The Infinite Worth of the Soul (Matthew Sermon)

“How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

This morning we’re looking at Matthew 16:26-28. I wanna begin by asking a question, a question asked by the novelist Leo Tolstoy and that is, “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” It’s a short story that he wrote in 1886, James Joyce called it the greatest story ever written. It’s a story about a Russian man named Pahom who had ambitions to improve his lot in life and back then in Russia, the most valuable commodity economically was land, real estate. The owner of a large tract of land was inevitably wealthier than one who owned less and one who owned no land at all was a peasant, a beggar living at the whim of a landlord. Now Pahom yearned for more land and therefore with it, more prosperity. At the beginning of the story, he boasts to his wife, “If I could have more land I wouldn’t fear the devil himself.”

The Devil sitting behind the oven hears this and snickers. He says “Alright fine, we’ll have a battle. I’ll give you plenty of land and by that means, I will get you into my power.” As the story unfolds, Pahom hears about a tribe of people in the rich fertile valleys of the east, a people named the Bashkirs. Though he can hardly believe it, he hears that these people are selling large tracts of land, for very little money. Incredible bargain. So he travels overland to the Bashkir region and he meets the chieftain. After drinking some tea and going through some social rituals, Pahom gets down to business. He declares his desire to buy some land. The Bashkirs readily agree and Pahom asks for the price, they say strangely 1000 rubles, per day.

Pahom doesn’t understand what this means, “Per day?” “Yes,” they answer, “for 1000 rubles, you can have as much land as you can walk around in a single day but you have to begin at sunrise and you have to return to the same spot by sunset or else your money is forfeited to us.”

Well, Pahom that night is filled with greed. He’s thinking that he’s in good physical condition. He can walk around a pretty big tract of land, so he’s excited. He thinks he can walk around at least 35 miles in a day. He’ll have 150 acres for plow land, he thinks and all the rest will be for grazing all of his head of cattle that he is most certainly going to own. So he agrees to the price, he wants to start the next day and they agree to do that.

At sunrise Pahom stands ready on the top of a little hillock. The Bashkir chief at sunrise drops his hat on the ground as both the starting and the finishing place for his race. Pahom has to return to that hat by sunset or forfeit his thousand rubles. So he starts off and his greed drives him on quickly throughout the morning as he goes along the first leg of his journey and as he goes the land just seems to get better and better, richer and richer, better looking rivers and copses of trees and he just wants it all but then he starts to realize, I’ve bit off a lot here and so he thinks it’s about time, it’s getting near noon to make his first turn, so he digs a little hole to mark the place as was agreed and he turns but he starts to realize that he’s behind schedule, the sun’s already at the top of the sky, it’s the heat of the day, it’s actually past noon now and he starts to pick up the pace. He’s getting hot, he takes off his coat, he’s moving along and he decides enough on the second leg, and he digs a hole to mark the second marker. By now, it’s actually mid-to-late afternoon and he thinks he’s in trouble, and he actually is. So he starts to travel faster and faster, marks the third spot as quickly as he can, and turns for home.

By now, the sun is getting a little bit orange in the western sky and he is pushing as hard as he can. Actually he’s running at top speed whatever energy he has left late in the day. He comes over a little bit of a hill and he sees that hillock where he began but it still seems distant and now it’s a race for time. He goes as hard and as fast as he can but he’s got that last little rise to go just as the sun is dipping over the horizon, he dives and grasps the chieftain’s cap, just in time.

Well, the Bashkir people are elated. They’re just laughing and celebrating, “What a fine fellow. It’s the largest tract of land we’ve ever seen in a single day.” And they’re celebrating and they go to raise him up but there’s blood coming from Pahom’s mouth, you see, he’s dead. The exertion killed him and so the Bashkirs take a shovel and they dig a six foot long stretch six feet down in the earth and that’s the answer to the question: how much land Pahom needed, just enough to bury him.

What an interesting story. What a parable on life, on ambition, on what really matters. What do you really need? I think Jesus asked two searching questions in our text. It gets to a deeper issue even. Pahom forfeited his physical life, Jesus goes even deeper than that. He asked this question, “What would it profit a man, if he gained the whole world and forfeited his soul?” And then he asked a second question: “What would a man give in exchange for his soul?”

At the end of your life of achievement, you will stand before Jesus Christ and you’ll give an account of every careless word you spoke and you’ll give an account of your life and the issue hanging in the balance on Judgment Day will be this: Where will your soul spend eternity? Will your soul spend eternity with God in heaven or will your soul be tormented for eternity in hell? That is the question.There is no third option and Jesus is speaking this to make sure that we don’t lose our souls in a fruitless pursuit of things that don’t matter at all.

Understanding the Context

Now, let’s understand the context. We’re in the Gospel of Matthew, returning there after about a year and a half. The gospel of Matthew is the presentation of Jesus Christ as the king of the kingdom of heaven, that’s the theme of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the King of the Kingdom of Heaven. So the gospel begins with a genealogy, establishing his right to rule as the legitimate, the legal heir of David, the son of David.

But then in chapters two and three, with his birth, a birth account and then with his baptism and the statement made by Almighty God from the sky, we see established also Jesus is the son of God. So he is the son of David, the son of man, and he is also the son of God and those are his personal credentials to rule over the Kingdom of heaven.

And then we see his personality and his attributes established in his miracles at the end of Matthew chapter 4. He does signs and wonders, and so the power of his kingdom established by his miracles. We see also the wisdom of his kingdom established and his teachings, the Sermon on the Mount and the parables and all of the great utterances he spoke as no man ever did. And we see also the character of the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, the purity, the holiness, his compassion, his mercy. We see all of that put on display.

But in this section of Matthew, he has turned his gaze and Matthew has through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to us as the readers to people to see whether we will enter the Kingdom or not. We have to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and so there are many teachings concerning this. That we have to be able to in Matthew 16, make Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. And after Peter makes that confession, Jesus warns his disciples, in verse 21 of this chapter, “From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the chief priest, elders and teachers of law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

This is devastating for them. They did not expect a suffering Messiah, still less a dead Messiah. Could not understand this and it was very difficult for them, and Peter again acting as spokesman for what they were all thinking, just could not understand how that could work and took Jesus aside, if you can actually believe this and rebukes Jesus. Quite a moment in redemptive history. Peter, the chief among the apostles, rebuking the Son of God.

Jesus turns and rebukes him back and says “Get behind me, Satan. You’re a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of man. You’re thinking like a man, not thinking like God would have you think.”

Now Peter’s immediate motive was selfish. He figured that he was in line for a key position in this new kingdom. Did not understand the Kingdom of Heaven, didn’t understand it at all. But he knew that Jesus dead leaves him in a bad way, having left his fishing business and all that and being one of Jesus’ right-hand men. And so he can’t imagine Jesus dead because he can’t imagine himself dead either. And so he’s really thinking like a human. His mind is focused on earthly things, earthly power, earthly achievement, earthly pleasures, that’s what he’s thinking about, that’s what’s on his mind and so Jesus gives this incredible call.

Understanding the Call

Verse 24 and 25, Jesus said to his disciples. “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 will find it.” “Don’t live for this world,” he’s saying to Peter. “Don’t cling to things in this world. Don’t hold on to your life, let it go. There’s another world that’s coming and we’re gonna live for that world. In this world, we’re gonna have trouble; persecution and difficulties and suffering. In the next world, I will establish forever my perfect kingdom. Don’t live for this world. Deny yourself. Be willing to die as I’m going to die.” That’s what he’s saying.

Stop finding your life in earthly things. Jesus then turns up the intensity even further, the call on the disciples is that they realize that anything that hindered them from entering the Kingdom of Heaven must be dispensed with, just as Jesus earlier said, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. So he wants to give the disciples a sense of the immense worth and value of their future life, more significantly of their souls.

And so he says this, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or What will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Now, from this text, I’m gonna focus on two questions, two issues. And that is the world and what it means to gain it and secondly, the soul and what it means to lose it.

And then I’m gonna ask Jesus’ two questions and seek to answer them. “What would it profit a man then if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” and secondly, “What would a man give in exchange for his soul?” I wanna sharpen these questions to a fine point. I wanna urge you to be sure that your soul’s final state will be in heaven and not in hell. I believe that’s why God brought every one of you here today, including myself; that we would have a strong answer to that question by faith. That we would know where our soul is going to spend eternity. It’s not an academic question. There could be no more important question that you face today than that.

Where will your soul spend eternity? Will you be welcomed into heaven or will you be cast into Hell? One of those two will be your future. And to help you, I will focus on the final inducement that Christ makes. Verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” Judgment Day is coming and the glory of Christ and the eternal value of your soul will push out every other issue from your mind. I wanna heighten that so you can make the wisest possible choice.

I. The World, and What It Means to Gain It

So let’s start with this issue and that is the world and what it means to gain it. Jesus said, “What would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?””

First: No One Has Ever Done This, Though Many Have Tried

First of all, let me say no one has ever been able to do it. I mean, to gain the whole world. Many have tried but they’ve never been able to pull it off. Jesus is clearly using hyperbole here, an exaggerated statement to make a point. The fact of the matter is, many empire builders of all ages have sought to control the world and it has eluded all of them but they have run the race, haven’t they? They’ve certainly tried.

The largest contiguous empire in the world in terms of land mass that there ever was, was that of the Mongols, the Mongolians. It reached its peak in the year 1260. It was 12.8 million square miles, larger than the Soviet Union, five times larger than the empire of Alexander the Great. However, for all of that, it represented just shy of 25 percent of the world’s available land mass. They got a quarter of it and they had it for a few years, then it started to shrink, as all empires do. And so that’s it, that’s the number one of all time.

Others have tried to control certain aspects of the world. Certain commodities, or certain economic features. John D. Rockefeller for example, over 100 years ago, controlled through Standard Oil over 90 percent of the petroleum business of the world. Now, imagine what that would be worth today, if you controlled 90 percent of it.

For that reason, some people estimate that Rockefeller’s personal wealth when adjusted to 21st century standards, is the greatest in history, approximately $320 billion. Incredible amount of money. He had 90 percent not 100 percent 90 percent of the oil business and he had it for a little while.

In recent years, some have tried to corner the market one way or another. In the 1970s, Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert came very close to cornering the market on silver. That doesn’t mean owning all the silver in the world, just means controlling it. They’d accumulated huge amounts of silver and by September of ’79, the price had risen from $11 an ounce to over $50 an ounce. At that point, the Hunts controlled more than half of the world’s deliverable silver but they didn’t have quite enough money and the whole thing collapsed and in the end, they filed for bankruptcy so they tried just to control the silver and they couldn’t even do that.

See, these are just some of the ways that individual human beings have sought to control just small portions of the world and no one has ever been able to do it but Jesus is saying, even if you could gain the whole world, even if you could do it, and if you lost your soul, it wouldn’t be worth it. It wouldn’t be to your profit.

The World IS Attractive—Admit It!

Now, the world is attractive, admit it. We’re not gonna stand up here and purely say, in a philosophical or theological way, “There’s nothing in the world that attracts me. There’s nothing here I like. I am so other-worldly that I have no earthly concerns.”

Now, I know that Psalms 73 says beautifully. “Earth has nothing I desire besides you.” That God is our portion, he’s our final reward, and I understand that thought but let’s be honest, God has created a beautiful world and there are desirable things in this world. There’s the beauty of the earth, the pleasures of food and travel and entertainment. Hobbies, a good novel, an absorbing board game or an athletic event. There’s the value of the esteem of other people. The joy of earthly success in business, academics, athletics, these things are desirable and it’s wrong for us to say that there’s nothing in them for us. That there’s nothing attractive in this world, it just isn’t true and all of these things should be received as good gifts of God. We would lie if we said that these things meant nothing whatsoever to us. God created all of these things richly for our enjoyment, he says, but any of them can become idols, they can just take over so they become the focus of our hearts and of our lives. They become an idol.

The Attractive Pulls of the World… All Empty

And ultimately, if we’re gonna use that language, ultimately, the attractive pulls of the world are all empty. They’re not going to satisfy our souls deepest longings. There’s the pull of power. After Alexander the Great conquers whatever he could conquer and his army was compelling him to turn back and enjoy what he’d conquered, never lost a battle, and he sat down and wept that there were no more battles to fight. Come alongside him and say “Alexander, look at all the battles you’ve fought and won.” It’s not bringing him any happiness, he’s miserable. He’s got to have more and more and more and more and more. The pull of power. It’s empty.

How about the pull of wealth? There’s Croesus, who lived in the 6th century BC. His land happened to have some of the richest gold mines in the world, therefore he was the richest king in the world. Had all of this gold, didn’t make him happy and it was very attractive to Cyrus the Great of Persia. Heard about it, very interested in it. Came and conquered it, captured Croesus and was going to burn him to death. How happy is he now, concerning his wealth? As he’s just about to be burned to death, doesn’t bring any satisfaction. Actually, the richer you are the more worries and the more trouble you have in life.

What about wisdom? If only you could have wisdom, if you could have all of the wisdom. Well, Solomon went down that road for us and what does it say in the book of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 118; For with much wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief. Students can testify to that. The more knowledge I get, the sadder I get, or at least the pursuit of knowledge anyway, brings grief. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived until the time of Christ and it brought him nothing but misery and sadness.

And then there’s fame. I think no one can have the kind of fame that’s available to us in this modern age. Think about it. Through the internet, through digital photography, through even YouTube, your privatest moments can immediately become world famous. Not that you would want that. More infamous, I would think. We can become quickly infamous but not very much quickly famous, I’m thinking. But I remember during the Barcelona Olympics, the first dream team, the basketball team, Michael Jordan was walking down the street of Barcelona and came to a building, a seven-story building that had a Nike poster of himself that covered the entire side of the building and so, the camera pulls back until it can get the whole poster and you can’t even see Michael Jordan, the real one. He’s tiny behind this dwarf photo of himself dunking. Worldwide fame, okay? But yet it’s pretty pathetic to see athletes and movie stars and others try to hold on to that fame as age starts to take away the capabilities that gave it to them in the first place. They come back for one more Tour de France or they come out of retirement three times or they just can’t let it go, because they’re not satisfied, they can’t live in the past, they can’t hold on to it.

What about beauty? Look at all the movie starlets and the surgeries they’re willing to go through and they’re willing to risk their health to maintain their beauty. And you can see an aging starlet as she no longer gets the phone calls she used to get and others have taken her place and she’s in some abandoned hotel room and commits suicide like Marilyn Monroe. Didn’t bring any ultimate satisfaction and happiness. These things are not meant to be ultimately satisfying to our souls or the reason for our lives.

Satan’s Consistent Offer of a Trade

And then there’s Satan, who in the story of “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” is willing to stand and make a trade with you. Now, he’s not offering to peons like you and me, the whole world. He offered that only once to one person, you remember who it was? He offered it to Jesus. “I’ll give it all to you, the whole thing, if you’ll just bow down and worship me.” And Jesus said, “Away from me, Satan. For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

So he offered it to Jesus but he’s willing to make trades. Like Dr. Faustus, who traded his soul to the devil in that story to get supernatural power and pleasures. For 24 years he had it and then at the end of the story he tried to rescind the offer, make the trade back and couldn’t do it and came to a bitter end.

And so in common speech, we think about somebody with an extraordinary ability, like Paganini who could play an entire piece on one string. He would purposely break three of the strings on the violin and that would leave just one string and he could still play it on the one string and they said he sold his soul to the Devil to get that ability. We use that kind of expression. Well, it’s a myth.

You can’t sell your soul to the Devil. He doesn’t have that kind of power. What’s he gonna do with it when he is screaming in pain in the lake of fire because that’s what it was made for? He doesn’t have any ultimate power in this matter but he does have the ability to tempt us to lose our souls as well.

And so he’s constantly pulling on us to trade our souls for something temporal, something temporary. Some pleasure, some power, some material possession. Something and so that’s the world and what it means to gain it. What is the soul and what does it mean to lose it?

II. The Soul, and What It Means to Lose It

What Is Your Soul?

Well, your soul, it’s more than merely your true self. Some people say that what this means is that the power of sin is such that, eventually, you just lose your true self. You won’t be true to yourself, you’ll be corrupted, you’ll be transformed, you’ll become a different person. And what good would it be if you kind of lost who you really were in the quest for power and fame and all that? Well, that’s true, that does happen but that’s not what Jesus is talking about.

And it’s more than merely your physical life and here, you’ve got to kind of track through acts of Jesus, a changing of the use of the Greek word. In verse 26 he says in the ESV, it says, “What would it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” that’s what the ESV gives us. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.” I think there he is talking about physical life, but here it’s deeper than that.

Here he’s talking about, not merely that you’re going to die, like Pahom after running around that huge tract of land. What good was it for him to gain that big tract of land and die? He can’t do anything with it. And so that’s true. We can’t take it with us and so what good is it if in gaining it, you then die? There are a number of people that press and press and press in their work lives, then when they retire and seek to enjoy their wealth and they can’t, they die soon after because of all the exertions. I think that’s true as well but that again, is not what Jesus is talking about here.

No, no. He’s talking about your soul. That’s that immaterial part of you that is able to relate to God, to love God, to serve God, to trust in God, to yearn for him. That’s what the soul is and according to this, your soul is in jeopardy. You can lose your soul. That soul is eternal. That’s not some trick of Greek philosophy as some have thought, the immortality of the soul as some Greek philosophical concept. That is false, it’s a biblical concept.

God will uphold your conscious existence for eternity. Once he creates you, you will be upheld by God for eternity, either in heaven or hell. You can’t cease to exist. Keep that in mind if you’re ever toying with the idea of suicide. As Hamlet said, “To sleep, perchance to dream. Ah, that’s the rub.” I might not stop existing after I come out of the body. No, you don’t.

A Lost Soul: Eternal Damnation in Hell

So the immortality of the soul is a biblical concept and according to this, your soul, our souls are in jeopardy. The soul itself is in peril and grave danger for Jesus speaks of the possibility this soul could be lost. What does this mean, to lose your soul? This is a terrifying prospect and how can I combine words and tone of voice and physical demeanor to give you a sense of the seriousness of what it means to lose your soul? What can I say?

Later in this Gospel, we have a picture of Jesus as a Judge of all the earth and all the nations are gathered before him and he separates them, one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he puts the sheep on his right, the believers and he puts the goats, the unbelievers, on the left and he says to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Friends, that’s what it means to lose your soul. To hear those words spoken about you on that final day.

And what is that like? The eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, what is that like? How can we conceive it? It says in Revelation 14, “He too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.” There is no rest, day or night, for those that are cast into hell. For those that are condemned, for those that lose their souls, there’s no rest.

Luke 16, the rich man is in agony in hell. He’s in torment, yearning for Lazarus to come and cool his tongue with some water. That’s what it’s like, it’s just a picture of somebody eternally lost.

Now, how is the soul lost, how can we lose our souls, what happens? Well, Jesus seems to pit the pursuit of the world, a love for the world, against the welfare of the soul. The seeking or the gaining of the whole world here, is the enemy of the soul but deeper, the issue is, what does your heart yearn for?

The real issue here is sin. It is by sin that we lose our souls. As Jesus will make it plain, souls are lost by Judgment Day’s assessment of their life and their behavior. Look at verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in the glory of his Father with his angels and then he will repay every man according to his deeds.”

III. Jesus’ Two Piercing Questions

So the great issue of your life is simply this; will I lose my soul? And to make this clear, Jesus asks these two piercing questions and both focus on the horror of Judgment Day.

A Question of Profit

Verse 26, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Gain and loss are like business terms. They are Greek business terms here. Has to do with weighing value. What is the value of this, the setting of the price on that? The economics of the matter? Has to do with relative value and worth and the clear implication, this is astonishing. Is that the value of a single human soul is greater than that of the material possessions of all the world. Meditate on that. You came in here today, the possessor of something, a possession of greater worth and value than all the gold, the silver, the diamonds, the real estate, the Fortune 500 companies, the pleasures and privileges of this world, more than all of that put together. Your soul, worth more than that.

And it isn’t just your soul. It may help your self-esteem to meditate much on that, fine. Let your self-esteem be helped by considering, “I am created in the image of God. My soul is worth more than the entire physical world.” But it’s not just you, but 6.8 billion of us and the same is true of every last one of us. There is not a single human being on the face of the earth for whom it would be a good exchange if they could lose their soul and gain the world. No one.

There might be an orphan waif on a pile of garbage in Rio de Janeiro, picking through trying to find enough calories to make it through the day, that person would not be wise to trade their soul to gain the whole world. Neither the president or CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Wouldn’t be wise for that person either to trade their soul to gain the whole world. It doesn’t matter if they’re a professor in a German institution of higher learning or somebody with Alzheimer’s. A human being’s soul is worth more than the material possessions of the entire world. Therefore, to forfeit, to lose that soul is the most foolish thing a person can ever do. It is the most devastating mistake a person can make.

A Question of Exchange

It’s a question of exchange too, the second question. Look at verse 26, “Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Again, the language of commerce, of making an equitable trade.

Imagine it’s Judgment Day and Jesus has done his separation and there you stand in the group you were put in and you come to find out that Jesus is speaking these words about you, “Depart from me, you who are cursed. Into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and drive out demons, perform many miracles?’ and he’ll say, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evil-doers.’”

So you find yourself in that group and, like it happens in Matthew 25, you may argue with the judge and think it’s unfair but your status will remain unchanged and then the judge dispatches an angel, for it speaks of being cast into eternal darkness. It’s a very personal thing. And so an angel comes and takes you to the precipice and you can look down into the lake of fire.

Alright, freeze right at that moment. Let’s say possibly, you still possessed all of your earthly possessions, what percentage of them would you give at that moment in exchange for your soul? If you still had them to give and you won’t because they’re not yours anyway, they’ll have all been taken from you but suppose you did. “I’ll give up to half. I’ll give up to half of all I possess that I not be thrown into eternal hell.” “Alright then, 90%. I’ll hold back that 10% though.”

You won’t hold back anything. Imagine then the foolishness of exchanging your eternal soul for anything earthly. You say, well you’ve been thinking about becoming a Christian but you’re afraid of what your friends will think, what effect it will have on your career, what effect it will have on your fun, what effect it will have on your moral life. You’re afraid of these things.

Alright well, let’s collect those things and there’s some value or worth you think in each of them. Are you willing to trade your soul for those things? That’s the question Jesus is bringing to you here and of course, it will be too late then. There’ll be nothing that you can do. The question, the matter, has been decided. You may not want to go to Hell, I tell you, no one wants to go to Hell but you will be cast there if you’re not a believer in Jesus Christ.

So therefore, the time to face these questions is now, today. Today is the day of salvation. “In the time of my favor I heard you, in the day of salvation I helped you. I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor. Today is the day of salvation.” Face the question now. My job, as a preacher, is to make it vividly come alive to you. To clearly portray Judgment Day and in a moment, to clearly depict Christ crucified, the only salvation for your soul. That’s my job, but yours is to come to this point. Reason it out.

IV. Jesus’ Two Compelling Reasons

The Coming Judgment

Jesus gives us two compelling reasons to make the wise choice. First, the coming judgment. Verse 27, “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” This is the dreaded Day of the Lord. Christ is going to return in glory with the armies of Heaven. Jude 14 and 15, “Behold, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” That is the coming of Christ in power.

It’s a heavenly invasion and can I tell you that the poll numbers leading up to that won’t matter to Jesus? Do you know he’s actually going to be King of the earth, whether we want him to be or not? Did you know that? He’s not submitting to a popular election. Amen and Amen. He’s just coming. He’s coming in power to reign. The real election will be what happens with you and now is the time to decide that issue. But he will be King and he will reign forever and ever.

So he’s coming and he will reign and the judgment will be on all sinners who have not been forgiven and they will give an account, the court will be seated, the books will be open. “And I saw the dead,” Revelation 20, “great and small, standing before the throne and the books were open. Another book was opened which is the Book of Life.” Oh, that your name would be in the Book of life, that you would repent of sins and trust in Christ, that your name would be written indelibly in the Book of Life. Oh, that that would be the case today. And “the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.”

The Coming Glory

That’s the first reason to make a wise choice, the second is the coming glory. Look at verse 27, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels,” verse 28, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” The kingdom is coming with glory. I believe that mysterious statement there has to do with the Mount of Transfiguration. We’ll deal with that, God willing next week. When some who were standing there actually got to see Jesus made glorious. His face shone like the sun, his clothes became whiter than light and Jesus said in Matthew 13, the parable of the wheat and the tares. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Oh there’s a coming glory. You don’t wanna miss it. You don’t wanna miss being in that glory and seeing it. I’m coming in my glory and my kingdom is gonna be glorious. Oh, don’t miss it.

V. Application

Repent and Come to Christ

So what application can we take from this? Well first, just repent and come to Christ, if you’re not a believer. Repent and come to Christ. Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, we sang about it right before I came up to preach. The cross of Christ is the power of God for salvation. The message of the cross, the power of God for salvation. Look to the cross, look to Jesus whose blood was shed. Your sins can be forgiven, you can stand forgiven today at the cross and for the rest of your lives. And not by works but by simple faith. By the imputation, the gift of his righteousness, God will see you as perfectly righteous in Jesus for the rest of your life. That’s your only hope, look to him and he will forgive you.

Examine Yourself

Now, I assume the majority of you consider yourselves Christians. You came here today believing yourself to be a Christian. That’s a good thing. I’m not trying to undermine your assurance. I’m not trying to pad the statistics of those who will come forward at the end of the service. You know I don’t seek to do that. But understand, who did Jesus speak these words to? To his apostles. Don’t excuse yourself from the potency of these words, of dealing with the weight of them.

Make your calling and election sure, be certain that your soul is saved and forgiven through faith in Christ, that you’re living in a right way and then look at what’s going on in your life, look at the health of your soul. You may not forfeit your soul but you can actually wage war against your soul. It says in 1 Peter, there are lusts that wage war against the soul. Are you waging a war against your soul, right now? Don’t. Put it to death by the power of the Spirit.

Meditate on the Infinite Worth of Human Souls… Yours and Others’

Thirdly, meditate on the infinite worth of every single human soul. It will help you to see people differently. You won’t be so rude to them or irritable toward them. You’re dealing with eternities. Each person you deal with is an eternity in Heaven or Hell. That’s what you’re dealing with. Feel the weight of that. Deal with it seriously. That’s the key to the abortion question. That’s the key of the abortion question, the value and worth of a human soul, of a human being. That’s what it is.

Meditate on the Correspondingly Small Value of the Whole World

Meditate on the infinite worth of human souls and meditate on the correspondingly small value of the whole world. It’s small, it’s a small value so why do you want it so much? “Well, I don’t want it.” Yes, you do. More than you should.

Put it to death, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Jesus, don’t have earthly ambitions, don’t seek great things for yourself in this world. Seek to serve a great King who’s coming in a great Kingdom, seek that.

Be Active in Seeking and Saving the Lost

And then finally, be active in seeking and saving the lost. Part of the reason that I preach like this to believers, I hope and trust is that you will know how to preach to the unbelievers in your life. That you’ll be able to take these things and press them home to the unbelievers you know and I don’t, who aren’t sitting here today and who might be years away from sitting in a church. Talk to them. Talk to them about their soul. Ask them Jesus’ question: What good would it be if you gained the whole world and lost your soul? Ask that question to somebody and trust that God will use the Word of God to save them. Close with me in prayer.

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

“How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy asked that question in a short story he wrote in 1886.

The story is about a Russian man named Pahom who has ambitions to improve his lot in life.  Back then, the most valuable commodity was land, real estate;  the owner of a land tract of land was inevitably wealthier than one who owned less; and one who owned no land at all was a peasant, a beggar, living at the whim of his landlord.

Pahom yearns for more land and more prosperity, and at the beginning of the story boasts to his wife, “If I had plenty of land, I wouldn’t fear the Devil himself!”  The Devil, sitting behind the oven hears the boast and snickers.  He says to himself, “All right, fine… we’ll have a battle.  I’ll give you plenty of land and by that means I will get you into my power.”

As the story unfolds, Pahom hears about a tribe of people in the rich fertile valleys of the east named the Bashkirs.  Though he can hardly believe it, he hears that the Bashkir people selling their vast lands for an incredible bargain.  He travels overland to the Bashkir region and meets the chieftain.  After some drinking of tea and other social rituals, Pahom gets down to business.  He declares his desire to buy some of their land, and the Bashkirs agree.  When Pahom asks for the price, they say “One thousand rubles per day.”  Pahom doesn’t understand what this means… “Per day?”  “Yes,” they answer…”for one thousand rubles you can own as much land as you can walk around in a single day.  But you have to begin at sunrise, and return to the same spot by sunset.  Whatever you walk around will be yours.”

Pahom’s greedy heart leapt with joy… he said to himself, “I can easily walk around at least 35 miles in a day… I’ll be rich!  I can have 150 acres for ploughland, and all the rest will be grazing land for my cattle.”  He agreed to the price and asked if they could start tomorrow.

At sunrise, Pahom stands ready and the Bashkir chief drops his hat to start Pahom’s race for land.  Pahom must return to the hat by sunset or forfeit his thousand rubles.  Pahom’s greed drives him on throughout the morning to take an ever bigger and bigger circuit of rich farmland.  The further he went, the better the land seemed, and he didn’t want to miss any of it.  But the sun’s heat was beating down on him and he was getting tired.  He finally decided to make his first turn, digging a hole as a marker.  By now it was past noon, and he realized he was behind schedule.  He started picking up the pace and early in the afternoon, marked his second turn.  By now the day was flying past, the sun seemed to hasten across the sky… Pahom wasn’t even looking at the land anymore, just wanted to make his third turn and head for the finish line.

As he neared the little hill he could see the Bashkir people cheering him on;  he was utterly exhausted, his chest heaving as he raced the sun and ran up the last hill.  Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, he dove for the chief’s cap and grasped it.

“Ah, what a fine fellow!” exclaimed the Chief. “He has gained
much land!”

But as they came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw that blood was flowing from his mouth. Pahom was dead!

The Bashkirs clicked their tongues to show their pity.

They picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.

So how much is enough?  And was it all worth it to Pahom?

Yes, he had achieved this incredible chunk of land… but what good did it do him?

Jesus asked two questions much more probing:

Matthew 16:26  What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

At the end of your life of achievement, you will stand before Christ and give him an account…

The issue hanging in the balance on judgment day is the eternal destiny of your soul

The central point of this text and of my sermon is this:  your soul has infinite worth, infinite value, more than the net worth of all the material world

Your soul will be either eternally living in God’s presence in heaven or eternally dying away from God in hell.  The world and all of its pleasures and pains is passing away and will soon disappear… but your soul will endure forever

Thus Jesus is warning us to make certain we don’t lose our souls

Context:

Last time I preached on Matthew, I preached on what I consider the greatest challenge of your life and mine… the challenge to deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily and follow Christ

A. Understanding the Context

1. Jesus’ stunning prediction to His disciples

Matthew 16:21  From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

2. Peter’s shocked and shocking reaction to Jesus

Vs. 22  Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

3. Jesus’ just as shocking rebuke of Peter

Vs. 23  Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Jesus directly addresses SATAN working in Peter!!

Satan was laying a trap for Jesus through Peter; Jesus dealt with it vigorously!!

4. The Call to all Disciples

In that setting He gives His call… not just to Peter:

Vs. 24-25  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  ²⁵ For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

5. Peter’s Immediate Motive

a. Not so much concern for Jesus… although that was there

b. BUT concern for his own interests… Peter’s own future was wrapped up in Jesus’ earthly kingdom

c. Peter was really motivated by SELFISH INTERESTS

d. He wanted to “save his own life” and make it as rich and pleasurable as possible

Jesus said:  “you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

B. Understanding the Call

1. Deny yourself

2. Take up your cross

3. Follow Christ

4. what these three taken together mean:

a. Stop “finding your life” in your earthly goals, pleasures, achievements, desires

b. Lose your life in Christ’s purposes, goals, commands, desires

c. Call given to EVERY disciple, not just the apostles

d. Call stands over EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE

Luke 9:23  Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross DAILY and follow me.

This is the context of this incredible statement by Christ

Jesus turns up the intensity even further… the call on the disciples is the realize that ANYTHING that hindered them from following Christ was the ultimate threat to their eternal happiness… so He wanted to give the disciples a sense of the immense worth and value of the soul:

Matthew 16:26  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

From this text, I will focus on two issues:

The world and what it means to gain it

The soul and what it means to lose it

Then I will ask Jesus’ two questions:

1)    What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

2)    What would a man give in exchange for his soul?

I will seek to sharpen these questions to a fine point:  I will urge you to be sure that your soul’s final state is of the utmost importance to you… I will plead with you to be certain that your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ… that your soul will be welcomed into heaven and not cast into hell

To help you do this, I will focus on the final inducement Christ makes:

Matthew 16:27  For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.

Judgment Day is coming… and the glory of Christ and the eternal value of your soul will push out every other issue from your mind

I. The World, and What It Means to Gain It

Matthew 16:26  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

A. First:  No One Has Ever Done This, Though Many Have Tried

1. Jesus is clearly using hyperbole… an exaggerated statement to make a point

2. the fact of the matter is, may empire builders of all ages have sought to control the world and have been unable to do so

3. the largest empire in history by sheer landmass was that of Kublai Khan and the Mongolians in 1260—12.8 million square miles

a. larger than the Soviet Union… five times larger than the empire of Alexander the Great

b. however, for all of that, it represented only  24.6% of the habitable land mass of the earth;  the earth has 52 million square miles of habitable land

4. many have sought to control even just one aspect of the world and have failed

a. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil controlled 90% of the entire oil industry and in so doing became the wealthiest man in history;  his adjusted net worth was 318.3 billion dollars… but all he did was control one aspect of world commerce;  he couldn’t control everything

b. During the age of the great American industrialists, the titans of industry were always seeking a monopoly in one form or another:  railroads with the Vanderbilts; Andrew Carnegie with steel; J.P. Morgan with financing;  but no one could control all the railroads or all the steel;  and even if they had, it would just have been one aspect of the world’s commerce

5. in recent year, some have tried to corner the market in one way or another—in the 1970s, Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert came very close to cornering the market in silver;  they had accumulated huge amounts of silver and by September of 1979, the price had risen from $11 an ounce to over $50 an ounce;  at that point, the Hunts controlled more than half the world’s deliverable silver; but they didn’t have quite enough money and the whole thing collapsed… in the end, Hunt had to declare bankruptcy

6. these are just some of the ways individual human beings have sought to control just small portions of the world… no one has ever been able to do it

7. Jesus is saying, however, even if you COULD gain the whole world, if it cost you your soul, it wouldn’t be worth it

B. The World IS Attractive—Admit It!

1. Certainly Psalm 73 speaks a theological truth

Psalm 73:25  Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

2. however… everyone admits that the world DOES hold attractions for us

a. the beauty of the earth

b. the pleasures of food, travel, entertainment, hobbies, a good novel, an absorbing board game

c. the value of the esteem of other people

d. the joy of earthly successes in business, academics, athletics

3. all should be received as good gifts of God

a. we would lie if we said these things meant nothing to us whatsoever

b. God created all of these things richly for our enjoyment

4. but any and all of them can become idols

C. The Attractive Pulls of the World… All Empty

1. Power

The most powerful military conqueror in history, Alexander the Great, never lost a single battle;  but at the end of all of his conquests, he sat down and wept because there were no more regions to conquer, no more battles to fight

See him weeping there, and ask him if all his conquests had brought him lasting joy?

2. Wealth

The wealthiest man from the ancient world was the legendary Croesus, King of Lydia in modern Turkey;  he ruled from 560 to 545 B.C., and gold from the mines and from the sands of the River Pactolus filled his coffers to overflowing.  But Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Croesus’ kingdom, and he sentenced Croesus to be burned to death.  As the flames drew near, the wealth of Croesus brought him no joy at all… he would gladly have traded it all for more time to live

3. Wisdom

Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived; but his wisdom brought him little more than grief:

Ecclesiastes 1:18  For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

Some of the most intelligent people in history have struggled intensely with depression and mental illness

4. Fame

Modern athletes and movie stars are constantly focused on by the relentless media machine;  only in modern times can someone’s face be so widely disseminated to the billions who inhabit this planet

During the 1992 Olympics, Michael Jordan was walking down a street for a videographer, and he pointed up to a Nike ad that was a monstrously huge picture of himself dunking a basketball… it covered the entire side of a six-story building

Jordan’s face recognition is at the point where he can’t go anywhere in public without being mobbed by huge throngs of people

5. Pleasure

In a world craving pleasure, some people it seems have cornered the market on pure hedonism… the movie stars and the glitterati who move from one resort to another seeking pleasure are the focus of the world’s envy

Like venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who sank $150 million dollars into designing and building the largest privately owned sailboat in the world, the Maltese Falcon

But the pleasure of that distinction lasted less than a year before another larger sailboat was built and passed it by

All earthly pleasure is fleeting!  Again, it was Solomon who proved this:

Ecclesiastes 2:10-11  I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.  ¹¹ Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

6. Beauty

Hollywood movie starlets are willing to trade their health for constant cosmetic surgery to fight the inevitable onslaught of aging… I often wonder what a torment it must be for an actress whose youthful beauty made her the talk of the nation and whose services in movies were the subject of intense battles between the studios… but as aging set in, no one calls any more, and other youthful starlets now take her place

She sits at home with her Academy Award and with poster pictures of what she looked like when she was 22… and what she will never look like again

All of these allurements are part of God’s physical world… none of them evil in themselves;  but all of them have led countless souls astray in their quest…

Power… wealth… wisdom… fame… pleasure… beauty

Death stands over every one of these and turns them all to dust in the wind

How much more agony will come to the damned when they consider for what paltry things they exchanged their immortal souls!!

D. Satan’s Consistent Offer of a Trade

1. Satan is willing to make some kind of trade for any of these

Luke 4:5-8  The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.  ⁶ And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.  ⁷ So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”  ⁸ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'”

2. he will offer the world’s bounties if you will trade your soul

3. famous story:  Dr. Faustus selling his soul to the devil

In the fictional tale of Dr. Faustus, a man makes a deal with the devil: in exchange for his body and soul, the man is to receive supernatural power and pleasures for twenty-four years. The devil agrees to the trade, and Dr. Faustus enjoys the pleasures of sin for a season, but his doom is sealed. At the end of twenty-four years, Faustus attempts to thwart the devil’s plans, but he meets a frightful demise, nonetheless.

In common speech, we think of someone doing incredibly well in financially or in sports or business or something, and people wonder if he sold his soul to the devil to achieve it

4. now Satan has no such authority to make deals… however, he is the very one who orchestrates the world system to lure people away from the gospel of Christ

II. The Soul, and What It Means to Lose It

A. What Is Your Soul?

1. More than Merely Your Inner Self

a. Some translations of the Greek imply it means your “very self”

b. The idea then is that, by pursuing worldly things—money, fame, power, pleasure, etc.—you will no longer be true to yourself;  you will lose your way, stop being the person you really want to be

c. That’s true, but that’s not what Jesus is talking about… for He goes on to discuss the terrors of the Second Coming and Judgment Day

2. More than Merely Your Physical Life

^ESV Matthew 16:26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?

a. In Tolstoy’s story, “How Much Land is Enough,” Pahom gains all that land and forfeits his life… he literally dies

b. So also many people work themselves to death trying to achieve some worldly, selfish goal

c. But again this is not what Jesus is referring to… actually He is challenging His disciples to be willing to take up their cross and follow Him, even if if means martyrdom…. Thus He is not speaking of gaining the world world and losing your physical life

Matthew 16:25  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

No… the “soul” of verse 26 is more than these

3. Soul:  That Which is Able to Relate to God Now and Eternally

a. The soul is that immaterial part of you, housed in your physical body, that makes you a person, a human being, unique in the sight of your Creator

b. The soul is that inside you which is able to relate to God… to speak to God, to love God, to obey God, to cherish God

c. And that both now, in space and time… and then—in eternity

d. That is your soul

B. A Lost Soul:  Eternal Damnation in Hell

1. and the soul itself is in peril… in grave danger

2. for Jesus speaks of the possibility that a soul could be LOST

3. what does this mean… to lose your soul?

4. O how terrifying a prospect!!  For Jesus is speaking of a soul being lost for eternity after Judgment Day

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Revelation 14:10-11  he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.  ¹¹ And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night

Luke 16, the Rich Man was in agony in hell… he was in torment, yearning for Lazarus to come and cool his tongue with some water

This is the picture of a soul eternally lost

5. how is a soul thus lost??

a. Jesus seems to pit the pursuit of the world against the welfare of the soul

b. The seeking of the whole world is here an enemy of the soul

c. But deeper, the Bible’s answer to this vital question is simple… by SIN is a soul lost

d. As Jesus will make plain, souls are lost by Judgment Day’s assessment of their life, of their behavior

^NAU Matthew 16:27 “For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS.

6. so the great issue of your life is simply this: will I lose my soul?

7. to make this clear, He asks two piercing questions

III. Jesus’ Two Piercing Questions

Both focus on the horror of Judgment Day

A. A Question of Profit

[NASB] Matthew 16:26 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

1. “Gain” and “loss” in the Greek are business terms… like profit and loss in an accountant’s ledger book

2. it has to do with relative value and worth… and the clear implication is that the eternal soul is worth more than any physical thing in the universe

3. an astonishing thought… all of the gold, the silver, the diamonds, the real estate, the kingdoms, the splendor and glory of the eye and of the body… if you added all of it together, it comes short of the value of a single human soul

4. there is not a single human being on the face of the earth that would be wise to trade his soul for the world… this is the worth of every single human being

a. a forsaken orphan picking for food among the refuse heap in Rio de Janeiro would be utterly foolish to trade his soul even for the whole world

b. an addict, strung out on heroin in Amsterdam would be the greatest fool in the world to gain the whole world at the cost of his soul

c. there are no worthless human beings… for no matter what their outward conditions, no matter how low or high they’ve attained in the achievements of the world—no matter whether highly educated or illiterate, no matter whether the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the hourly laborer in a sweat shop in Bangkok… it doesn’t matter who it is, they have a possession of infinite value, worth more than all the material of the world—an eternal soul

5. AND to forfeit, to lose that soul is the most terrifyingly foolish thing any human being can do

B. A Question of Exchange

Vs. 26  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

1. again, the language of commerce… of making an equitable trade

2. imagine yourself having heard the dreadful sentence:  Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels

a. a holy angel is dispatched to cast you out into the eternal fire

b. the horror of it comes crashing down… you can scarcely believe that it refers to you… you always thought of yourself as basically a good person

c. you cherished the memories of your good deeds, or of your religious moments in life… and you cherished a notion that any God who really condemned regular people like you to hell, you wanted nothing to do with a God like that anyway

d. but at that terrifying moment, such reasonings will vanish like a mist… they will be as vapid as a wispy cobweb… they are nothing but lies… for now the eternal sentence has been read and an angel has you by the arm to cast you in

e. imagine then nearing the searing heat, you can hear the screams of those already cast in… what would you give at that dreadful moment in exchange for your soul?

3. Of Course:  It’ll be too late then

a. Death has already stripped you of all ownership

b. Even if you had gained the whole world, you will have nothing in your hand with which to barter… none of it was really yours to begin with

4. the time is NOW to face this question

2 Corinthians 6:2 I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

a. So the question goes back to your present life… the moment is NOW… when you can decide what you will pursue… what exchanges you can make

b. What will you give NOW that your soul might be saved?

c. Is there anything you now possess that you fear you will lose if you turn to Christ?  Are you afraid of losing the esteem of your unsaved friends?  Are you afraid of losing a lucrative career?  Are you afraid of losing the fun of life… pleasures and joys and possessions and FREEDOM?

d. Which of those things can you rightly say, “That is simply too big a cost to pay for my eternal soul!  God, you can have anything else, but NOT THAT!!”

IV. Jesus’ Two Compelling Reasons

The coming judgment… and the coming glory

A. The Coming Judgment

Matthew 16:27  For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.

1. this is nothing less than the dreaded “Day of the Lord”

2. Christ will return in glory with the armies of heaven

Jude 1:14-15  “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones  ¹⁵ to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

a. The second coming of Christ is an invasion… the power of God coming down to bring justice to an ungodly world

b. The Antichrist will be ruling the whole world at that point… and what good would it be for him?

c. For Christ will return with an invincible army and with slaughter all His enemies with great wrath

3. the judgment is upon all sinners who have not been forgiven

a. those who have lived for this present world… who like Pahom in Tolstoy’s story ran the race of greed and selfishness

b. those who have lived for the lusts of the eyes and of the flesh and the boastful pride of life

4. giving an account

a. Jesus will reward everyone according to what he has done

b. The court will be seated and everyone’s life will be read like an open book

Revelation 20:12  And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

c. Your life choices will be made manifest on that terrifying day

B. The Coming Glory

Matthew 16:27  For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels

Matthew 16:28  I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

1. Jesus mentions the glory of His second coming…

2. he also refers to another glory… the glory Him coming in His Kingdom which even some of His apostles would be able to see

3. this mysterious reference has stymied many commentators, and I am not certain of it’s proper interpretation myself

4. however, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke… in all three of those gospels, this amazing statement is followed by the awesome display of Christ’s glory on the Mount of Transfiguration:

Matthew 17:1-2  After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.  ² There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

[see also how this same statement immediately precedes the Transfiguration in Mark 9:1-2 and Luke 9:27-28]

Also Peter refers to the mount of transfiguration as a coming of Christ:

2 Peter 1:16-18  We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.  ¹⁷ For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”  ¹⁸ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

5. this was a foretaste of the eternal glory that would far outweigh any earthly sacrifice we could make to obtain it

6. so Jesus’ two great arguments for wisdom about gaining the whole world are clear:

a. Judgment Day is coming with all the terror of giving a full account to Christ;  hell threatens any who have lost their souls to sin

b. Eternal glory is coming with all the brilliance and radiance of the person of Christ

What is gaining the whole world compared to this?

V. Application

A. Repent and Come to Christ

1. Christ came specifically to FIND what was LOST

Luke 19:10  the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

2. the issue here is the losing of a soul… this is precisely what Christ came to do

3. there is no pact with the devil over a human soul… we cannot “sell our souls to the devil” for some earthly gain… Christ has the authority to break such pacts and covenants and agreements!

4. Come to Christ with your sin-sick soul and let Him do His saving work in you

B. Examine Yourself

1. be certain that you are in Christ… that pursuit of the world is not killing your soul

2. examine the way you spend your time and your money… see if some love for the world is not polluting your soul

3. sin wages war against your soul… though you may not be “lost” yet you might be waging war against your soul daily by worldly choices

1 Peter 2:11  Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.

C. Meditate on the Infinite Worth of Human Souls… Yours and Others’

D. Meditate on the Correspondingly Small Value of the Whole World

E. Be Active in Seeking and Saving the Lost