BST No.8 Sole Exchange

If you have a Bible and you'd like to follow this reading, we're reading here from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 8, beginning at verse 31 through to the end of the chapter, Jesus predicts his death. Verse 31 of Mark, chapter 8. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed, and after three days, rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. Out of my sight, Satan, he said. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.

Then he 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. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel will save it.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 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 with the holy angels. Mark 8, 37, it puts up the question, What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? I got some help in the address this evening. And here we want to put on the little board at the back what is basically my subject for tonight.

I'm going to be talking about the soul. The soul. I've got a friend in the States.

His name is Ray Stedman. And Ray had a little girl. She's now that much older.

And on one occasion when Ray was asleep or pretending to be asleep, his little girl climbed onto his tummy and she pummeled him with his fists, having tried previously to open his eyes, and she said to him, Wake up. I know you are in there. And that's the thing about the soul.

It's in there. It's in your body. Doug Wheeler, just come to the mic a moment, will you? I want to put a couple of questions to Doug.

He's a good friend of mine. We've known one another for several years. Doug, do you personally feel any different now as far as your soul is concerned than what you were at the age of, say, 25? Well, no.

Not really. Because the body ages, and as one gets older one realises that, but the soul seems to stay alive and young and fresh. If you took your life again in God's grace, is there one thing that you would ask that might be different from your experience as it has been first time round? Certainly, my experience was coming to the Lord very late in life and realising the years, the locusts have eaten.

If I had come earlier, then my soul, my spiritual self, I believe, would have a greater knowledge and understanding of the love of God and my Saviour. Thanks very much, Doug. You see, there's an illustration, and that wasn't fixed incidentally, there's an illustration of someone, a senior citizen, who nonetheless would tell you that his soul, though his body has aged, seems the same.

I conducted the burial service of a 90-year-old lady just a few days ago, and the last time I was talking to her, she said, but you know, Tony, I feel so young. What I am and where I'm at, or rather who I am, are two different things. Listen to someone telling us what we are in terms of just bodily matter.

Man is nothing but fat enough for seven bars of soap, iron enough for one medium-sized nail, sugar enough for seven cups of tea, lime enough to whitewash one chicken coop, phosphorus enough to tip 2,200 matches, magnesium enough for one dose of salts, potash enough to explode one toy crane, and sulphur enough to rid one dog of fleas. That was Professor Jode that she was quoting. It wasn't a very sort of complementary analysis of what we are, was it? You've got the last bit, sulphur enough to, just to, was it sulphur for getting rid of fleas? I'm not too sure, but sufficient chemicals to get rid of fleas on a dog.

We're more than just body, we are soul. And Jesus says in this question that he put to a crowd that our souls are very valuable. Our souls have great worth.

Why are our souls so valuable? Well, for two reasons at least, and there are probably others. The first is this. We have been made in the image of God.

There is something about you that is utterly different from a dog or a cat or any animal. There is something potentially God-like about you. That's what makes the soul valuable.

That's why Jesus called crowds of people, when he was speaking basically to his disciples, to enlarge the audience, and he said, and I think as a rabbi he would probably shout it, that the soul is of such great value that a man who gained the world and lost his soul would be a fool. You are made in the image of God. What is more that adds to the value of yourself, you cannot be destroyed.

I'm not referring to your body. I've given you illustrations from the dear lady whose memorial service I conducted and whose body I committed to the ground just a few days ago. You've seen from a senior citizen, you see from a more middle-aged person, you see from a younger person an illustration in this congregation of the aging process.

But though our bodies decay, our souls don't. You are indestructible. Listen to this, and it's phenomenal, and I'm going to stop immediately after I've said it because I want it to sink in.

There will never be a time when I am not. Say that of yourself in the quietness of your mind using the personal pronoun. There will never be a time when I am not.

If that is the case, and your body decays, then isn't it more important to look after your soul than your body? And that's precisely what our Lord Jesus Christ was saying to His disciples on this occasion when He uttered this tremendous teaching. Listen a little more to the value of the soul and why it is that we ought to look upon the way that we live our lives now and rate it extremely importantly and give it great care. I am a mystery.

I wake up in the morning. I find myself the sole occupant of a complex, sensitive, and extremely useful body. I am also the proud owner of an intricate, imaginative, and highly resourceful brain.

Everything about me is unique. My face, my fingerprints, myself. I am alive.

I develop. I grow. So does a vegetable.

But I am more than a vegetable. Vegetables don't fall in love or read the paper or go on holiday. I am a body with a brain, an animal.

But I am more than an animal. Animals don't peer through telescopes or send birthday cards or play chess or cook. Surely I have a dimension that animals and vegetables lack.

After all, a carrot is oblivious of the size of Jupiter. A cow cares for nothing for the speed of light. But I am in a different class.

I observe and appreciate. I create and choose. I am aware.

I criticize. Sometimes I even criticize myself. I am different.

I am mankind. In fact, the Bible says I am God-kind. The Bible tells me that I am like God, that I exist in something of the way that God exists, that I am aware in some of the ways that God is aware.

And although I cannot prove it, the idea that I am made in the image of God makes more sense than all the other views put together. Indeed, it helps me to put the other views together and see them and myself as a whole. I am a person created by God, unique in the entire universe and in the whole of history, and I know it.

Mother Teresa out in India impresses me. One of the most moving experiences I ever had. Well, two of the most moving experiences I ever had in that subcontinent occurred several years ago.

I was preaching in a place called Ahmedabad. I preached some eight times on that one Sunday. And the final address that I had given was in a little slum village.

Conditions were worse than if you and I were living in our garden huts or our garages. And I came from that slum village across quite a lot of scrub land back to the city of Ahmedabad, and I almost tripped over in the darkness a little boy who was snuggled up against two goats. I never hit poverty head-on like that before.

And I started to weep. I was rather glad no one was around. I wept as I rarely wept in my life because I was face-to-face with poverty in a fashion that I'd never experienced before.

A little while later I was in the sprawling metropolis of Calcutta and I deliberately fought my way almost literally through rush hour to go to the place where Mother Teresa's nuns spend their time taking from the streets of Calcutta the flotsam and the jetsam old, smelly men and women bringing them into her clinic having them disinfected and cleaned and allowing them to die with dignity. I don't go all the way with Mother Teresa's mystical theology but I salute the woman for showing me, along with her compatriots that there is value to every finite man and woman on this earth. You have dignity because you have a soul and that soul is fashioned in the image of God and it is indestructible.

But the Bible makes it clear not only is the soul valuable but the soul is capable of being misused. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul indicates that the soul is expendable. I don't mean that it's expendable in the sense that it will burn itself out I've already argued against that but it can be put to a wrong use.

This is why Jesus, I think, was not speaking softly but was really shouting out so that all at the edge of the crowd that day could hear what He had to say. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? What does the Bible mean by losing the soul? You lose your soul when you forfeit eternal life. You lose your soul when you refuse God's offer of salvation.

You lose your soul when you decide to go your way and not God's way. You lose your soul in the language and estimate of the Lord Jesus when you keep your hands on the steering wheel of your life and refuse to let God's Holy Spirit have control. And Jesus says you can gain the whole world having declared independence from God.

And when you get to the end you'll be the loser because your soul in its eternal destination will not enter into the blessed presence of God but will be away from God eternally. I listened to Rudolf Murdoch. Did you when he gave a speech in Edinburgh about the media? Murdoch who controls such a lot of the press in this country and in the States and in Australia that you might well say that he typifies a person who has tremendous power.

I also heard a Labour Scottish MP say because of some of the publications in Murdoch's group I wonder how he will react when he meets his maker. It was a good question because if you gain the whole world in terms of controlling the media of the West if you have not secured your eternal salvation you're the loser. Alexander the Great, history records, wept when his armies had conquered the world and he had no further objective in life.

One of the saddest stories in the Old Testament is the man Solomon. Asked for women, he got them by the cart load. His harem was the most extensive in the world in those days.

He controlled stables and armies. He had all that there was for a man to enjoy himself and towards the end of his life this prodigal of the Old Testament writes a book and in that book, Ecclesiastes he sums up his conclusion, the bottom line what it really is when the rubber has hit the road and has almost been worn out. Emptiness of emptinesses, all is empty.

Why did he say that? Because his soul had been expended on things that were not in accord with the will of God and his happiness was lost and was transformed to unhappiness and became abject depression and despondency. Not because he didn't have the kicks, he did. Not because he never tasted the forbidden fruit, he did.

But because the forbidden fruit turned sickly sour in his mouth and made him want to vomit at the end. My language is not extreme. I've got the whole of that book to prove my point.

You see what I'm trying to say, my friend? When the blessed, gentle Lord Jesus increased the number of his audience by bringing ordinary people alongside his disciples and he challenged all of them about their soul he was emphasizing that the soul is valuable. But what shall a man give? The Jews understand commerce. The Jews are brilliant in the area of finance.

So he plunders the commercial metaphor. What will you barter for your soul? And the Lord Jesus says, if you gain the world and you move away from the purposes of God, you are the loser. And the message was so necessary for his audience because as the Bible tells you elsewhere in the Old and in the New Testament, every man has gone astray from God.

We're all in danger of expending our souls in things which are harmful to us. And the end of the sinner is destruction. That's what the Bible means.

And by destruction it's not inferring oblivion. In one sense, if I could preach that, I'd be a happier man. I wouldn't preach with such passion.

If this was the case, then I would placate my critics in Worthing who very often will criticize this pulpit for tying its convictions to the word of God and I wouldn't feel so passionate about preaching on salvation and the lostness of man. Because if it's true that the soul is indestructible and that you can forfeit your relationship with the Lord, it's also true that hell is an option that faces men and women outside of God. Did you hear that? All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

All have the predicament of being in the category of wastefully using their time and therefore expending their souls in things which are harmful and injurious. I play on the word soul, don't I, in that little overhead. It's not a misspelling.

S-O-L-E. That means one. You have only one soul.

And there is only the possibility that you by responding to the promptings of the Spirit in your heart and life will make your peace with God. I can't do it for you. If I could, I'd do it a thousand times.

If I could run fifty miles and secure a soul, I would be running all my life. I really mean that. But there is nothing I can do to save my wife or my mother or my in-laws.

Thank God they all love the Savior. They had to go on their own to the Lord Jesus because He doesn't deal by proxy. And the blessed thing about our Savior, a logical deduction from what He had to teach in regard to this conversation He had with the disciples and His increasing audience, and that is that the person who is in danger of losing his soul should know that the soul is salvageable.

The soul is salvageable. That's the reason why Jesus came into the world. The Son of Man, that's another title for Jesus, came to seek and to save that which is lost.

For our holiday, we went to a place called Worthing. We didn't go any further after all. Why not have the benefits of Worthing for a while? Best seaweed on the south coast.

But we did take one day off, Rowena and myself, and we went to Southampton. And we had, because I'm like a kid with boats, we had a ride on a boat. And the boat took us to various parts of the complex docks there.

And we could have, but it was a bit too expensive, and I am a Yorkshireman, I like value for money. We could have gone into what they call the ship, now it's gone from my mind, the Mary Rose. That's right, isn't it? The one that was taken from the from the depths of Southampton water and brought back at least part preserved.

It's salvaged. The other day, some folk will wonder if I'm not a little bit sort of loose, of a tile when I make reference to the fact that I was cycling round the Sea of Galilee, but I was on a bike that could have been a lot bigger and my what have you would have been less sore at the end of the journey. But do you know, I passed a place called Magdala where Mary Magdalene came from.

And they tell me, though I didn't have a chance to stop and look it up, they tell me that there's a Jesus boat there. Now they're not saying that it's the boat that our Lord Jesus actually sailed on, but it dates back to that time and they've got it like the Mary Rose, they've got it out of the sea and they're preserving it. Salvageable.

Jesus says that you're salvageable. Jesus says the whole world is salvageable. That's the reason why he came into the world.

Jesus said in this particular passage of Scripture that if a man would turn his back on life and be prepared in a word to carry his cross, then he would be saved. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? The Lord Jesus had taught previously about him being crucified.

And he says, in a sense, what happens to me is going to happen to you. Now he didn't mean that literally, although for some people there has been a literal fulfilment of that. What he meant was that he would die the most awful death on your behalf to take away your sins.

Now death by a cross was obnoxious to a Jew. To talk about bearing the cross, carrying the cross, it was obscene. Only the Romans pin people to a cross, not the Jews.

The whole idea of a man being pinned to the stake was an obnoxious one. But Jesus said that was the death he would die. And he went on to say that there is a sense in which those who become his disciples will so turn their back on the world that they will die to it.

And as you die to the world and offer yourself, you remember my metaphor, offer the steering wheel of your life to the Lord God, then he saves you. He saves you right there and then. Increasingly he fills you with his Spirit.

For some that's an ecstatic experience that lifts them to heaven. For others it's a more quiet and gradual thing. But however it operates in your life, it helps to affirm this, that you belong to God and that your soul has been saved.

And what I'm saying right now is there is an opportunity for you to find the Lord Jesus as these dear young folk found the Savior. You see, you can argue with me. You can be suspicious of me.

I'm a clergyman. I'm paid for this sort of stuff. But you can't put that argument up against these four, can you? Would you like to stand in front of a congregation of more than 500 people and fabricate, make up a story about what's happened in your life? Of course you wouldn't.

Neither did they. You cannot really put down the experience of a life that's been changed by Jesus Christ. So if He's changing people now, can't He change you? Of course He can.

That's why He bled and died. To save your soul. He'll deal with you on a one-to-one relationship.

Not in community, which means that right now you've got to do something. You with a soul that's valuable, made in the image of God, a soul that's indestructible, you that have known what it is to have expended some of your time in what's worthless, you now have to respond to the salvation of God as He offers it, you and the Lord Jesus. For it's not God's will that any man, any woman, any child should perish.

Let's just quietly bow our heads in prayer. Let's listen to a little song, an old song being sung about the saving of the soul. Souls of men, why will ye scatter like a crowd of frightened sheep? Foolish hearts, why will ye wander from a love so true and dear? Was there ever kindest shepherd half so gentle, half so sweet as the Savior who would have us come and gather round His feet? There's a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea.

There's a kindness in His justice which is more than liberty. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed. There is joyful all the members in the sorrows of the head.

God is broader than the measures of man's mind and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. But more simple, we should take Him at His word and all lives would be a sunshine in the sweetness of our heart. If you confess me before men, says our Lord Jesus, I will confess you before my Father who is in heaven.

Let's remain in prayer for a moment. One more hymn and then we're through this service. I'm not prolonging it.

Let's stand. O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder at Thy eyes are gleaming, I see the stars, I hear the nightingales, I love the world, I hear the birds, I see people dancing round I hear the moon and since my soul my soul was buried, set in to die, my steps can take me dear and on the cross my burden badly bearing, He bled and died to take away my sin and since my soul my soul was buried, set in to die, my steps can take me dear and on the cross all God's people said Amen and the saints enthusiastically rejoiced Hallelujah