel. Benny Hinn is quite a well-known prosperity preacher. Um, I heard an interview with Benny Hinn's nephew who grew up with the prosperity gospel. He said it became more about trying to control God Than surrender to him, and I think this is a really interesting point. Like God's some kind of slot machine. Going back to another comment, I think I saw it in the Zoom room. Is money a metaphor? Ask Kath for everything we focus on away from God, and in many ways, yes. And this is why Jesus talks about you can't love money and God. And one of the interesting things about I think why we're called to be generous. with certainly our money. In some respects, it's the most difficult thing to give away. You cannot give away your God, right?

Mike: No.

Matt: And so if money is your God, you can't give it away.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt: Now let me be totally clear before we go off air, off YouTube. We're not saying that it's wrong to have money, not in any way, and that if you get it, you somehow have to give it all away and live some kind of weird sort of, you know, kind of crazy life. Uh, that's not what we're saying at all. Um, obviously people earn money. There isn't equality in the system. Uh, it's not that I think God is into Marxism or communism, um, nor do I think he's into democratic— but anyway, let's not get into politics. Avoid that, Matthew, avoid that. Um, I think the point is this, that, um, fundamentally it's about what we do with the money that we have. Like with any gift that God gives us, It's about what we do with it in response to that, and that's one of the key things, um, from the New Testament. Nor does it promote laziness. I think Sharon put in the comments that's 2 Thessalonians 3:10: For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: if anyone will not work, he shall not eat. Um, which is something we'll get into that whole nother day. Um, but I think I've hopefully summed up Uh, some of the comments. I appreciate I've not got to all of them, but time, alas, is fast running out. Ade, anything, uh, in closing from you before we close the YouTube and head over to the live lounge?

Ade: Uh, no, I'm good, thank you.

Matt: Michael?

Mike: Um, I suppose I'd just finish by saying, you know, Job, after meeting with God and seeing how big he was, having suffered so much, then sees how big God is. He returns and knows that every good gift he gets is a gift. And I think, as you said at the beginning, I think just recognising that everything you have is a gift, a gift from God, and you didn't earn it, um, it's much— it's much easier for me to give away things that I believe have been gifted to me in grace.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Um, than if I think I've earned them.

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: Um, so yeah.

Matt: Yeah, there's such a good point. Uh, so yes, I guess the challenge this week, like Mike said earlier, is, uh, what are you going to do in response? What can you give? Now again, to be clear, because I don't want this to come up in the comments, this is not me as the pastor of Crowd Church saying you need to give your money to Crowd. That's not what I'm saying at all. Um, this is just us Opening the scriptures and just saying, "Listen, God says we need to be generous people." And actually, when you are generous, you live a life of grace, and you—I think you sense God in it, right? And you—you live not a—I can't say a better life. I think you live a more fulfilled life, a more content life, because if you give, you become more content. And so that's the challenge this week: Where can you give? Where's God? Leading you personally to give. We'd love to hear your stories. Um, make sure you like, follow, and subscribe and all of that good stuff, especially on YouTube. If you want to find out more about Crowd, you can go to the website www.crowd.church. I can see someone's put in the comments, how do I access the podcast? The What's the Story podcast I mentioned is also available on the website crowd.church. Just click on the podcast Uh, and it will take you to the different episodes. You can also get it on all your favourite podcast players, of course, and it's also on the YouTube channel. If you would like to know more about Crowd Church, it's on the website. We are running an alpha course. I think we're on about week 8, so this is probably the last week that we'll keep the alpha course open. After this, we just kind of keep the group that we've got because, you know, there's quite a bit of momentum in that. Uh, but we will be doing a new alpha course in the new year. If you would like to know more about that, again, you can go on to the website. Helps you learn more about the Christian faith. It's just such a great time that we have in those conversations, and quite a few people on the livestream have come through Alpha. So if you want to know more, just head to the website, www.crowd.church. We do those on a Wednesday night where we explore the questions of the Christian faith together, and they are wonderful, wonderful things to do. Um, Ade, have I forgotten anything?