If you were here last Sunday then you may remember that one thing I said in my sermon is that teachers can have a very powerful influence on their pupils. Well, this morning I want to begin a series of sermons in which we focus on one of the TOOLS most teachers USE to influence their students, namely: ASKING QUESTIONS. As we all know teachers use questions in quizzes and exams but they also use them in their daily lectures, either as a way to REVIEW old material or to INTRODUCE new material.
Well as THE Master Teacher, Jesus of course made good use of this particular method of instruction. In fact, the Gospels record the fact that our Lord used this technique over and over again as a way to help His disciples understand vitally important truth. And for the next few Sundays I want us to review some of these lessons He taught them with this method by taking a good look at THREE of the QUESTIONS JESUS ASKED. The first one I want us to study together is found in Mark 8. Let’s turn there now and read verses 34-38.
34 – Then He [JESUS] called the crowd to Him, along with His disciples and said: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.
35 – For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me and for the gospel will save it.
36 – What good is it for a man-[or What does it profit a man]-to gain the whole world, yet forfeit [or lose] his soul?
37 – Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
38 – If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory and with the holy angels.”
I don’t know if you noticed or not but Jesus drew from the realm of business or commerce when He asked His disciples the question we are studying this morning. He of course knew that several of His disciples were themselves businessmen. I mean, Peter, Andrew, James, and John sold fish for a living-so they would have been familiar with the relationship between costs and profit. So, no doubt with this in mind Jesus asked them, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”
Now-truly great teachers know how to ask a question with an obvious answer as a way of driving a point home-and that’s what Jesus was doing here. By asking this question He was saying, “Listen guys. It is doesn’t make good ‘business sense’ to attempt to get all the world has to give if doing so causes you to lose your soul.” Or, to put it in missionary Jim Elliot’s terms, “Only a fool would give what he cannot LOSE to gain what he cannot KEEP.” Or as Paul put it in his letter to the Philippians, “Whatever was to my profit [according to the world’s standards] I now consider loss in comparison to knowing Christ.” (Philippians 2:7)
Now, this is a VERY pivotal truth-one that all Christians must grasp if they are to mature spiritually-so to make sure WE understand it, as a “teaching-preacher” I want to make use of this teaching method and ask YOU a few questions. Here goes: “What was Jesus inferring here? I mean, WHY is it unprofitable-why is it “bad business” to spend your life attempting to gain the things of this world?” Well, one reason it is so is because…
1. …our present world and the things of it are TEMPORARY. They will not last.
As Romans 8:21 says, ALL creation is subject to “the bondage of DECAY.” Our world and the things in it are not eternal. It is not permanent. Since this world is fallen-it is decaying. That’s basically what our museums are full of-decaying parts of this world.
Now let’s look back a bit to see why Jesus’ disciples would need to be reminded of this obvious fact.
Just prior to Jesus asking this question He had fed 4,000 people with seven loaves and a few fish. Two chapters earlier He had fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. And, this excited Jesus’ disciples-they thought that with Him around they would never again know physical hunger! Then Jesus healed a blind man at Bethsaida and this thrilled them even more-for they began to think they would never again worry about illness! Shortly thereafter Peter had made his bold affirmation that Jesus was the Christ the Son of God-the long-awaited Messiah come to re-establish Israel as a world power.
Then suddenly, on the heels of all this Jesus began to teach about His imminent arrest and crucifixion. And when He did, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him-in essence saying, “Master, don’t talk like that. You’re going to kick the Romans out and set up a throne in Jerusalem!
With You in charge-with Your power at our disposal-we will never be hungry again and there will be no more sickness! It’s going to be great!” Well, Jesus responded by rebuking Peter STRONGLY saying, “Get behind Me, satan! You do not have in mind the things of God, but rather the things of men.” Jesus said this because Peter was tempting Him in the same way that satan did during His forty days in the wilderness-tempting Him to set up an EARTHLY kingdom.
Well, can you imagine Peter’s shock at having the Son of God call him “satan?!” I mean, if it were me it would have gotten my attention! I imagine ‘ole Pete was flattened-stunned that Jesus would say this to him. No doubt the rest of the disciples were stunned as well! And in response Jesus gently called the disciples and other onlookers over to where He and Peter were standing and said in essence,
“Listen, I rebuked you the way I did because your way of thinking is not in line with the Kingdom of God. You guys have it all wrong. I’m not here to make this temporary fallen world right. I’m not here to merely kick the Romans out and pass out free food. No! You’re thinking like the world thinks-not like God thinks. He has sent Me to prepare you for the NEXT world and it is an ETERNAL world!”
In other words Jesus reminded them that this fallen world and the things in it will pass away-so it is foolish to INVEST in it. It doesn’t make good “business sense.” It’s like putting all your eggs in the wrong basket-like buying a ticket on the Titanic or the Hindenberg…for, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:18, this world…”what is seen-is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
All this reminds me of the plot of the movie MATRIX, where in the not too distant future, the entire human race has been conquered by machines. These machines have put everyone on the planet to sleep and while they sleep the machines syphon off the caloric energy generated by their bodies. They turn the entire human race into a power-plant. Well, to keep humanity happy they link everyone to a computer-generated dream world. And the heros of the movie are the handful of humans who have somehow managed to wake up. THEY live in the REAL world-in reality instead of fantasy-and they make it their life’s goal to wake everyone else up.
Well, in essence that is what Jesus is trying to do here. He has come from the real world-Heaven-and is trying to get His disciples to “wake up” and understand that the fallen world they live in is like a bad dream that even now is passing away-and that the real world is eternal-that, even at it’s best this world is just a shadow of the glory of heaven.
Well, we are like those first disciples because so many times you and I embrace the mind set of investing all our energies in the natural world. We do this because this world is so evident to our senses that it draws a curtain across spiritual reality. The writer William Irwin Thompson would say that when we live like this we are behaving like flies that craw across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, blissfully unaware of the magnificent shapes and forms that lie beneath-or above-their threshold of perception.
But you know, we are not ALWAYS as dense as those flies because there are times that INSIDE we sense that there is more than what our five senses reveal.
I say this because we all have in us an instinctive homesickness for something better-something more-something eternal! Abraham felt this way. In Hebrews 11:9-10 it says, “By faith he made his home in the promised land LIKE A STRANGER IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY; he lived in tents…for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose Architect and Builder is God.” March Buchanan writes, “Even in a land flowing with milk and honey we live estranged, WE DWELL IN TENTS. It simply doesn’t matter how good earth gets or how much we experience our settlement here as promised land. No foundation we lay can take away our sense that we are not home yet…this awareness is eternity in our hearts. This is being haunted with and wooed by THINGS UNSEEN.”
Now, think about it-have you ever sensed and yearned for THINGS UNSEEN? Have you ever looked at the family picture album of your children when they were small-and your soul smiled as you remembered the day it was taken and you wanted that moment back-the moment of joy captured on film? Has an experience like that ever made you hunger for a place where time did not pass and take with it precious experiences like that? Have you ever watched a sunset so glorious that you dropped everything to look at it-inside feeling drawn to a place where magnificent glory like that was constant?
Have you ever watched the nightly news with its daily quota of bombings and disasters and ached for a place of absolute safety where there are no tears, no sickness, and where death itself has no foothold?
Well, those kinds of FEELINGS are really our God-given HUNGER for the REAL WORLD-for Heaven. In 2 Corinthians 5:5 Paul says, “It is God Who has made us..LIKE THIS…[He gave us this yearning] for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing WHAT IS TO COME.” This is what Paul is talking about earlier in that same text when he says we know-we instinctively know that, “…if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built with human hands. Meanwhile we GROAN, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.” Well, this “GROANING” is our inborn homesickness for heaven. It’s our awareness that this world is not enough-big enough-long enough-deep enough-to contain or explain even one single life in it. You see, we were not crated for earth alone. We were created for eternity and all our deepest senses confirm it. This is why our life here on Earth-even at its best doesn’t satisfy us.
The writer of Ecclesiastes discovered as much. Do you remember his words, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.” (Ecc. 2:10) If you read on you see he was telling the truth because he didn’t deny himself anything: The noble. The debased. The intellectual. The sensual. The cultural. The carnal. He built things, wrote things, amassed things, squandered things. He created and he destroyed. He drank himself silly. He bedded a thousand woman and more. He wielded despotic power. In short nothing in all creation separated him from doing whatever he wanted, taking whatever he sought. This guy had all this fallen world has to give-AND HE LEARNED IT WASN’T ENOUGH. It still left him wanting more. As he put it, “All was vanity, chasing wind, wasting time…Everything was meaningless.” I guess you could say his book is a chronicle of folly, a diary of all the ways we can LOSE our life by trying to SAVE it.
Well, as I said, we are all like this-we all hunger for Heaven-because God made us this way.
He made us to yearn for something we can’t get, to always be missing something we can’t find, to always be disappointed with what we receive, to always have an insatiable emptiness that no thing can fill and an untamable restlessness that no discovery can still. So, understand-this yearning itself is healthy. It’s a kind of compass inside us pointing us to True North. Buchanan says, “This is not so much a design flaw as it is a DESIGNED flaw-a glitch wired into the system…” to make us long for Heaven and Home. C.S. Lewis once said the same thing. He wrote, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing a food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in THIS world can satisfy, the most probably explanations that I was made for ANOTHER world. If none of my EARTHLY pleasures satisfy it, that does not mean the universe is a fraud-earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the REAL THING.”
Well, this yearning PROVES the existence of Heaven. God put this hunger in us to remind us of this and to act as sort of a homing device for eternity. You see, Heaven-not Earth-is where our inescapable sense of loss and incompleteness is overcome. So, just as Jesus said, it IS foolish to invest our time and energy in the here and now at the expense of the there and then. This is a lesson that every disciple-every student of Jesus-must understand.
2. And then another reason it does not make good business sense to invest in the things of this temporary world is the fact that you and I are NOT temporary.
We have ETERNAL souls. Now, our BODIES die. They begin dying the moment we are born but our SOULS last forever-so nothing on this temporary earth is worth more. As Jesus said, “What can a man give in exchange for his soul? Nothing-nothing this world has o offer is equal in value to the soul of man because it is eternal.
As a pastor I have seen people die numerous times-and every time there is an almost tangible sense of the person LEAVING their body. I mean-the soul does not cease to be-it is not destroyed. IT leaves-and when it does all that is left is an empty shell. The older we get the more we understand this. Every morning in the mirror, we see our body literally “decaying” before our eyes but our soul does not. We know inside that we are still the same eternal beings-living in an “earth suit” that is wearing out.
Malcolm Muggeridge confessed that in his final years he realized this saying that he lived in sight of Heaven. He once wrote: “You know, it’s a funny thing that when you’re very old, as I am, 75 and near dying, the queerest thing happens. You very often wake up about two or three in the morning and you are half in and half out of your body, a most peculiar situation. You can see your battered old carcass there between the sheets and it’s quite a tossup whether you resume full occupancy and go through another day…or make off where you can see, like the lights in the sky as you’re driving along, the lights of Augustine’s City of God.” His words remind me of the Apostle Paul’s where he says, “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” (Philippians 1:23-24)
Well, as Muggeridge and Paul realized, for human beings conscious life does not end when our bodies wear out. No-we go on-our souls-our essence as a person-is eternal. We will be around for eternity so you see it only makes sense to invest in something that will benefit us in eternity. As Philip Yancy says, “Aging Un-prepares us for life in this visible world and gives opportunity to prepare for the next.”
Okay-time for another teaching question. What are some IMPLICATIONS of this fact that this world is temporary and we are not? I mean, how should belief in another world change my response to life in this one?
1. Well, first of all, this would infer that, as Christians, we must live in light of ETERNITY.
You and I must learn to live you might call, “heaven-bent” lives. As Paul said in Colossionas 3:1-2, we must, “…set our hearts and minds on things above, not on earthly things.” In other words we must discipline ourselves so that our focus is on things of eternal significance. We need to choose to think and act day in and day out-not in light of what was, not of what is, but of what is to come for as Yancey says, “In every instant of human time, eternity is present. An act of love, justice, compassion or hate and cruelty – has consequences in this world and in the unseen world as well. So as Jesus said, we need to strive to “lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.” (Matthew 6:20)
And this is vital not just for the FUTURE but for the present as well. You see, the degree to which we do NOT set our hearts and minds on things above is the degree to which our spiritual growth will stall and we will grow bitter or become bored or afraid down here. Buchannan says that if we don’t focus on Heaven, “…we’re of little earthly good, and we find little good on earth.” So, we need to become heaven-bent-we need to “strive for the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14) That focus-that perspective-keeps us on track to becoming all that God wants us to be.
Several years ago a millionaire named Eugene Lang spoke to a class of sixth graders at a school in New York’s East Harlem. This was an inner-city school. The building was ramshackle; the morale even more so. The statistics gave a dismal picture: Within three years, most of the students would drop out to join gangs, sell drugs, or turn tricks. Many would end up in prison. Many would be dead before the age of twenty. If history were destiny, most of these sixth-grade students wouldn’t get a break and didn’t stand a chance. Eugene Lang looked at them and his heart broke. He put down his notes and pleaded with them saying, “Stay in school and I will pay the college tuition for every one of you.” Nearly 90% of that class took him up on his offer. They graduated and went on to college. One boy described it this way: “I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me. It was a golden feeling.” Well, if the Apostle Paul were here, he’d plead with us and say, “Stay the course. Stay in Jesus’ school of freedom and holiness. Stay, because not only has He already paid the ‘tuition,’ but you can hardly imagine what GRADUATION will look like-the golden glory that will be revealed….WHEN WE ALL GET TO HEAVEN!”
So, one implication of all this is that we live heaven-bent lives, but the fact that this world is temporary and we are not has other implications.
2. You see, this important truth also alters our perspective on PLEASURE.
When we are truly “heaven-bent” we begin to emulate Jesus by spending our lives unselfishly sacrificing to meet the needs of others-a way of living that is opposite to the ways of the world. And when we live this way we discover a source of unbelievable pleasure. You know, the most JOYFUL people I know are not those who HAVE the most but those who GIVE the most-those who sacrifice of their time and talents to make life better for others.
One example of this kind of person is Faith Waziri-who left the privileged upper classes of Kenya into which she was born and went to the slums of Nairobi to give her life to help the orphans and street children of that city. As many of you know, Faith lives in the midst of great poverty. Every day is a struggle to make ends meet as she feeds and cares for the hundreds of children in her charge-but in our week of ministry there last year, I never saw her with anything but a smile on her face. She laughed all the time-even while living in a place that would make most people cry in despair! Faith is one of the happiest people I have ever met and yet she goes counter to the teaching of this world and focuses on giving instead of getting. She lives like Jesus “Who was rich but for our sakes became poor.” Well, that’s the way it is when we live for the things of not this world but the next-we find pleasure even in the midst of sacrifice. C.S. Lewis once put it this way, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”
3. And then this mind set not only changes the way we look at PLEASURE. It also changes the way we look at PAIN.
For example, we learn that TEMPORARY pain can lead to ETERNAL gain-that God often used painful times to make us better people-more like His Son. As James said we learn to, “Consider it pure joy…whenever we face trials of many kinds because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance…and that perseverance must finish its work so that we may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4
Do you remember the movie Karate Kid? Mr. Miyagi agreed to teach Daniel Karate but when he showed up for his first day of lessons Mr. Miyagi had him wax a yard full of antique cars. Remember “Wax on-Wax off Daniel-san.” Well, he worked all day waxing those cars and when he showed up the next day ready to learn a few KARATE moves, Mr. Miyagi had him paint a fence. The third day dawned and still there were no lessons. Instead Mr. Miyagi had him sand his deck by hand. Finally Daniel had it-he wanted to learn Karate and was instead being treated like a hired hand. He began to quit but Mr. Miyagi stopped him and said, “Daniel-san, show me WAX ON WAX OFF” Daniel did and then Miyagi said, “Show me paint fence.” Then, “Show me, sand deck” Next Mr. Miyagi began to punch and kick at Daniel and to his amazement, by using the motions of waxing car, painting fence, and sanding the deck, he was able to block every hit. Without knowing it, his three days of persevering through suffering had actually been a secret Karate apprenticeship. Daniel had learned Karate without knowing it.
Well, that’s the way it is with us. When we are focused on heaven we look back on our lives and see that sometimes God allows us to go through tough times in order to teach us things that make us better Christians. This perspective shows us that temporary pain can yield eternal rewards.
And then, realizing that this world is fleeting-helps us to understand that suffering itself is temporary and that helps us to hang on when life gets tough.
In other words knowledge of HEAVEN helps us endure the troubles of earth. Albert Raboteau, an expert on the Christian faith of slaves living in the American South says that prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Virginia would gather for secret prayer meetings in the swamps between the plantations where they worked. They would each follow signs marked on the trees pointing them to the selected spot. When they arrived they would begin by asking each other how they felt-how they were doing. Stories of beatings, lynchings, and other cruelties would pour out. Then the prayer service would begin. As one slave reported, “The slave forgets all his sufferings, except to remind others of the trials during the last week, exclaiming: ‘Thank God, I shall not live here always.'” Those men and women endured unbelievable suffering-and they were able to do so because their of their faith in Jesus, Who promised them a heavenly home! This same faith helps you and me to endure the inequities of life on a fallen world. As the old hymn says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus and the things of earth-the tragic painful things-will grow strangely dim…” Even the dread of death grows dim-because we cease to “fear those who can kill the body but not the soul.” (Matthew 10:28)
Life is tough. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, “We are hard pressed on every side, struck down, always being given over to death. But we do not lose heart for our LIGHT AND MOMENTARY troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Remember, there is nothing that we experience good or bad in this world that either has more substance or is longer in duration than the glory of heaven. So our troubles are indeed, “light and momentary!”
Now, the Greek the word for “light” is “elaphros” and it means “easy to bear.” Well troubles ARE easy to bear if we embrace a faith in our eternal home. I remember my “boot camp” experience as an army chaplain years ago. It was tough. We slept in pup tents on the cold hard ground in January in New Jersey. It rained off and on. I was almost always cold and wet and tired. But do you know what kept me going? My knowledge that it would end in a few weeks and I would soon be home with my family safe and warm. Well, our faith that someday we will be in heaven keeps us going as well. So, when we learn to invest in and look forward to heaven-we come to look at pain and suffering in a whole new light.
In closing I want to make one more point and it is this-There is a very real sense in which Heaven starts now-not later-NOW.
You see eternity is not primarily a measure of time-you know, chronological time stretched into infinity. And, it is not first and foremost a place. No, eternity is PRIMARILY a relationship. It is first and foremost a presence-the presence of God in our lives that we can experience 24 hours a day through faith in Jesus Christ. I mean, it is not as much a lesson we learn as it is a Person we know.
Remember, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble-but take heart-I have overcome the world!” So heaven-eternity-begins as we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus-the OVERCOMER-as He walks with us through life, empowering us to endure. As Peter once said, we must follow Jesus because only He “has the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)
Okay, one more “teaching question.” Have you experienced eternity? Do you know Jesus?
Now, in the movie Matrix, to wake up you have to take a pill but that’s not the way it works in reality. No, if you don’t know Jesus then all you need to to to “wake up” and begin experiencing the REAL world is to pray confessing your sin, asking for Jesus forgiveness-and committing your life to His Lordship. That one prayer will usher you into a life of eternal significance that can begin right now. And if you pray that prayer, I invite you to tell me about it. In a moment as we stand and sing, walk forward and share your decision with me.
Perhaps you are already a Christian-in need of a good church home-and you feel God leading you to invest your time and talents here. We’d love to have you join our church family as we work not to further the things of this world but rather the things of the eternal kingdom of God! Won’t you come now as God leads?