And this is the Lord Jesus Christ,
and he's still in the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, in the
area of Caesarea Philippi, north of the Sea of Galilee. And he
had called the people unto him with his disciples also. When
he had called the people unto him with his disciples also,
he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever
will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose
his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save
it. For what shall it profit a man
if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore
shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and
sinful generation, of him also shall the son of man be ashamed
when he cometh in the glory of his father with the holy angels. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. What powerful questions these
are that the Lord set before the gathering of disciples and
other followers there this day in this place where he was with
them. These are questions which it
ought to cause us to pause and reflect upon when we hear them
spoken. What shall it profit a man if
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? Often when we listen to the news,
or watch broadcasts, or read newspapers, whatever it might
be these days that we use as the vehicle for our information. We encounter the passing of the
rich and the famous, the celebrities, the pop stars and the TV stars,
or the politicians, the leaders. We wonder about all that they've
attained in this world. all that they've accumulated
in their life. And we think perhaps they've
done very well for themselves as far as the accolades of the
world is concerned. And then we are brought face
to face with a question like this. What shall it profit a
man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? And we're going to pause for
a little while today and think about some of the implications
of these questions. And I've got an introduction
and then three points that I want to draw to your attention from
the passage before us. The introduction goes on a little
bit, so I'll let you know when it's finished. There's a couple
of different strands in the introduction as well. So I'll try and keep
you abreast of where we are in our thoughts today as we go through
these few verses. So in the introduction to this
thought today, I just want to point out something which is
pretty obvious but worth stating, I think. The Lord is not making
this a discussion about whether or not we have a soul. and nor
I trust will we. We have a soul that is everlasting
and we have a soul that is answerable to God. After this life is finished,
our soul will continue and God will hold us accountable for
the things that have been done in this body. Our soul is the
breath of God within us, by which we live in this world as personal,
rational, individual creatures. So we find in the creation account
of mankind, in Genesis chapter two, verse seven, these words. And the Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and man became a living soul. And having become a living soul,
our soul is immortal. It doesn't die with the death
of our body. And yet, the soul, if it is separated
from God, if it is separated from fellowship and communion
with God, is likened to a lost soul. A soul that will be judged
by God. And that judgment is likened
to destruction. But it is not an annihilation.
It is an ongoing destruction in a fire that never goes out. So that we read the Lord Jesus
Christ warning men and women that the cost of the loss of
our soul is more serious than the death of our body. Men and women live in this world
today and they endeavour to do the best for themselves. And
that's understandable and indeed in many ways it is commendable. if they look after their bodies,
if they look after their minds, if they look after their well-being. But they fail to look after their
souls, which is much more important than this body and the things
of this flesh. The Lord tells his disciples
in Matthew chapter 10, verse 28, fear not them which kill
the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear
Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Don't forget God. In all of the
getting, in all of the going, in all of the accruing, in all
of the building up that we do in this world, don't forget the
Lord. The Apostle Paul tells us, that
there is a judgment coming upon sin, which he calls the righteous
judgment of God. And this is what he says of it.
The righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man
according to his deeds, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish
upon every soul of man that doeth evil. That's in Romans chapter
two, verses six to nine. And the old prophet Ezekiel in
the Old Testament scriptures tells us, God says, behold, all
souls are mine. As the soul of the father, so
also the soul of the son is mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall
die. But the message of the Gospel
is that there is salvation for the souls of men and women in
Christ, by whose blood forgiveness and deliverance of sin is available. The psalmist says, for the redemption,
Psalm 49, for the redemption of their soul is precious. by which redemption, the Apostle
Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians, them that believe to the saving
of the soul shall in their whole spirit and soul and body be preserved
blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that
while there is a wickedness, while there is a culpability,
in the fallen souls, the sinful souls of men and women, there
is by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the shed blood and
righteousness of Jesus Christ the Saviour, a redemption to
be had for sinners like us. Such a redemption that will render
us blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What
a wonderful thought that is. So I say to all of you who hear
me today, flee the wrath that is to come. There is a great
divide in this world. It's not about what we can get
in the flesh, in the body. This is a divide between heaven
and hell, life and death, destruction and salvation, tribulation and
peace. May the Lord be gracious to us. May the Lord save our precious
souls this very day by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world
and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? I wonder if you realise that
the answer to those questions is nothing. There is no lasting,
enduring peace in the property of this world. This world will
pass away. This world must pass away. Heaven
and earth will pass away, but our souls will continue, either
in the bliss of the presence of God or in the torment of his
presence without a saviour. There is no price that you can
pay to buy your soul. There is no work that you can
perform. There is no trade that you can
make. No exchange is possible here. So let us take these questions
seriously and let us think about what the Lord is telling us here
today. So that's the introduction and
now I'm going to see if I can just point three things out to
you with regard to these questions which the Lord uses to direct
his disciples and his followers and us with them in the way in
which we should think of him. The first thing is this. that
following the Lord Jesus Christ, which is what the Saviour is
speaking about here. He says, whosoever will come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow
me. So following the Lord Jesus Christ
is primarily a spiritual experience. It is the experience of faith
and trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot follow the
Lord Jesus Christ but by faith. And so it is a spiritual experience
that we are talking about here. Today, We rather presumptuously
look back on the disciples with a critical eye and we wonder
why it took them so long to grasp the things that Jesus was telling
them. Things, for example, like that
his kingdom, Jesus' kingdom, was a spiritual kingdom, not
a physical earthly kingdom, and that his rule was to be a worldwide
rule in the hearts of men and women, and not an earthly empire
centred on Jerusalem, where he would rule the world from. And right to the end, it seems
as if the disciples could not shake the idea of this physical
kingdom. Do you remember the day that
the Lord rose from the dead? he met two of his followers on
the road to Emmaus, Luke chapter 24, verse 21, or Luke chapter
24. They were talking about the things
that had happened in Jerusalem and the Lord drew up beside them
and he went with them on the way and he was listening to the
things that they were saying. And this is what they told him.
They said, we trusted that it had been he which should have
redeemed Israel. After the Lord had been crucified,
after the Lord was risen from the dead, These disciples, these followers
still held this view that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to
reign in Jerusalem as a Messiah over an earthly kingdom. But I wonder if we would have
been any different. I said we look back rather critically
on the disciples, but I wonder if we would have been any different.
Because is this not what we talk about so often in this battle
of flesh and faith? This preoccupation that we have
with the time and the world and the things that are material
around about us that causes anxiety and fear and weigh so heavily
upon us. And there's so many distractions
to us. Is this not the same thing as
the disciples had to deal with? The idea of a spiritual kingdom,
the idea of a body, the church, which was Christ's reign and
rule in the hearts of many men and women was unlike anything
that had ever been seen in the world. And that's not to say
that the church did not exist in the Old Testament. It certainly
did. And the Lord had his elect amongst
the Old Testament peoples as well as the new. But it was hidden. There was not as yet a fullness
of the revelation. And the patterns of thought,
even of believers, were fixed on David's past glory. And the immediate things of the
world around about him, in this case, as far as the disciples
were concerned, it was the Roman occupation and domination of
the known world at that time. And that's what they compared
things with. And also there was a veil over
their eyes. It's not that these men were
unbelievers. but their understanding was not
yet full because the gospel revelation was still not complete. There
still was more to learn. Despite the frankness and the
openness and the clearness, the clarity of the Lord's words,
we find that there was still more to understand. prophets
of the Old Testament had preached a worldwide gospel, but they
had been rejected out of hand. They had been misinterpreted
and misapplied because the message that they spoke was received
too narrowly by the people of their age. And still today, even with the
benefit of hindsight and the explanation of the apostles and
with what is sometimes called New Testament eyes and the unfolding
history of the church and the fullness of the revelation which
has come by Jesus Christ. We still, you and me, we are
still over much preoccupied with matters of time and flesh and
physical evidence in every part of our lives. It's hard to live
by faith when every urge of our flesh is to live by sight and
to react to our physical circumstances, the physical world around about
us. And yet to follow Christ is spiritual. That's why the Lord said to Nicodemus,
you must be born again. He was being taught the same
lesson that following Christ was a spiritual experience. This
is what the Lord Jesus was explaining to the disciples and others here
in the coasts of Caesarea Philippi. Whosoever will come after me,
let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. The
disciples sought glory in an earthly kingdom, but the Lord
was pointing them to the sacrifice that needed to be made for his
heavenly kingdom here upon earth. And that's still the life and
the understanding that we have today. We have to follow the
Lord spiritually as part of his heavenly kingdom here upon earth. And the disciples were learning
that this would be a costly path to follow. There would be sacrifice. There would be shame. There would
be hurt. There would be trial. Then the Lord taught his disciples
what it means to follow him spiritually. So our point one today was that
following Christ is a spiritual experience. Point two is what
it means to follow Christ spiritually. Following the Lord Jesus Christ
spiritually of course isn't physical. The Lord Jesus Christ is in glory
now. The God-man is in glory, seated
at the right hand of God. We walk about the countryside
after him, like these people were doing here in the Gospels. But following the Lord Jesus
Christ is standing for Christ. It is standing for his gospel,
it is standing by faith, it is believing and trusting in the
things that he has said and the things that he has done in this
present evil world. That's what it is to follow Christ.
If somebody says they're a follower of Christ, then we expect them
to be faithful to his words, faithful to his testimony. Now,
as we've been saying, I suspect these disciples had ambitions
of glory and honour when the Lord Jesus Christ would be revealed
as Israel's promised Messiah. But little did they realise that
their own labour was just about to begin when the Lord's work
came to its end. We do not work for our salvation. God will have none of that. Salvation,
the work of salvation was completed on the cross when our representative
and our substitute stood in our place, condescending to bear
our sins, stooped to carry our sorrow and died in our place. We are saved by the blood of
Jesus Christ. We are fitted with the righteousness
of Jesus Christ for the glory of God. But the Lord's people
are saved to serve and to follow and to express their gratitude
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what we are called to. And we do our service and our
following and our thanksgiving by honouring the Lord and his
gospel with our service and with our testimony. We testify to
his grace and his glory by the things that we do and
say. and sometimes that testimony will be expensive. Losing life for Christ's sake
and for the gospel's sake was indeed the lot, the experience
of the disciples and it has been for others down through the history
of the church and it may still be for men and women who are
followers of Jesus Christ today. But at very least, for all of
us, it is serving Christ with all we are and have as a token
and evidence of our love and gratitude to Him for what He
has done for us. We said that we are saved to
serve and follow and express our gratitude. And that service,
that adherence to the gospel, to the Lord and to his gospel,
and that gratitude to Christ is evidenced in the things that
we stand for and the things that we profess. We believe in the
sovereignty of God. We uphold and support the gospel
of free grace and the effectual salvation of sinners by the blood
of Jesus Christ. That is the ground upon which
we stand. That is the faith that we profess. We believe in total depravity. We believe in the complete inability
of men and women to please God by anything that they do outside
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that it is impossible
for men and women to discern or to discover God in any way,
to exercise faith in God in any way, without first being quickened
and made alive and given the grace of God. We believe in unconditional
election. We stand upon this ground. We
believe that it is God's sovereign right to choose some from fallen
mankind to salvation while passing by others and leaving them in
their sin. We believe that when the Lord
Jesus Christ died on the cross, his blood completely atoned for
the sin of his people and that he redeemed the lives of all
for whom he died that day on Calvary. We believe that all
those elected to salvation, all those that were redeemed by Christ's
blood, will in time by the preaching of the gospel be quickened by
God the Holy Spirit, born again through the work of the Spirit
and brought to a confession of sin and faith in Jesus Christ
as their Lord and Saviour. And we believe that having once
been saved by the sacrifice of Christ, no elect Redeemed or
quickened believer in Christ will ever fall away so as to
be eternally lost, but will persevere in faith to the glory of God
who holds his people and his church in the palm of his hand. This is what it is to follow
Christ. This is what it is to stand for
his gospel. This is what it is, spiritually,
to have faith in the work that Jesus Christ has accomplished.
Christ and his gospel will be opposed in this present evil
world. We believe it always has been
thus. And to a greater or lesser extent,
it always will be. but by God's grace we say with
Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. And then the Lord taught his
disciples our final point today, that following the Lord Jesus
Christ brings true lasting happiness and it brings honour. The honour the world gives is
fleeting, futile and invariably false. We lift up those that are heroes
one day and by the end of the week we've forgotten what they
stood for. The honour that the world gives
is fleeting, But God says, them that honour me, I will honour. We honour God in Christ by faith,
believing in the one God sent, in the salvation he secured,
and the hope of glory that he promised. This is how we honour
our God. Our service flows from that. Our service for the help of our
brothers and sisters in Christ, for the extension of the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the support of the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ, for the upholding of the ministers of
that gospel. Our service, our giving, our
sacrifice in these things flows out of love and gratitude to
God for what he has given us by the Lord Jesus Christ. This
isn't anything to do with law or legal obligation or duty. It is a response from a heart
that has been touched by the power of God in such a way that
we desire to serve him and glorify his name. The Lord Jesus Christ
said in John chapter 12 verse 26, if any man serve me, there's
that word service, if any man serve me, let him follow me. And where I am, there shall also
my servant be. If any man serve me, him will
my father honour. I wonder, if we could speak to
Peter and James and John and Paul today, right now, and ask
if they feel as if they missed out on the on the honour, the
glory that they had mistakenly hoped for in those early days
of the Lord's ministry when they thought it was going to be an
earthly kingdom in Jerusalem. I wonder if we were to ask them
if they felt that they missed out in some way. I think they'd
say, not at all. Not at all, this was far better.
for all the work that had to be done, for all the service
that was given, for all the miles that were walked, for all the
preaching that was done, for all the suffering that was endured,
for all the disappointment that was incurred, this was far, far
better. What will it be like on that
day when the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father
with His holy angels? It's the last verse of our little
passage here today. What will it be like on that
day when the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father
with His holy angels? What a day it will be. Will Jesus
be ashamed of us when He comes Not at all. He will gather the
people whom he loves. He will reveal us as we really
are in our garments of pure white. He will cause us to shine like
gems in his crown. And he will bring us in honour
into his Father's house. Why? because we trust him, because
we have faith in him, because we love him for what he has done
for us. Hebrews 2, verses 11 and 12 says
this, For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are
all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren,
saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst
of the church will I sing praise unto thee. Amen. May the Lord
bless these thoughts to us today and encourage our hearts in them
also.