“What Will It Profit a Man?”

Well-crafted and often change the way we see the world. Jesus was a master at asking penetrating questions Matthew 16 verse 26 he posed a powerful question challenging each one of us to evaluate our priorities. That's our subject today on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg concludes encore 2020 but our question is there. What will it profit a man could easily be what will it profit a woman. What will it profit a man or woman. What will it profit anybody to gain the whole world and yet lose their soul, but I think tonight this particular question should reverberate quickly in the minds of business personnel. This is a question for accountants if you like, and it is a very straightforward question.

It would be possible by dint of its clarity that we might even sidestep its impact and so we need to be careful that we apply our minds to what is actually being said, what good will it be what advantage will there be for the person gaining the whole world. Yet for feeding or losing their life or their soul is not as an unfamiliar question posed in a variety of ways.

It is the subject matter of movies, emporiums and books. In fact, and one might often be tempted to think that all of them are derivatives of this great and fundamental question Jesus was routinely asking questions Jesus was experiment and speaking to people where they where their very use that he made of parables are stories the way he pointed out our circumstances, saying to people.

There was her sore and he went to solo our there was a man he was building his house and his immediate points of identification and in a similar vein, he says so, then the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine panels or the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that a man finds in a field and immediately goes and purchases the field in order that he might benefit from the treasure, the kind of points of contact the people would readily identify with and in both of those little parables, he was actually saying, the kingdom of heaven is a goodbye no matter what price you pay for it. It would be worth selling all the rest of your portfolio.

He says in order to hold this one star. Now that's what Jesus was saying there and what he's doing here in this question, which is this evening's question is he is addressing things not from a judicial perspective but from a commercial perspective what he says would be the point. For example, of gaining all the money in the world. If you're not around to spend what possible advantage would there be in becoming very famous, and yet for the end of life to reverse that completely is the kind of question that we can easily identify with, but we need to be clear about the terminology and some of you have been following along, perhaps in a translation that actually translates the word soul as life and there is a reason for this. The word in Greek is the word Sue K.

From which we get our English word psyche and the distinction is between bio English. The Greek word from which we get our English word bio going is biology, etc. and Sue K, which is this dimension of life which is a far more significant dimension of life.

It is if you like the inner life.

If it if we could see it in these terms. It is the use you know it is the real you is the part of you, which when the Bible says God has set eternity in the hearts of men. It's that part of you tonight. We are an entity of physiological and spiritual and psychological elements. All of that. Making up our true self, the part of eyes that will survive even day. That is what Jesus is referencing here. None of it is suggested here. This is an easy question. Just because it is a simple question because it actually forces us to think about things that we may not really want to think about it forces us to think about issues of eternity of death about whether my life actually counts whether it comes for anyone or anything beyond myself whether my life is oriented exactly towards my own selfish preoccupations or whether my life is oriented in a different direction entirely. All of that and more is wrapped up in the challenge of this question and it forces many of eyes to go beyond the benign darts of our own explication of life. Tonight's question is, what possible advantage. Will there be for the individual gain in the whole world and losing their soul know the reason that I read the surrounding section is because it's always important to do that when you're reading anything is not immune. Anybody can lift a sentence out of anywhere and make it say just about all that you wanted to say and if you are skeptical at all.

That's one of the reasons that you may have concerns about individuals like me you may have actually written. Most of us off or they just left pieces out of the Bible and they make them say whatever they want them to say well I don't want to do that and that's why read around and if your Bible is open or if you care to look at it, you will see that Jesus is addressing his disciples, and in the course of that.

He espouses essentially a general principle general principle with with universal application. We know that because of the way he had. He introduces it in verse 25 he says whoever whoever whosoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find this great paradox is worthy of our consideration, the loss of life to which he refers is not just an ultimate loss of life in the van if you like, which he comes to down in verse 28. This is not just simply the idea you will lose it all.

Then later on when you're gone but he's actually pointing out that there is an immediate loss of life. When an individual chooses to try and hoard life or explain life or live life oriented completely around the South Sea if we regard life is no more than this ordinary physical frame and if we determined to give ourselves entirely to getting out of it whatever we can then says Jesus, we actually lose life in the fullest sense we end up existing, according to Jesus, but not actually living. Not sure I understood this passage before this week I think.

Up until this week. I thought that what Jesus was saying was that the selfish person will be punished by having their life taken from them that Jesus was issuing. This is a form of thread. If you're selfish, you know what will happen to like get a grandmother speaking to her grandchildren on on a rainy Thursday afternoon. I've you're not going to share with your sister. You know what'll happen but actually when I read it again and study that I realized that this is not a threat.

This is an observation.

Jesus is not making a statement here about a punishment fact. Rather, he is pointing out what happens when a person chooses to live their life in a certain way. Note we can illustrate this. Lots of places, one of the wisest men that ever lived with Solomon and back in Ecclesiastes.

I don't suggest you turn to, but Ecclesiastes.

If you would like to read a book for homework and you could read Ecclesiastes is pretty good and it essentially is the journey of one man trying to solve the riddle of life without punching out beyond time and space without really considering eternity and he goes down all whole series of dead-end streets familiar dead-end streets. He said I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom. All that is done under heaven, and otherwise I a I walked the pathway of intellectualism and then he says, but what is twisted can be straightened and what is lacking can be counted.

He said ultimately I'm still left with more questions than I have answers and so is that I tried to go down the pleasure Street but also found the pleasure was actually like drinking saltwater. The more you try to. The more you had to have and the more you have, the more thirsty he became. So I said I just decided to amass stuff.

I denied myself nothing that I could see. I refuse my heart.

Nothing I engaged in the acquisition of everything that was around and I realize that when I put it all together and set looked at it didn't satisfy either, but it comes out as all the time. And from everywhere somebody sends me a copy of a note that it come from a lady to another lady who was suggesting that it was time for ladies to step up and to make sure that they didn't let life pass them by, and in the course of the email that the lady suggested to the recipients of her email.

Remember this motto to live by. Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 10. What are rise. I like that kind of honesty while the ladies saying is let the good times roll gravities taking over last year's ride it out, but there's no thought of eternity.

What would profit. Such a lady to have the right of her life and lose her own soul which you give in exchange for her soul, but pleasures are like puppies spread. He sees the flower it's blue. Ms. shed like a snowflake in the river.

One moment here and then gone forever. Robert Burns scored his point. Or what about Walter Lippmann in a far more difficult quote in his book, a preface to morals. He talks about how man as man this point in the 21st-century finds himself discontented being and listen as he writes at the heart of it that are likely for him to be moments of blankness giving in which he finds that the civilization of which he is a part leaves a dusty taste in his mouth. He may be very busy with many things, but he discovers one day that he's no longer sure they are worth doing. He has been much preoccupied, but he is no longer sure he knows why he has become involved in an elaborate routine of pleasures, and they do not seem to amuse him very much.

He finds it hard to believe that doing any one thing is better than doing any other thing or in fact that it is better than doing nothing at all. It occurs to him that it is a great deal of trouble to live and that even in the best of lights. The throws are few and far between. He begins more or less consciously to seek satisfactions because he is no longer satisfied and all the while he realizes that The Pursuit of Happyness was always a most unhappy quest is somebody here tonight and you have that dusty taste in your mouth. Listen again to Jesus Christ. What possible advantage would there be engaged in the whole world and losing your own soul.

One final illustration of that will draw to a close. Here in a moment, but Jordan Ragland was a very successful property developer in the UK. It was a bit of a cynic as well. He made a terrific amount of money and when he died. He was cremated and left instructions in his last will and testament that his ashes should be made into egg timers and he insisted that an egg timer be given one to his accountant and the other to the equivalent of an IRS agent with whom he had spent a terrific amount of time.

Why well reflecting on the goals that are directed the best years of his life.

He said one day, I suddenly thought I'd worked hard all my life, only to hand over most of my cash to the bank and the taxman. So when I kicked the bucket, I may as well go on working for Lacey. Workaholism is often a thin disguise cover-up a run for the border men, women running from themselves running from their family.

Ultimately, running from God. No time for these disturbing doubts, no time for these difficult questions. What would it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lost his own soldier member that song Ray Stevens verse two, I think you get air-conditioned sinuses and dark, disturbing doubts about religion and you keep those cards and letters going out.

And while you're secretaries, tempting you. Your morals are exempting you from guilt and shame. Heaven knows you're not to blame 86 proof anesthetic crutches prop you to the top where the smiles are all synthetic and the ulcers never stop. And when they take the final inventory yours will be the same sad story everywhere, no one will really care no one more lonely than this wretched more than man. Hey you better take care of business. Mr. businessman would it profit a man in the whole world loses own soul. And in this way, Pascal the French philosopher and mathematician gave us his explanation for this chase down the street. The existence of what he referred to as a guard shape gap at the deepest level of our being Prescott identify the fact that the reason for our existence was a living relationship with the living God would made us through Jesus and the identify the fact that since that was such an intrinsic part of the human psyche.

There was nothing that could fill it. Well, what do we need what we need for Jesus challenges us to consider and that is an eternal perspective and eternal perspective.

I know most of them want to have an eternal perspective because if you think in terms of eternity you really think about the fight that time is passing through her fingers is going through is going through our fingers as if we were picking up pieces of little lumps of sand on the beach and the more we squeeze it, the more it squeezes out and goes away such as life if you're here tonight and you don't believe these things. If you're dead honest your problem with Christianity is probably not of the church is old-fashioned breathing is not exactly no novel when doing after a long time to. It's not usually that the sermons are boring. Although I I I have a great deal to say about that. It's neither neither is it that sciences disprove the Bible because it hasn't know the real problem is that deep down inside your heart and mind is cold towards God and we prefer to save our own souls by pursuing the world than to forsake what we desire.

Most and pursue Christ. The remarkable thing about the story of the Bible is that there is an answer to this question about the value of your soul and the volley of your soul is seen actually in the surrounding context. Again, the volume of your soul is seen in accrual seen outside of Jerusalem where a man hangs between two other men, all of them crucified by the Roman authorities and the man in the middle cross cries out some very interesting things.

I one point he cries out in one word in Greek S thigh.

It is finished making people wonder what's finished at one point he cries out my God my God why have you forsaken me. The reason that he cried out as he did was because on the cross he gave himself for the souls of men and women he hanged upon the cross, despised, rejected purists guard scorned so that what we deserve. He, having received what we do not deserve. He might freely give a nice how much you matter to God. Now the very beginning of the text.

Jesus has explained to his disciples what it would be like if they were going to become his followers and people ask me all the time. Well I think I'm getting the picture. I think I understand a little of what you're saying but you know what what's in what's involved with this sacristan thing. We know the super thing about it is in the one that that that allows me to speak with such confidence is that there's not there's no silliness in this little soft option in this there's no telly evangelism in this this very rigorous very demanding is now Jesus put it if you want to be my disciple number one come after me walk where I walk come after me as your rescuer and is your ruler number two deny yourself in other words, get off the throne of your life. Get off the throne of your life. I came to sit on that throne. If you continue to sit on the throne and covet your throne and covered yourself, you lose life now and you lose it then, but if you get off the throne and then thrown me that you will discover life that is truly life and thirdly, take up your cross every day and follow me.

In other words, is not a momentary decision is a lifetime commitment dying to myself every day identified with Jesus risking my life for him if you like. For many of these disciples. It meant death. People around the world today. It still means death because of their commitment to Jesus for you and I am may not mean death that could, I suppose, but it may mean that you have to face all those jokes from all your academic friends. It may mean that you will have to walk a path of loneliness amongst the immorality of your peer group.

I don't know what it will mean but I guarantee you on the authority of what Jesus said that if you and I are prepared to come to his cross and bow before him and acknowledge who he is and what he stuck and give up our lives as best we know how. Then he will give to his life.

That is life in all of its fullness. Now and for all of eternity. What a beautiful promise life in all of its fullness. You're listening to Truth for Life. The Bible teaching ministry of Alister Bragg.

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