Two Journeys

In Romans 6, Paul unfolds how Christians should live once justified by grace and how to avoid the temptation of sin.

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In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul describes the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in bringing us from spiritual darkness to a right understanding of God’s grace in Christ.

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Jesus' transfiguration into heavenly glory on the mountain and his conversation with Moses and Elijah was spectacular display of His true divine nature.

Turn in your Bibles as we continue our study in this magnificent gospel, Mark's Gospel. We turn now to the ninth chapter, Mark 9:1-8. This morning in the text we are invited up into a mountaintop experience. We are invited up into a display of the glory of God in the face of Christ. We are invited up into a bright cloud, enveloping cloud, of Almighty God, speaking of his love for his only-begotten son. As we do so by faith, we are looking back at a moment in time when for a brief instant, the veil of the incarnation was pulled back and Jesus's true glory shown forth. But also by faith we look ahead to not just a mere moment, but an eternity of walking in Christ's glory in the new heavens and the new earth.  When the new Jerusalem will not need the light of the sun or the light of the moon or the light of a lamp, for the glory of God will give it light and the lamb, Jesus, will be the lamp. 

We need this mountaintop experience, don't we? We need it. We need this display of Christ's light. We need the experience of the bright cloud of God's glory and his mighty voice declaring his love for his son. We need this because of this present darkness that we are all walking in. This present darkness, that's Paul's phrase in Ephesians 6, battling disease, battling injury, battling aging, battling pain and anxiety and fear and guilt and sorrow, battling Satan and demons and their temptations, most of all, battling sin.  We need this mountaintop experience, don't we? The Lord in his graciousness and his kindness has given it to us in Mark 9:1-8. We need it, and I think the disciples needed it too.  

The context of the Mount of Transfiguration account, as we've seen, is what's been happening in Mark's Gospel. Jesus is on retreat with his apostles in Caesarea of Philippi, as they were moving along in that area. He asked them concerning his own identity, who do people say that I am, and they gave the answer. And then that most important question that we would ever face, that any of us ever faces, the question on which our own eternal destiny hangs our answer to that question, what about you, who do you say that I am?  Simon Peter speaking for all of the apostles, speaking for indeed all believers at all time, gives in Matthew 16 the full confession, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." But then Jesus went on to give a stunning, a shocking revelation of his own imminent death[Mark 8:31- 32]. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priest and teacher of the law, and that he must be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this.

Peter, again, probably speaking for all of them, took Jesus aside privately and rebuked him.  Matthew tells us, he said, "Never, Lord. This shall never happen to you." But then Jesus turned and publicly rebuked Peter in front of all of them. "Get behind me, Satan," He said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” The kingdom of God would be built by Christ's suffering and death, by his bloodshed on the cross. And not only that, it would be advanced and built across generations of his servants who are similarly willing to suffer and to die in his name[Mark 8:34-38]. 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 from me and for the gospel will save it. What good would it be for a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? What could a man give an exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his father's glory with his holy angels.”

 I think the apostles must have been reeling at this. These are heavy words. We've walked through them over the last number of sermons and felt the weight of it. I think they would've agreed with Peter about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David suffering and dying on a Roman cross.  To them, the Kingdom of God must be glorious, powerful, dominant, would fill the world with the glory of God, and the Romans would melt like wax before it, before the coming kingdom. How could it possibly be that the Messiah, the Son of David, would die, especially if he's not merely human, but is actually in fact the son of the living God? How could that be? To them at that moment, it made no sense whatsoever. 

Now, of course, they didn't realize that the real threat facing them was not Roman power or any Gentile power. The real threat facing every sinner is the wrath, the just wrath and condemnation of a Holy God on Judgment Day.  That's the danger. A Holy God whose laws they and us, all of us, have violated throughout our whole lives. A God who could by no means clear the guilty without blood sacrifice. Now, Jesus knew their hearts were stunned, crushed, reeling, unable to wrap their minds around this infinite contradiction, a personage so obviously powerful, able to still a storm with his words, able to walk on the sea, able to drive out a legion of demons with a word, able to heal any, every disease and sickness effortlessly and completely and instantly, able to make bread and fish appear out of thin air, feed a multitude.  How could such a powerful and perfect man be arrested like a common criminal, suffer rejection and torture, and then be crucified and die? He knew they were reeling, and He knew what they needed. For a brief moment He would allow their faith to become sight. He would reverse the basic rule of the incarnation, that He had left the form of his glory as God behind in the incarnation. He would let them look on his true glorious nature for just a moment to restore their faith in his ultimate triumph as king of the Kingdom of God.

He makes a promise to them. Look at verse 1.  He said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power." Now, there are many theories on what this statement means, lots of back and forth. But I have to tell you, all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, immediately follow this statement with the Mount of Transfiguration, all three of them. I don't think we should wonder what He meant. I believe that experience by Peter, James, and John was a direct fulfillment of this promise. They did not taste death before they saw the Kingdom of God come with power, before they would behold his glory.

The phrase “they would see the Kingdom of God come with power is very provocative for Jesus's heavenly glory to be revealed briefly as a preview, a foresight rather than foretaste, we could say, of his kingly power. Jesus' full Second Coming glory will be powerful even to the destruction of all of his wicked enemies. He's going to come in the clouds with power and great glory. Jesus just said in Mark 8:38, "The Son of Man will come in his father's glory with the holy angels." Jesus knew his disciples needed this foresight of his kingdom's immeasurable power and glory, and they wouldn't have to wait long.

Six days later, it came, the earthly eyewitnesses of Christ's majesty. Look at verse 2, “After six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and led them up a high mountain where they were all alone.” Why only three and why these three? Well, first of all, they were the inner circle. The twelve were selected of a mass of disciples, followers of Jesus, to be apostles and they had a special role. And then within the twelve, there was the three that were the inner circle, Peter, James, and John. These would be the same ones who would be with him in his hour of distress in Gethsemane. They were his closest friends on earth.  The number 3, I think, is significant because that is the number of witnesses needed to fully establish any matter in Jewish law. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:1, every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. These three would officially testify to what they would see to the other apostles and then eventually to the whole world, meaning us this morning. We would have the eyewitness account of this experience through these three. We would know it's true. Now, years later, the Apostle Peter would write about this experience. I'd like to actually invite you to turn to 2 Peter 1:16-18.  It is very powerful. Peter writing about what it was like for him to see this. 2 Peter 1:16-18, there Peter writes, “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. 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.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” He's definitely talking about this experience, the Mount of Transfiguration.

Peter says, the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus were not cleverly invented myths. They were based on actual history and actual history itself is based on eyewitness testimonies. Peter says, "We were eyewitnesses of his majesty when he was revealed with divine glory on the sacred mountain and by the voice of Almighty God," as we see in our account in Mark. Peter says, "We ourselves heard this voice." As he says, "We ourselves saw his glory as witnesses." Now, if you were to continue in 2 Peter 1, he says, "We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place."

That's how I began the sermon. Many of you would say, "Boy, I wish I had been there. I wish I could have been there to see the transfiguration. What an incredible mountaintop experience that would be." Peter says it's actually better to read scripture than to have been there. The word of the prophets is more certain than the experience. Why is that? Experience is over, and then what, right? What happened last week? Do you remember? That was amazing. Well, I think that was this, and no, it was that. I'm pretty sure it was the... Look, Peter says, the word of the prophets is perfect, it's unchanging, and it's more certain than any experience we could ever have.

The best experience you could ever have of the glory of God is to read the prophetic word. That's what Peter's saying. But he's saying it did happen. It did happen. And guess what? Now this experience is in the prophetic word and we get to read it for all time. The Apostle John, I think, refers to it not so clearly talking about the Mount of Transfiguration, but just his experience of Jesus' life as a whole. John writes in his epistle 1 John 1:1, he says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life. We were eyewitnesses."

That's why he brought Peter, James, and John up there. Go back to Mark 9. The point of all of this, the point of all four Gospels we say, week after week, is to bring you and I, the readers of the gospel, with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to confess Jesus as God. None of the gospels says it better than John 20:31, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and believing may have life in his name.” All of the four gospel accounts are written to bring you to faith in Jesus as God.  

This account of the Transfiguration is overwhelming evidence of his deity.  Peter, James, and John were led up by Jesus up a high mountain where they're all alone. Luke tells us in his account of the Mount of Transfiguration, they went up to pray, and so they did. They were up there praying. Jesus loved to do this. He loved to go up on mountains and pray, usually alone. But in this case, He takes these three friends with him. There's something about the mountaintop experience, isn't there? Just getting up elevated. I'm definitely a mountain person. I just love getting up high and be able to look down over the valleys below. There is that sense of being up. We don't know for certain what mountain they're on. But because of the proximity to the Caesarea of Philippi, most scholars believe it was Mount Hermon, which is quite a mountain. It's 9,232 feet above sea level. It's a dramatic vista of that whole region, and so it was this mountaintop experience. Then Jesus was transfigured before them. Look at verse 2 and 3. There He was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.  It's a stunning transformation in the appearance of Jesus and his clothing.

Essential to the theology of the incarnation was that Jesus appeared ordinary. That's essential to our salvation. It's essential to the salvation that, God works through Jesus, and He had to appear ordinary. This was predicted in Isaiah's great prophecy of him in Isaiah 53:2, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected.”  This ordinary appearance was essential to him being known only by faith, not by sight. You had to be able to see him properly by faith, not by sight.  It had to be revealed by the Father who Jesus was or you're not going to get it, because He just looks like a mere man and He's claiming to be God. If Jesus is radiantly glorious all the time, everybody's on their face around him. That's the inevitable reaction. As a matter of fact, in John's gospel, when his enemies came to arrest him, He asked, "Who are you looking for?" They said, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said, "I Am," and they drew back and fell to the ground. The full display of the glory of Jesus did not fit with the plan of God that Jesus would be despised and rejected, ultimately leading to his crucifixion.  They would never have crucified, Paul says in Corinthians, the Lord of glory if He'd appeared glorious. 

But for just this one moment, the rules of engagement were changed, just for a moment. A radiant light, [Matthew 17:2], his face shown like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light. His face is shining. There's overpowering light coming directly from his face, so also his clothing. Luke 9:29 says, "As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed." Listen to this. "His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning." You could imagine, have you ever looked at and seen a flash of lightning?  It's just overpoweringly bright. His clothes are shimmering, like light flashing, like a jewel in their heavenly brilliant white, a symbol of perfect radiant purity. “God is light and in him there's no darkness at all.”  [1 John 1:5]  Light is strongly connected with the presence of Almighty God in many places, but also Psalm 104:2, “He wraps himself with light as with a garment.”  It's beautiful, isn't it? It lines up with the Mount of Transfiguration. Before Jesus was incarnate, He was glorious. Before Jesus was incarnate, He was glorious. As a matter of fact, in John 17:5, He prays to get his glory back,  “And now, Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world began.” 

Jesus shared a glory that God says in other places He will not share with another. There's a unique glory that God has that He shares with his Son, because his Son is God. We can see that in the prophets. Isaiah and Ezekiel had visions of pre-incarnate Christ and his radiant glory. Isaiah 6, “ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne high and exalted and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him there were seraphs, each with six wings. And with two wings they covered their faces, and with two wings they covered their feet, and with two wings they were flying.  They were crying to one another, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory.’" John tells us in John 12:41 that Isaiah saw Jesus' glory and wrote about him. That was Jesus' glory. 

Ezekiel has a vision, I think, also of the pre-incarnate Christ.   In Ezekiel 1 the prophet had a vision of cherubim who moved back and forth and there's wheels within wheels. The cherubim themselves were brilliant as lightning and flashes of lightning were moving continually back and forth among the cherubim. Fire was moving back and forth among them, as though fire is their native habitat.  Then high above them is an expanse sparkling like ice and awesome, and high above that expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above that on a throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up, he looked like glowing metal as if full of fire. And that from there down, he looked like fire and brilliant lights surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so is the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. “When I saw it, I fell face down.” Ezekiel's reaction is common for all who have encounters with the glory of God in the Bible.  They're always overwhelmed and knocked to the ground. That's why Jesus couldn't do this all the time. These passages give us a sense of the infinite glory that was Jesus before the world began and before He was incarnate. 

Paul makes it plain, that essential to his incarnation was Jesus' humility in laying aside the form of God, laying aside the outward appearance of majesty and glory that is his by right. In Philippians 2:6-8, “Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.  Being born in likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” The Greek word form there is “morphe”. It has to do here with his appearance and presentation to onlookers. The radiant light, the magic, majestic glory that belongs to God alone was Jesus' by right since he is equal in deity to the Father. He laid aside the “morphe”, the “form”, the appearance of God, and took on the “morphe”, the form, the appearance of a human being and a servant. Charles Wesley in his Christmas hymn, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, “mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.”  He lays his glory aside. 

This transfiguration now, this is a metamorphosis. That's the Greek word, Jesus' “morphe,” his form, his appearance, his likeness changed, not his essential nature. He always was God, is God now, and forever will be God. The entire universe depends on the deity of Christ. He can't stop being God and then start being God. That's not what the incarnation was all about. He was God, is God, will forever be God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. But his “morphe”, his form, had changed. And like I said, in the incarnation, usually He looked completely ordinary, until this one moment.  He allowed some of his divine glory, a glory that is his by right, to be shown to these three witnesses, Peter, James, and John. The Greek word is “metamorphoo”, “metamorphosis”, that's where we get it. It's like a change of appearance. But interestingly in the Greek, it's in the passive voice. He was metamorphosized. It was done to him. He didn't do it to himself. God did it to Jesus. God the Father wanted Jesus to appear glorious to Peter, James, and John. This transfiguration happened right before their eyes. Indeed, it was the whole point. The light was not for Jesus's benefit, it was for theirs and for ours, to prop up their flagging confidence in the light of his revelation, that He would suffer and die. 

The heavenly eyewitnesses of Christ's exodus, now we've got... If it's not exciting enough, now it gets even more exciting. Look at verse 4. There appeared before them Elijah and Moses who are talking with Jesus. Now, this is amazing. Two deceased heroes of Israel's past show up talking with Jesus. We believe that they were among the spirits of the righteous made perfect, that the author of Hebrews speaks about in Hebrews 12, that were surrounding God's throne in the Heavenly Zion. They're in the spirit realm.  They were absent from the body, present with the Lord. Moses, the great lawgiver, the author of their first five books of the Bible, the leader of the exodus from slavery in Egypt, Moses, and then Elijah, the greatest of the prophets who ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, talking with Jesus. Many scholars have said they represent the law and the prophets in their testimony to Jesus. I think they were actually there, but I think that's valid, that the law and the prophets testify to Jesus. This also proves in Jesus's pattern, the resurrection from the dead. Remember how the Sadducees said that there is no resurrection from the dead?  Jesus says about the resurrection of the dead, "Have you not read what God said to you? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." He is not the God of the dead but of the living. In other words, “I am Abraham's God right now. Abraham continues to exist. I am Isaac's God right now. He continues to exist and have a relationship with God. I am Jacob's God." Let's add these two. “I am Moses' God. He continues to exist. I am Elijah's God. He continues to exist.”

 For this brief encounter, they appeared to have human bodies, I guess. I don't know how they knew that it was Moses and Elijah.  I doubt they were wearing name tags. You know how you just know things in a dream or maybe they heard the conversation? But they knew it was Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. What was the topic of their conversation? Mark doesn't tell us, but Luke does. In Luke 9:30-31, it says, "Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in gloria splendor talking with Jesus." Listen to this. "They spoke about his departure, which He was about to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem." All right, simple terms, they're at least talking about his death. What was his departure that He was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem but his death?

Why would that be the topic? That's the very thing that Peter, James, and John and the rest of them are reeling over. It's the very thing they're going to talk about going down the mountain. This is the point of all this is that they would understand how essential Jesus' death is to God's glorious plan. But even cooler than that is that the Greek word for departure is “exodus”. Basically Moses is saying, "I just did the symbolic exodus." Yes, it was physical and all that, but the real exodus is done by Jesus, because the real slavery is sin. As He says in John 8, “Anyone who sins is a slave to sin. But if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.”

What is that exodus? It's Jesus' work in us setting us free from our sin. That's what they were talking about, the exodus that Jesus would bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem by his death. At this moment, Peter thought it best to say something. Don't you love Peter? Isn't he a piece of work? Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put at three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah." He did not know what to say. They were so frightened. Just a glimpse into Peter's personality. I've said this before, but now is the moment to say it for the record.  There are two kinds of people, those who when they don't know what to say, say something, and those who when they don't know what to say, say nothing. Peter was in the first category. I don't know what to say, but let's just roll this out. Honestly, Peter's words were foolish. There's not a time for him to talk. Furthermore, there's a nefarious kind of center to it. I think they wanted to stay in the mountaintop experience. We know that they have to go down off that mountain, down into the valley, and what's going to happen down there is going to be really hard. There's going to be some immediate ministry that's going to be very distressing, and then the road is leading to Jerusalem and to his death.  Peter doesn't want any part of that still. He just wants to stay up there on the mountaintop experience. Furthermore, he wants to make three shelters as though Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are all equals. 

Finally, as though this isn't dramatic enough, a bright cloud appears. This literally brings goosebumps to me even right now. God the Father shows up and surrounds them in a bright cloud, a bright cloud envelops them [Matthew 17:5]. God often appeared in the Old Testament in a bright cloud. Now, this is not a normal cloud that reflects sunlight. This is a cloud that has its own brightness.  It is a cloud of light. It enveloped them, It surrounded them in cloud and light, and then the voice of Almighty God came from that cloud. "This is my Son whom I love. With him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” This is the second time that God has said these words. At Jesus' baptism, in Mark's gospel, He says them to Jesus. "You are my Son whom I love. With you I'm well pleased." Here, He says them to Peter and the other two apostles, "This is my son whom I love. With him I am well pleased."   Here we are, as I said at the beginning of the sermon, invited up into the bright cloud of Almighty God's love for his Son. He's inviting you in. He wants you to know how much He loves his Son. “For the Son is,” [Hebrews 1:3], “the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.”

One of the most important lessons you can ever learn about God is that God is happy. He is a blessed being. He is in and of himself a happy, full, complete being. He sits on a throne and does whatever pleases him.  At the core of his pleasure is his love in his Son. John Piper in his book, The Pleasures of God, said this, "A great part of God's glory is his happiness. It is a glorious thing for God to be as happy as he is. God's glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imagination.”  Piper goes on to argue that the happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in his only begotten son. From eternity past, God the Father has effectively stared into the face of his Son, his only begotten Son, and has delighted in it. He is infinitely well pleased with Jesus, and our salvation very much consists in being able to enter into that joy, that happiness, that indescribable love forever. What an incredible thought. God the Father wants us to share in the love He has for his Son. Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now abide in my love." It's like being in that cloud forever.  Stay in that love.

 Now, beautifully, He's going to transform us to make us as morally and physically beautiful and perfect as Jesus is. Thank God for that. We're going to shine like the Son in the Kingdom of our Father, but He's going to transform us. The key to all of that, that salvation, is we need to listen to Jesus talk to us. It's by listening, by hearing, that we are going to be transformed. Faith comes from hearing, and the hearing is the message of Christ. Or again, in John 10:27-28, "My sheep listened to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life." 

God says and it feels like a rebuke to Peter a little bit, listen to him.  What I get out of that is “Peter, be quiet. Be quiet. It's not by your talking that you're going to be saved. It is by me talking to you. It is by Jesus talking to you. It is by the word of God that you are saved.” Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God," or as Habakkuk 2:20 says, "The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him." I feel like this voice from the cloud is speaking to the entire human race across every century. “All of you, be quiet and listen to my Son. I love him. He is my glory. Listen to him and you will be saved.”  As the ancient hymn writer put it, “Let all mortal flesh keep silent and with fear and trembling stand; ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand, Christ, our God, to earth descendeth, our homage to demand.” By listening to God, we have faith in Christ, and by faith in Christ are our sins forgiven. 

Suddenly, Jesus only. Look at verse 8. Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. The bright cloud is gone, Moses and Elijah are gone. It's only Jesus, only Jesus. Moses and Elijah are not equal with Jesus. Not at all. The bright cloud from which God spoke was not needed either, because Philip said, "Show us the Father and that will be enough.”  He said, "Don't you know me, Philip? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." You don't need the bright cloud. Look at Jesus and you'll see the Father's glory. Christ alone is sufficient. He is, in fact, the final word that God speaks to the human race, as Hebrews 1:1-2 says., “In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son.” The Son is a radiance of God's glory. 

First of all, the infinite glory of Jesus. Not one of us fully realizes how great is Christ's glory. Not one of us sees him properly.  All of us should yearn for a clearer vision of Christ, of his power and his glory. And that comes by listening to Christ's word, by listening to his words. All of us should realize the delight the Father has in Christ. This Jesus is the Savior of the world, so trust in him, all of you. I don't know your spiritual condition. I don't know what state you are in when you came in here today, but all you have to do is believe in Jesus as the glory of God, believe that He was incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit, that He lived an ordinary physical life, though He was God, that He died in your place on the cross, a bloody death that you deserve, but He died in your place so that your sins could be forgiven.

All you have to do is trust in him and they'll all be forgiven, and you'll have a promise of seeing His glory for all eternity. Therefore, learn to listen to God and to Jesus more than ever before. Feed on his word. The best thing I can do week after week is just walk through this Gospel of Mark and help you hear Jesus speak. Just listening to what He would say to you. Mountaintop experiences are necessary. From time to time, you might want to get away from the busyness of your life. Go find a mountain or whatever is good for you, forest, beach, but get alone and let God speak peace to your heart. Let him renew you.  Let him restore you. Let him revive you so that you can serve him. 

We're about to partake in the Lord's Supper. It's a beautiful opportunity we have itself, a foretaste of heavenly feasting. We're going to invite all who have trusted in Christ as their Lord and Savior and have testified to that by water baptism to partake. If you've not, we ask that you refrain. But we're going to enjoy a foretaste of heavenly feast, just like this morning, we've enjoyed a foretaste of heavenly sight. 

Let's close the sermon time in prayer, and then we'll go to the Lord's Supper. Father, we thank you for the beauty of your word.  We thank you for the experience that Peter, James, and John had so many, many centuries ago. We thank you that the Holy Spirit led Mark to write this account for us and also Matthew and Luke, so that we could read about it and see by faith the glory of Christ. And now, as we partake in the Lord's Supper, we pray that you would strengthen each one of us and help us to feast on you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Jesus' mountaintop transfiguration into heavenly glory and his conversation with Moses and Elijah was a spectacular display of His divine nature.

The post The Mount of Transfiguration: A Preview of Christ’s Glory (Mark Sermon 42) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Paul instructs that God destroys the so-called wisdom of the so-called wise but has revealed his salvation through the gospel proclamation.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 2: Christ the Wisdom and Power of God appeared first on Two Journeys.

When we sin, we should feel a burning sense of shame that keeps us from sinning again, at the same time, we should never feel ashamed of the Gospel.

This morning as we look one last time to the end of this chapter, Mark 8, and we're zeroing in on this one verse, Mark 8:38, and as we do, we're looking at one of the most powerful forces that shapes human experience, and that is the issue of shame. Shame. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 19th century novel, The Scarlet Letter, that terrible symbol of sin, the scarlet letter A, representative of adultery was commanded by the magistrates to be stitched onto the dress of Hester Prynne, the young woman who was discovered to have born a child by adultery. The sentence was combined with the command that Hester should stand on a raised platform holding her infant daughter and displaying the scarlet letter for all to see.

Clearly the goal was her public shaming in front of the entire population as a warning to all. She was required to wear this public emblem of her personal shame for the rest of her life. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, I think had an agenda concerning New England puritanism. He did tap into a very powerful force, and that is a fear of public shame.

In our culture, public shaming takes a very different approach. It still powerfully exists, because anyone who doesn't fit into the popular narrative of morality in our day and our age will be shamed, publicly shamed, at least in the digital universe, forever. Made to stand up and bear public ridicule on some social media platform.

But the moral code behind it has dramatically changed. Christians will become more and more ostracized if we don't agree with the world's views on all the most controversial societal issues, whether it's sexuality or gender, feminism, race relations, politics, climate change, sexual harassment, child abuse, undocumented aliens, or what have you. Shame is one of the most powerful forces shaping human personality, and that's the topic of today's sermon.

It starts with a shame that Jesus mentions that we should never feel, ministered by a world that ought to be ashamed and isn't. Look at Jesus' words, one of the most convicting passages in the Gospel of Mark, indeed, really in all of scripture, Mark 8:38, "If anyone is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His Father's glory with the holy angels."

Years ago, I memorized that scripture by itself, so that I would not ever be ashamed of the gospel, in a workplace setting or in my neighborhood. Because I feel the temptation to be ashamed of Christ and His words, I feel it acutely. Jesus is severely warning His disciples against any feelings of shame about Him and about the gospel. They are going to be His messengers to a wicked and hostile world, and the world will hate them for it, because it hated Jesus first. But Jesus warns them that no true disciple of His should ever feel ashamed of Him or of His words in such a wicked world.

So for me, as I look at this, I wanted to expand and look more generally at the topic of shame to try to understand it, because I think it needs a lot of biblical instruction. There's a lot of confusion about it. So with Jesus's statement as a starting point, and really is the center point, I want to expand and learn what the Bible teaches about shame in a number of ways. It's going to expand into five points.

First, the world ought to be ashamed and isn't. Secondly, Christians ought to be ashamed and are. Third, Jesus is not ashamed of Christians. Fourth, Christians ought never to be ashamed of Jesus. And fifth, Christians in heaven will feel no shame at all. Let's walk through these.

The context here, Jesus is training His apostles for their future ministry of the Word to the ends of the earth. He elicits from them the world's faulty, inadequate assessment of Him. Who do people say that I am? And they give their answers. Some say this, some say that. Then He asks them the most important question any of us will ever face, "What about you? Who do you say that I am?" Peter speaks as their spokesman and ours, saying with his full testimony, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Then Jesus declares His future death, which is the core of His saving mission, that He will be rejected, despised, mocked, beaten, condemned, publicly shamed and killed, and then His future glory completely vindicated by His glorious resurrection. Peter cannot comprehend this, cannot accept it, and rebukes Him privately for saying this. So Jesus turns and rebukes Peter publicly in front of everyone as a spokesman for Satan. Then He strongly charges His disciples with the cost of following Him. You must deny yourself, you must take up your cross. You must follow Jesus.

He exposes the core affections of a saved heart. If you love your life, you'll lose it, but if you lose your life, you'll save it eternally. Then He reveals a proper evaluation we should have of our souls relative to the world. The soul is worth infinitely more than anything there is in the material world. With one last verse in this section, He gives a warning against currying the world's favor by aligning ourselves with its value system concerning Christ, so we can avoid the shaming mechanism it's going to heap on us.  "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man, also, be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."  

Let's start with the first point. The world ought to be ashamed and isn't. Look at Jesus' evaluation of the world in a very potent statement, "This adulterous and sinful generation," He calls it. This world is deeply immersed in sin. Jesus calls it adulterous. The image is one of the deep, intimate love every single person should have for God. It's likened to the intimate love between a wife and her husband.  God likened Israel to His bride in many places. For example, Isaiah 62:5, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." But Israel has gone after idols. She was spiritually adulterous, both Ezekiel and Josiah liken Israel's lust for idols to a wayward and promiscuous wife running after other lovers, committing adultery. All sin therefore is ultimately spiritual adultery. We are an adulterous and sinful generation. The entire world is adulterous in the same way.

Jesus highlights the great wickedness of this world, a world that ought to be ashamed of itself, but it isn't. It isn't. So what is shame? Let's take a minute and define it. Shame is a painful emotion caused by a consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. It's a painful emotion caused by a consciousness of guilt or a shortcoming or impropriety. Shame always involves an audience, an onlooking audience, a sense of public censure, a stripping of honor before an onlooking crowd of disapproving people. There's disgraced, dishonor, reproach, the crowd being shocked, pouring out disapproval.  Fundamental to shame is the sense of the respect and affection that we desire in the eyes of others, especially God. That God Himself and that other people would see us well, honor us, think well of us, speak well of us. To have the exact opposite, to be despised, to be publicly stripped of all honor is among the greatest fears of the human heart.

God Almighty, definitely in many places, includes shame in judging sin. There are many verses I could use to prove this, but when speaking of Israel's forsaking of the true God to fall idols, he says in Jeremiah 2:11-13, "My people have exchanged their glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this O heavens, and shutter with great horror," declares the Lord. "My people have committed two sins. They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

When He says, "Be appalled at this, O heavens," He's calling on the heavens to witness His people in their shame in what they've done. To look on Israel's sin with horror and to shutter. Isaiah does the same thing, "Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth!"

The first mention of shame in the Bible  appears very early, and it's mentioned negatively. “The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.” They wouldn't have known what the word was at that moment, but it's ominous, because Moses, writing centuries later, knew exactly what it was to feel shame, and the first experience of shame came in the very next chapter. Tragically, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and they felt shame. First, horizontally toward each other and then vertically toward God. The eyes of both of them were open and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. The word shame isn't mentioned there, but it's clearly implied, especially since it was just mentioned a few verses before that.  Then all the more when God comes and calls to the man, "Where are you?" and he answered, "I heard you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid." But tragically, the disease of sin, specifically, attacks the sense of shame, and after a while, sinners feel no shame whatever for their sins. The world corrupts shame. As sin progressed in the world, people became more and more hardened concerning their sins. Genesis 6 says that before the flood, the thoughts of men's hearts were only evil, all the time, continually.

The general principle in redemptive history has been the greater the evil in the hearts of the people, the more they throw off shame entirely and actually boast in the evil things they do. Jeremiah 6:15, "Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all. They do not even know how to blush." Or again, at the end of Romans 1, when there's a terrible catalog of sins, twenty-one sins listed, Paul says this, "They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity." Then verse 32, "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but,” listen, “they also approve of those who practice them."

The word “approve” means “to have pleasure in”. They actually delight in things that they ought to be ashamed of. Paul talks about this in Philippians 3:19, speaking of lost people, "Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame." Paul means that these depraved people actually glory in what should be making them feel feelings of shame. People then boast with great glee over sexual promiscuity or getting away with the perfect crime or fits of rage as demonstrations of power, that kind of thing.

This defective shame is part of what the Bible calls a “seared conscience". 1 Timothy 4:2, Paul mentions, "Hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." A seared conscience means they have no feeling in their conscience. To some degree they are like lepers. Leprosy is a nerve disease which manifests in a lot of ways, but one of them is that you lose the sensation of pain. You could walk the entire day with a rock in your shoe that's just gouging your flesh, and you never feel it. The end of the day you take off your shoe and your shoe is filled with blood, your own blood, but you never felt anything.  I think that's what it means to have a hard heart, a seared conscience, you don't feel anything, but actually they're still aware of the existence of a sense of guilt and shame as a reality. They're aware of that. Thus, they often try to make righteous people feel ashamed of not joining with them in their own sinful actions. They want everyone to join their party with them. 1 Peter 4:3-4 says to Christian people, "You've spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do, living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry. They think it's strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation and they heap abuse on you.”  “Why aren't you joining in what we're doing here?” They heap abuse on anyone who won't join in their sins. Our culture will become even violent toward people who don't agree with them, who don't, for example, in Pride month celebrate homosexuality. They don't get on board with LGBTQ, et cetera. If you don't get on board, they'll heap shame on you. Or on other topics, make you try to join their crusades on those topics, and if you don't join with them in the same way, they will heap abuse on you. They'll try to make you feel ashamed.

The world fundamentally wants us to dance to their tune. Jesus talked about this in reference to John the Baptist not dancing to anybody's tune. Matthew 11:17, "To what can I compare this generation? They're like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others, 'We played the flute for you and you didn't dance; we sang a dirge. And you didn't mourn.'" In other words, "We're calling the tune, you need to dance to our tune." Concerning the LGBT, et cetera, Paul actually calls it in Romans 1, "Shameful lusts."

That phrase is not going to go anywhere, it's not going to disappear, and yet the whole thing has been turned around now, where it's shameful to oppose. It's shameful to tell the truth. In love, to say, "This like all the other sins are sins that Jesus, the great physician can heal you from." Now the whole thing's turned around. Isaiah said in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." Who call things that are shameful good and try to put shame on people who are doing actual good in God's eyes. Turn the whole thing around. So fundamentally, the world rejects the healthy shame they should feel for their sins. Without it they cannot repent and be saved.

Secondly, Christians ought to be ashamed and are. In order to be saved, sinners must repent of their sins. Genuine repentance is essential to salvation. Jesus said in Luke 5, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." But what is repentance?  The puritan pastor Thomas Watson in his masterpiece, The Doctrine of Repentance, defined repentance as, "Repentance is a grace of God's spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed. He then breaks out that inward humbling in six ingredients of true repentance. First, sight of sin. You see it as God does. Secondly, sorrow for sin. You have a genuine grief or sorrow over your sin. Third, confession of sin. Vertically, you agree with God that that is sin, that you are a sinner, and that specific thing is sin. Fourth, shame for sin. A sense, a burning sense of how repulsive that sin is in the sight of a holy God. Fifth, hatred of sin. A moral revulsion over the sin. And then that results in sixth, a turning from sin, a genuine transformation of life."

That's what repentance actually is, and shame for sin is in the middle of it. The Holy Spirit comes in His marvelous powerful work, and He works repentance in us. Thanks be to God, if you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit has done this deep work of convicting in you. John 16:8, "When the spirit comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment." Therefore, part of that is the Holy Spirit works in us a healthy shame for our sins, a reasonable healthy shame for the sins we've committed. Ezekiel 16:63, "'Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, then you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth, because of your humiliation,' declares the sovereign Lord." That's powerful, and that's in the spiritual adultery chapter of Ezekiel 16. 

But we see it all over the place in the New Testament. If you know what to look for, you can see it. The parable of the prodigal son. Remember, he's out there having squandered his father's money, slopping pigs, comes to himself, comes back, and he says this to his father, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  Or again, in Luke 18:13, in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, "The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'" What do you think he's feeling there? Jesus said, "I tell you that man went home justified." Or again, in Luke 7:37-38, "When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisees house, she brought an alabaster jar perfume. And as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them." I don't think we can fully capture all the feelings she's feeling at that moment, but deep repentance for her sinful life is part of it.

Justification by faith in Christ frees us from ultimate shame. Hallelujah!  It sets us free. Now, I'm going to develop more on this in a moment, but shame is essential to our salvation, and I want to borrow a phrase from John Newton's Amazing Grace, “'twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.” Same thing with shame, “'twas grace that made us feel healthy shame for our sins, and it's by grace our shame is relieved.”

Even after we have been forgiven for all of our sins, past, present, and future, I don't know if you've noticed, but your career in sin isn't over yet, unless somebody of you wants to claim that it has. But you know it hasn't. We're all wrestling with sin. Romans 7, "The very thing we hate, we do and the good things we want to do, we don't do, and so we commit new sins." We're not done with healthy shame yet. Sanctification involves an ongoing work of repentance and therefore an ongoing work of healthy shame.  This is pretty controversial. Many Christians think that we should never feel ashamed. Jesus has taken away all my shame. I get all that, but I don't think that's carefully nuanced enough. I don't think it's even biblical. They fail to deal properly to the fact that we're not done being saved and that there's this ongoing work of necessary repentance. We're not done repenting. And therefore, according to Watson, we're not done with shame.

In justification, all of our sins have been forgiven, past, present and future, and we're positionally perfect in Christ. That is true. But in sanctification we have this ongoing battle with sin. And when a Christian sins, what is the healthy response we should have toward that new sin, other than shame? Paul openly uses shame for past sins in the sanctification verse, in Romans 6:21, to me that just proves that shame is a healthy part of the ongoing Christian life. He says, "What benefit or what fruit did you reap at that time from those things you are now ashamed of?" Now ashamed, you're a Christian, and it's healthy to be ashamed of those things you used to do. Those things result in death.

What do you think Peter felt that terrible night that Jesus was arrested, and Jesus predicted his denial, three times denial, "Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me three times." Peter swore he wouldn't, "Even if all fall away in account of you, I never will." But as he was being led into the courtyard, a slave girl at the door said, "You're not one of his disciples, are you?" "No, I'm not," off and running. And then he is warming his hands with God's enemies, Jesus' enemies, "I don't know him." "You don't know... You're not one of..." "No, I don't know him." By the end of that evening, he was literally calling down curses on himself if he knew Jesus.  Then the rooster crowed for the second time. 

Then in Luke's Gospel, Jesus was going from one place to another in his trial, and he had the opportunity to look right at Peter, just at that moment, and Peter went outside and wept bitterly.  What do you think he was feeling? If you don't like the word shame, then come up with a new word. But that's what he was feeling. Shame therefore is like physical pain. We will not feel it in heaven, I'll get to that in a few moments, but we need it now, so that we don't keep touching the hot stove, so that we stop sinning. Christians ought to feel shame and do. 

Thirdly, Jesus is not ashamed of Christians. Now this should blow you away. Jesus Christ openly associated with sinners. He was a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He had no problem sitting with them, eating meals with them. He had no fear of guilt by association, none. He was a friend of sinners. And we need a friend, don't we? Jesus, we're told in Hebrews 2:11, is not ashamed to be called our brother. He's not ashamed to call us brothers. It's incredible given who we are and who He is, but that just mirrors God Himself. It says in Hebrews 11:16 that God is not ashamed to be called their God for He's prepared a city for them.

God doesn't mind having his name associated with us. He's not ashamed of us. Why is that? Because Jesus, by His atoning work, by His blood, has removed all of our sin, has atoned for all of our sins. Jesus is willing, based on the blood He shed on our behalf, to stand next to a sinner who has repented and believed. Like the father of the prodigal son, who's still wearing nasty pig clothes, he gives him a hug, puts his arm around, he owns him. He puts a ring on his finger as an heir and a robe on around him. He's willing to stand in front of all the angels and say, "He is one of mine. I know her. I vouch for him. I vouch for her.”  Romans 8:33-34, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns Christ Jesus who died-more than that, was raised to life-and at the right hand of God interceding for us?" Owning us, He is saying, "She belongs to me. He belongs to me," advocating for us. He's not ashamed of us. He's not ashamed, because atonement removes all of our sin, all of the shame for sin.

Romans 10:11, as the scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." So by his atonement, the death penalty for our sins has been paid. By the miracle of imputation, His righteousness is credited to us. His righteousness is given to us, picture it like a beautiful robe to cover our shameful nakedness. That's the open language used in Revelation 3:18, Jesus says to the church at Laodecia, "I counsel you to buy from me white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness." The white robe to wear is the imputed righteousness of Christ. It's faith in Christ, and it's pictured like a white robe.

The ultimate shame in the universe, there is no greater shame than this, before the angels, before all the redeemed to be condemned to hell, to be condemned to hell. "If anyone is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His Father's glory with his holy angels." What is He coming in His Father's glory with his holy angels to do? He's coming to judge the earth. He's the judge of all the earth.

Another passage openly talks about that moment, Matthew 25:31-32, "When the Son of Man comes in His Father's glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His throne in heavenly glory. And all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He'll put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left."  Therefore the ultimate shame is to hear those dreadful words spoken that I spoke last week, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and as angels.” That's the shame we Christians will never feel. Anyone who trusts in Him will never ultimately, eternally be put to shame. If we repent of our sins now and trust in Christ now, we will never know that ultimate shame. 

Fourth, Christians ought never to be ashamed of Jesus. Now, this is obviously the home base of this scripture, but I've sought to show the context of why this would even happen. Why would we be tempted to feel ashamed of Christ and of His words? It's because the world seeks to make Christians ashamed of Christ and of the gospel. The world in its sin attacks people who point out their sins. No one did that more perfectly than Jesus.  Jesus said to his, at that point, unbelieving brothers in John 7:7, "The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil." Did you hear that? The reason the world hated Jesus is because He told the truth about their sin and they didn't want to hear it. "The reason the world hates me is I testify that what it does is evil." And again, John 3:20, "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."

Therefore, in His death the world heaped abuse on Jesus, they heaped shame on Him. Mark 15:17 and following, "They put a purple robe on Him, they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on Him. And they began to call out to Him, 'Hail king of the Jews!' Again and again they struck Him on the head with a staff and spit on Him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took off the purple robe and put His own clothes on Him. Then they led Him out to crucify Him."

Jesus told His followers to expect the same treatment if they follow Him in proclaiming the need that sinners have to repent and believe. John 15:18, "If the world hates you, keep in mind it hated me first." The world will try to make all Christians feel ashamed of Christ and His words though they are the ones who ought to be ashamed of their sins, so that they can be saved. But Jesus says, "If anyone is truly, at your core, ashamed of me and of my words, you're not a Christian, and I will disown you on that day." He will be ashamed of you at Judgment Day, that's what He's saying.  This verse is fundamentally a warning to all of us. The shame Jesus is referring to here is the total rejection of Christ and his incarnation. If anyone does that, Jesus is going to reject them on Judgment Day, saying, "I never knew you, away from me, you evildoers." People have to come out from the world and join with Jesus by faith, as He is crucified. We have to make our stand with the crucified and bloody savior and not be ashamed of Him.

The cross itself was designed to maximize every form of torture, including public shame. Isn't it amazing that Hebrews tells us that Jesus said, the shame they heaped on Him, He considered a small price to pay to save us, a  small price to pay to save you and me. Hebrews 12:2, "Let us fix our eyes in Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.”  What does that mean? He thought little of it, the  shame. It's a small price to pay. Marvel at that, because shame is one of the most powerful feelings there is. For Him, it's small, "I know they're going to shame me. I know they're going to keep abuse on me. I know they're going to mock me, and they're going to spit on me, and they're going to strip me out in front of all the people. It's a small price to pay to win you," to win His bride.

But then the author to Hebrews urges us Christians to stand with Jesus, under the cross bearing the shame He bore. In the next chapter of Hebrews 13:12-14, "When the sacrifices were made, the carcasses of the sacrifices were taken outside the camp and burned, refuse." The author then says, "Jesus also suffered outside the city gate," as though He's garbage, “to make the people holy by His own blood." Listen to this, "Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we're looking for the city that is to come."

So what does he mean? Go outside like your garbage, stand next to Jesus, own Him like He's willing to own you, and stand under that reproach, and bear the reproach He bore. That's what the author of Hebrews is urging us to do. Be willing to join him, to stand under the bloody cross, to preach the bloody cross, to not be ashamed of it in any way. That is our mission in the world to testify to Christ and to his words. We are sent as witnesses to a lost and dying world. Jesus said, "We should expect to be hated and shamed.”  Paul was constantly. The shaming mechanism was dumped on Paul again and again. Think about Paul and Silas in Philippi. They were stripped publicly and beaten publicly and then thrown in the inner dungeon and their feet were put in the stocks as though they were maximum criminals, complete public shaming. In our generation, unbelievers will try to shame us as well. 

In America at this present time, it just means being mocked on social media, or on the news programs, or the brunt of standup comedian jokes or late night talk jokes, things like that. It's going to get worse though I think. I don't think it's going to get better. I think it's going to get worse. In more oppressive cultures and at different times in history, Christians have been more openly shamed. In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966, Chinese Christians were made wear dense caps and had insulting signs put around their necks. They were paraded through the streets with gongs, and the crowds were expected to hurl insults and mud and stones on them to shame them. Now in our setting, the bolder and more faithful we are on witnessing, the more likely we're going to kick into that shaming mechanism the world's going to try to do. If we stay quiet, if we "stay in our lane", so to speak, and don't make waves, we're not likely to experience a lot of shame. But if we share the gospel, we will. And we know it, that's what's holding us back.

What you need to realize is what we're talking about here, Christ is the most glorious thing there has ever been on planet earth, and His words are equally glorious. How could we be ashamed of Christ and of his words? How could we? Let's turn that whole thing around. Let's openly proclaim the glories and excellences of Christ. That's the best kind of evangelism you can ever do. Talk great about Jesus in front of lost people. So we can say, as Paul said in Romans 1:16, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."

Fifth, Christian in heaven will feel no shame. Dear friends, you Christians, brothers and sisters, this whole thing's temporary, praise God. You will feel zero shame in heaven. I believe you'll remember everything, for how could you thank God for your salvation, if you didn't remember from what you were saved?  You won't feel any shame, just like you won't feel any pain. There'll be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain of any type, including emotional pain. You'll be set free [Revelation 21:4]. No shame whatsoever,  so beautiful.

The Book of Revelation again and again portrays the redeemed in heaven as wearing white robes. There's five different white robes verses in Revelation. For example, Revelation 7:9, it says, "There was a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation, and they were wearing white robes and saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne.'" That's the covering of our sins with Jesus' imputed perfect righteousness.

You know what's so beautiful, there won't be any scarlet letters on our white robes. You're not going to present as former blasphemer, former adulterer, former anything, just radiant beauty. You're going to shine like the sun. The backstory is necessary just to tell history, but you'll be able to say, "It is no longer I who do it, but sin that lived in me back then that did it, but I am done. I'm different. I'm a new creation. So tell the story, I have no fear in the matter.”  It's beautiful. We'll be set free. 

Lessons, first and foremost, all I can do is plead with you. If you have not yet trusted in Christ, come to him. Believe in him. You don't want that ultimate shame of being condemned on judgment day, so trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Now to Christians I would say, let the shame of past and present sins fire you up toward personal holiness. What fruit or what benefit did you reap at that time from those things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. Think about those shameful things and the shame you should feel for those in and of themselves, apart from the atoning work of Christ, and don't do those sins anymore. That's the point. Nothing good comes from sin. That's what Paul's saying there, “be holy."

Secondly, be bold in sharing Christ in this hate-filled wicked world. Your eyes are open. You know what's going to happen. They're going to try to shame you. Don't be surprised when they do. Boldly share Christ, expect them to try to publicly shame you. Be willing to stand with Christ outside the camp and bear the disgrace He bore. Be warned here, take the warning, do not be ashamed of Christ or of His words. We constantly face that fleshly, cowardly, tendency that we have. We tend to hide... Think about what happened to Peter.  Peter got this warning, he heard it, and then he was later ashamed of Jesus. But he's a genuine Christian and so God reclaimed him, got him back, all right. The problem was he was masquerading as an believer. He was masquerading as somebody who didn't know Jesus. He was masquerading as someone who hated Christ. It wasn't his true nature. Thank God He can rescue us from those kind of false masquerades. Let's not, this week, masquerade as though we don't know Jesus, and keep quiet when we could say something of His glories, something of His greatness.

Ask the Lord, just go to Him in prayer, be honest with Him, say, "Lord, I know you know me, but I want to tell you I am a gospel coward. I would say a lot more about Jesus than I do, but I'm just afraid of what's going to happen. I'm afraid of people's reactions. Would you cure me?" Just be honest. Isn't it the truth? Just be honest and say, "Lord, be the physician of my soul. Help me to be bolder than I've ever been before. Help me to not be afraid what people will say. Help me to be willing to speak the truth for their salvation and for your glory. Help me to be willing to speak of your glorious Jesus. You're not shameful, you're glorious. You're pure and powerful and radiant and wise and good and loving. I want to tell people about you. I want to declare the excellences of Him who called me out of darkness into His marvelous light."

Gospel witness as worship is the best way to go. It drives out fear for me. It's like I'm not afraid what they're thinking. I'm just going to say some awesome things about Jesus in front of lost of people, whether they want to hear it or not. I'm going to fish for them and at some point somebody's going to like, "Tell me more. I want to hear more about Jesus." Like, "I bet you do. I can't wait to tell you more. Hey, let's get together and study the Gospel of Mark and let's spend three weeks on two verses in Mark, something like that." It's incredible the things that we can learn. So just ask the Lord to move in you. As the scripture is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." 

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the powerful warning that we've had from Jesus here to not be ashamed of you, of your words. We thank you for a day that we'll be free from all pain, any manner of pain. We thank you that you protected us from the ultimate shame of being condemned on judgment day. In the meantime, Lord, because we continue to sin, we know that we need shame to warn us. We need to feel a burn when we confess our sins to you. But we know that you love us, you're tender with us, that even that feeling of shame is temporary. If we just genuinely repent, you'll work in us. Lord, thank you. Thank you for the beauty of the gospel. Thank you for the beauty of the words of scripture, and for all we can learn from it. In Jesus' name, Amen.

When we sin, we should feel a burning sense of shame that keeps us from sinning again but we should never feel ashamed of the Gospel.

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In Romans 6, Paul unfolds how Christians should live once justified by grace and how to avoid the temptation of sin.

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In 1 Corinthians 1:1-17, the Apostle Paul greets the Corinthian church, expressing his gratitude for the grace of God on them, and addresses the problems in the church.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 1: Greeting, Thanksgiving, and Appeal for Unity appeared first on Two Journeys.

Our salvation depends on valuing Christ and his Kingdom above the entire collection of goods and experiences in the world.

Turn to your Bibles this morning as we continue our study in the Gospel of Mark, and looking at just a couple of verses at the end of Mark 8. The end of Mark 8 is very powerful, a very rich set of scriptures, and I want to zero in on it this morning.

As I do, I want to ask you a question. What is the most valuable thing on earth? When we think about value, value is usually economically evaluated by its price. The world’s entire economic system is based on setting a price for everything. Economists speak of the theory of price, which most people know as the law of supply and demand, probably you've heard of that. The price for any good or services is based on the supply of those goods and services, compared to the demand for them. In market economies around the world, the price of gold is high, because there's a very high demand and relatively low supply. Conversely, the price for salt is much lower. Because while there's a strong demand for it, it's so plentiful, the oceans are full of it, so the price is low.

Have you noticed prices higher than a few years ago? Have you had any sticker shock at the supermarket at all? Perhaps you've had some sticker shock at the gas pump. We are in inflation now, we're told, so the prices are getting higher. I don't know what the remedy is. No, I'm not going there. I'm not spending the whole sermon on inflation. But we've noticed, the price of beef, the price of other things is just much higher than it used to be.

When it comes to luxury items such, as a one-of-a-kind painting by a renowned artist like a Rembrandt or a Van Gogh, an art appraiser is skilled at knowing the history of art, the demand, the recent demand in the art market for an oil painting by one of those masters, what it's sold for at an auction in the past, and the prices is set accordingly. Luxury items like high-end watches, for example, like Patek Philippe, they set a range of prices based on entry level for that watch, $20,000. Can you imagine spending $20,000 on a wristwatch? But that's just entry level. They can go as high as $1.5 million. The prices are set by the quality of the materials, workmanship, the artistry, complications of the call, and demand.

This price evaluation, the valuation of worth, of relative worth, is at the center of two of Jesus' parables, his most famous parables. They're in Matthew 13. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, went out and sold everything he had, and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, one translation says, a “pearl of great price", he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Market value and relative pricing are essential to both of those parables.

In the first parable, the man, you can picture him digging in a field with a shovel maybe, and a shovel hits some metal, some clank or something like that. He hears the sound he's not used to hearing, so he spends more time digging and then finds, let's say a treasure chest. You could picture it that way, and he somehow gets it out. He pries off the lock, opens the heavy lid to this chest, and finds incalculable treasure inside. Jesus doesn't say what or how much, but this man knows it's the treasure of a lifetime. It's certainly worth more than the sum total of all of his possessions in his life. Everything he owns in the world is worth less than what's in that treasure box. He's filled with joy, because he knows that. He hides the treasure again, then sells everything that he owns to buy that field. The whole time he is filled with joy, because he knows the field & its treasure is worth it. The treasure in the box is worth greater than anything he owns in the world.

In the second parable, the merchant is looking for fine pearls. That man is an expert in his field, and his field is pearls. He knows pearls better than anyone else. He's been studying pearls his entire life. One of the most precious commodities in the ancient world was pearls. Worth far more by weight than any other precious substance. He already has a collection of pearls. He's a pearl merchant. But he's constantly searching for more pearls, better pearls. One day, what a day, he finds the most perfect pearl he's ever seen in his life. He knows pearls like you don't know pearls. But this man knows his business, and he knows that this one pearl is worth more than his entire inventory. So, he sells all of those pearls, so he can have enough money to buy this one pearl, he gladly sells it to buy this one pearl.

What is the treasure hidden in the field? What is the pearl of great price? I would argue, it is Jesus Christ himself. It is the kingdom. So I've heard, so it is. Jesus is worth more than anything that we have in this world. Our salvation depends on that kind of valuation, of valuing Christ and his kingdom above the entire collection of goods and experiences there are in this world. The merchant's mindset, valuation, pricing, esteem, weighing all of these skills tell you Jesus is worth everything.

But maybe a corollary of that whole analysis, is the estimation of the worth of our souls, our eternal souls. We need to do the same kind of relative valuation, comparing the worth and value of our souls to the things that we could gain in this world. What is the marketplace or the market price for your soul? That's what these two verses ask. Look at verse 36- 37, "What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?" Or, what can a man give an exchange for his soul?

At the end of your life, your life of achievement, you will stand before Christ and give him an account on Judgment Day. 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 the entire world. Your soul will either be eternally alive, living in the presence of God in heaven, or eternally dying under His wrath in hell. The world and all of its pleasures and pains is passing away, and will soon disappear, but your soul will endure forever in one of those two places.  Thus, Jesus is warning us to make certain that we don't lose our soul. 

Let's step back now for a moment and understand the context. The last time I preached on Mark, I preached on what I considered to be, and still do, the greatest challenge of your life or mine as a Christian, the challenge to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus. That has a context. Jesus is there with His disciples in Caesarea Philippi talking about His identity. “Who do people say that I am? What about you? Who do you say that I am?”  Then you have Peter's full confession, in Matthew, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Jesus then makes this shocking prediction to His disciples. Verse 31, 32, "Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priest and teachers of the law and that he must be killed and after three days rise again, he spoke plainly about this. Peter was shocked, and took Jesus aside,", verse 32, ..."and began to rebuke him. Never Lord.", he said, "This shall never happen to you." Then Jesus turns, and doesn't do it privately as Peter sought to do, but publicly rebuked Peter because He knew that Peter was speaking for all of them. They all would've said it.

He rebuked Peter, verse 33, “'Get behind me, Satan,’” He said. ‘You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men. ‘“ Then He issued that call to the crowd and to all of His disciples, the call indeed to the whole world. “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.'"

Peter's immediate motive in rebuking Jesus was not so much concern about Jesus, although Jesus was the center of his hopes, certainly that was there. But we have to imagine that his concerns were selfish. Peter's conceptions of his own future were wrapped up in Jesus, the king and Jesus' kingdom as he understood it. He wanted to save his life in this world, as he conceived it, and he wanted in so doing, to make it as rich, and pleasureful, and comfortable, and powerful, and we could add some other things, as he could. That's what he wanted. Jesus said to him, "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of man." You're thinking in a human way about my kingdom, not in God's way.

As we walked through last time, He gave this call. “Deny yourself is to say no to yourself, to your selfish drives, your selfish agenda, your fleshly yearnings. Say no to that. Say no to yourself. Take up your cross means be willing to die for me and for the gospel. Follow me means to obey me, to obey what I tell you, and to imitate me.” And Luke adds, do it daily. Deny yourself daily. Take up the cross daily. That's the context then of the statement we're looking at today.

But here, in these verses that we're looking at, Jesus turns up the intensity further. The call on the disciples is to realize that anything that hinder them from following Christ was actually an ultimate threat to them, a threat to their eternal happiness. He wanted to give the disciples a sense of the immense worth and value of the soul. "For what would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? Or what could a man give in exchange for his soul?”  From this text, I want to focus on two issues, the world and what it means to gain it, and the soul and what it means to lose it. Then I want to zero in on Jesus' two questions. What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? And what would a man give in exchange for his soul? I want to seek to sharpen these questions to a fine point. I'm going to urge you to be absolutely certain that your soul's final state is of the utmost importance to you, that you have a proper valuation of your soul. I want to plead with you to be certain that your sins will be forgiven through faith in Jesus, and that you'll be welcomed on that final day into heaven and not cast away into hell.  To help you do this, I'm going to focus next week more on kind of the final thing, the inducement and the warning,  there's an inducement and warning. We're going to develop that more next week.

In verse 38 it says, "If anyone's ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His father's glory with the holy angels?" And then Matthew's version of this account, 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 for whatever he has done.”  Judgment Day is coming, and so the inducements are positive to be in that world of glory called heaven. And they are negative, that you would not be condemned to the world of torment. Those are the inducements.

Let's zero in on the first, the world and what it means to gain it. Look at verse 36, "What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" First of all, no one has ever accomplished this, though many have tried to do it. Jesus is clearly using hyperbole. He's using an exaggerated statement to make a point. Many empire builders of all ages have sought to control the world and have been unable to do so.  The largest empire in history by sheer land mass, contiguous land mass, was that  of Kublai Khan, Genghis Khann’s descendant, the Mongolian empire in the year 1260. That was the peak, 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, they only achieved 24.6% of the habitable land mass of the earth, which has 52 million square miles of habitable land. They tried, but that's as far as they got, and they didn't hold it for long.

Others have sought to just kind of corner the market on one little part of the world. Like John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company, at its pinnacle of influence, owned 90% of the petroleum industry in the world. What would that be worth today? 90% of the petroleum industry in the world? As a result of that control, Rockefeller was the first billionaire in the world.  Some valuations of John D Rockefeller's fortune put him at present value of $420 billion. Perhaps the richest man in history, depends how you read it. So he, for a little while, controlled most of the oil, just the oil.  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, Carnegie with his steel, J.P. Morgan with his finance, but no one could control all in any of those areas, even though they tried to do it.

But Jesus is saying, even if you could gain the whole world, if it cost you your soul, it wouldn't be worth it. The world is attractive, you should admit it. Certainly, Psalm 73 speaks a beautiful theological truth in verse 25, "Whom have I in heaven but you and earth has nothing I desire besides you." That's beautiful, and it's true ultimately, but frankly, the world is alluring. It is appealing. The world has some natural attractions to us that are not corrupt. The world is physically beautiful, the beauty of the earth. There's the pleasures of food, and travel, and entertainment, and hobbies, a good novel, an exciting movie, an absorbing board game, sports, things like that. The value of the esteem of other people. The satisfaction of earthly successes in business, or in academics, or athletics, or other fields of endeavor. All of those should be enjoyed as good gifts of God. But any and all of them can become idols, if they become the reason for your existence.

When we talk about the allure of the world, the lusts of the eye, the lusts of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, 1st John 2 talks about that, the allure, all of those things are ultimately empty. Power, for example. The most powerful military conqueror, and the most successful military conqueror in history, Alexander the Great, never lost a single battle in 12 years of campaigning. But at the end of his conquest, he didn't want to stop, but his army mutinied, way out near the Indus River in India. They were done. Battle after battle, he just sat down and wept that there were no more battles to fight. Picture him weeping there, and ask him what pleasure all this conquest brought him? He was dead soon after that.

What about wealth? The wealthiest man from the ancient world was a king named Croesus, the King of Lydia, in modern day Turkey. He ruled from 560 to 545 BC. Gold from the mines, and from the sands of the river Pactolus, filled his coffers to overflowing, an overwhelmingly wealthy man. But all that did is attract the attention of a certain Cyrus the Great of Persia, who paid him a visit with his army, and then sentenced him to be burned to death alive. As the flames drew near, you could well imagine, that the wealth of Croesus brought him no joy at all. He would gladly have traded all of it to live another day.

What about wisdom? Solomon was said to be the wisest man that had ever lived up to that point, but his wisdom brought him no ultimate happiness. He wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:18, "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow." The more knowledge, the more grief. Some of the most brilliant, some of the most intelligent people in history, have struggled intensely with depression and mental illness.

Then there's fame. I don't actually know why anyone would want that. But I remember, thinking about fame when back in 1992, the Olympics in Barcelona, they put together the Dream Team, the basketball team which had Michael Jordan. There was a documentary made about the Dream Team, and Jordan was walking along the street, and the camera stopped and panned back, and there was this huge poster, hanging down the side of a six-story building of Michael Jordan dunking. So there's the real Michael Jordan under this massive six story big poster, and he just kind of looked up at himself dunking. But if you look at famous people like him, he couldn't go out of the hotel room at night without being mobbed like a rockstar. Some famous people are constantly hounded by paparazzi and and would yearn for a simple life of obscurity. Fame wasn't all that it was cut out to be.

What about pleasure and a world craving pleasure? Some people it seems, have cornered the market on hedonism. They go from one kind of pleasure sight to the next. They drink in the best foods, finest of wines, the most beautiful scenery. I remember reading a book by a venture capitalist, Tom Perkins, who sank $150 million into what was at that time, the largest privately owned sailboat in the world. That was his goal, the Maltese Falcon. But the pleasure of that distinction apparently lasted only one year, because some other mogul built a bigger one, and then Tom Perkins sold his. It just didn't bring in much joy after that.

Then there's beauty, physical beauty. I think about Hollywood movie stars, female movie stars, who are willing to trade their health for constant cosmetic surgery to stay in the game, but they can't oppose the continual march of time. I wonder if there are some that have seen their beauty fading, and seen spots in movies being given to younger starlets, and they know their moment has passed, and how depressing that is.

All of these allurements are part of God's physical world. None of them are evil in themselves, but all of them have led countless souls astray in their quest. What does it mean to gain the world? It's power, wealth, wisdom, fame, pleasure, beauty. Death stands over every one of these, and turns them all to dust in the wind. 

But how much more agony would come to the damned when they consider for what paltry things they exchanged their immortal souls?  Satan is willing constantly, in some way, to stand and broker a trade. Remember the temptation of Jesus? He offered him all the kingdoms of the world in his splendor. He would've given the entire world to Jesus, but Jesus didn't accept it.

There's a famous story well known of Dr. Faustus and the Faustian bargain. The whole idea of selling your soul to the devil. Dr. Faustus, in that book, makes a deal with the devil in exchange for his body and soul, that he gives to the devil in the end. The man is to receive supernatural powers, and pleasures, successes, for twenty-four years. The devil agrees to the trade. Dr. Faustus enjoys the pleasures of sin for a season, but his doom is sealed. At the end of the twenty-four years, Faustus attempts to thwart the devil's plans, but he meets a frightful demise, nonetheless.In common speech when somebody's doing really, really well, sometimes you'll hear it's like they must have sold their soul to the devil for it. Something like that. That's where that whole idea comes from.

I want you to know, theologically, Satan has no such authority to make a trade. Satan's going to be very busy on Judgment Day. He will be condemned to the Lake of Fire himself. He has no such power. But he is the one behind the world system that's alluring souls astray. That's what it means when it says the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One.

What is the soul, and what does it mean to lose it? What is your soul? It's more than merely your inner self, like your true self, or your very self, something like that. The idea by that is that, by pursuing worldly things, money, fame, power, pleasure, you'll no longer be true to yourself. You'll kind of lose your true identity kind of thing. You'll stop being the person you want to be. None of your friends that you grew up with will know you anymore. They won't recognize you. You'll have a big head, you'll have been changed. All of that's true, I think, usually, but that's not what Jesus is talking about. Not at all.

For He goes on to discuss the terrorist Judgment Day after the Second Coming. I think it's more than just your physical life, just being alive. The ESV in Matthew 16:26 gives you that sense by its translation."For what would it profit a man if he gains the whole world in forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?" I understand that's a valid way to translate the Greek word behind it, but I don't think that's what Jesus is talking about here.

A number of years ago, I came across a story by Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need?   I've quoted a number of times in a number of sermons, and not going back through it again. But in that story, the central character of the home is just constantly moving on to get a bigger, and bigger, and bigger, chunk of Bashkir land, and ends up literally physically dying, and by the effort, and they take the shovel that he carried with him in the circuit as he was going along this land, and they dug six feet down and buried him. That answered the question Tolstoy was asking, how much land does he need? That much, enough to bury him.

Again, I don't think this is what Jesus is referring to. It is true that the pursuit of these things can have detrimental physical effects on you, it might even lead to your death. But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. We know that, because He's actually challenging His disciples to be willing to die as martyrs, literally to die physically, for Him and for the kingdom. Some will, his apostles, most of them did die as martyrs. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't line up, that’s not what he's talking about, your physical life on earth. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. So that's not what He's referring to. No.

The soul of verse 36, Mark 8:36 is more than that. The soul is that core center of your being. The immaterial part of you, that is able to have a love relationship with God, both now and eternally. It is able to be conscious, aware, it knows, and can relate to and love God. That's what the soul is. It makes you the person you are, unique. To love God, to speak to God, to obey God, to choose God, the core of your being. That's what the soul is, an immaterial part of you housed in the tent of your bodies. Peter talked about the husk, the flesh of your body that was housed there. Physical death is the separation of the soul from the body.

The concept of an immortal soul is not from Greek philosophy, as some scholars will tell you, it's a biblical concept. For what would it be that is absent from the body but present with the Lord but your soul? There is an immaterial part of you that's housed in your body, that's your soul. What does it mean then, to lose your soul? To lose your soul would be to be condemned to hell by Jesus, the judge of all the earth. The soul is in peril, in grave danger, of perishing. As in John 3:16, "What would it profit someone if he or..." John 3:16, "For God's so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not," what? "Perish."

What's the perishing there? It's hell. It's dying forever in hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. To hear Jesus, the judge of all the earth say, as in Matthew 25:41, "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." That's what it means to lose your soul, to hear that spoken about you. That's what it means to lose your soul.

In Luke 16, the rich man was in agony in hell. He yearned for Lazarus to come dip his finger in the water, and cool his tongue in the fire. That's what it means to lose your soul, to be there, in eternal conscious torment. How does that happen? How is the soul thus lost? Jesus in our text pits the pursuit of the world against the welfare of the soul. The seeking of the whole world here, in this sense, is the enemy of your soul. Deeper still, the Bible's answer to this vital question is simple, "By sin is the soul lost,” unforgiven sin. As Jesus makes it plain, souls are lost by Judgment Day's evaluation, the evaluation of the judge of all the earth of your life choices, of what you did with your life.  Matthew 16:27, "For 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." That's Judgment Day. So the great issue of your life is simply this. Will I lose my soul on Judgment Day or not?

To make this clear, He then asks these two penetrating questions, both focus on the terror of that moment on Judgment Day. First of all, a question of profit, verse 36, "What would it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" So here He uses business terms, gain and lost. It's accounting terms in the Greek. Like profit and loss in an accountant's ledger book. It has to do with relative value and worth.

The clear implication is, that the eternal soul is worth more, is worth more than any physical thing in the universe. That's the logic of this. It's an astonishing thought. All of the gold, and the silver, and the diamonds, and the real estate, and all the stuff, the physical stuff of the, if you added it all up, it comes short of the value of a single human soul. That's the logic here. There's not a single human being on earth for which that is not true. It doesn't matter how high or low a person rises economically. You could imagine some orphan in a city, somewhere in Bangladesh, picking through garbage. It would be foolish for that orphan to trade his or her soul for the entire world, physical world, it'd be foolish.  So also, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, same thing. It would be foolish for that individual to trade their soul for the entire world. It would not make a difference if it was an addict, strung out on heroin in Amsterdam, it would be foolish for that person to trade their soul for the entire world. There are no worthless human beings. For no matter what their outward condition, no matter how high or low they've attained in the achievements of the world, how educated or literate, wealthy or poor, it doesn't matter. They have a possession of infinite value, their soul. And to forfeit, to lose that soul, is the most terrifyingly foolish thing that any person could ever do.

Then, it's a question of exchange in verse 37, "Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul?" Again, the language of commerce, of making an equitable trade. I can hardly say the next sentence in my sermon. Imagine yourself hearing, concerning you, this dreadful sentence. "Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." And then, a holy angel is dispatched to tie you hand and foot, and throw you outside into the darkness where there'll be weeping and mashing teeth. The horror of it comes crashing down. You can scarcely believe that it refers to you. You always tried to be a good person, basically a good person, but none of that means anything. You cherish memories of good deeds, or religious moments in your life, or a notion that a God who condemned people is not a God you wanted to be with anyway. All of these things don't mean anything at that moment. All of that reasoning will be blown away like a wispy cobweb at that moment. For now, the sentence has been spoken of you.

As you're nearing the searing heat of the Lake of Fire, what would you give in that moment in exchange for your soul? Of course, it'll be too late then, because you'll have nothing to give. Everything you thought was yours, wasn't yours, it was a stewardship. It's all been taken from you. But imagine, just for argument, that it hadn't. Suppose you still retained your whole, the lot, all of it still yours. What percentage of it would you give at that moment? Up to half for your soul? What would you give in exchange for your soul at that moment? What wouldn't you give? That's the point here.  Then it will be too late.

 The time to face these two questions is now. "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation." [2 Corinthians 6:2]. So the question goes back to your present life. The moment is now. When you can decide what you will love, what you'll pursue, what you'll do with your life, what exchanges you can make. What would you give now that your soul might be saved?  We're not saved by the exchange. you're saved by simple faith in Jesus, like the thief on the cross. You don't earn anything by the exchange, none of that. But we're just following the logic of this verse here.

Is there anything that you now possess that you fear that you would lose if you turned to Christ and followed him fully? Get rid of that fear, it’s hindering your soul. Are you afraid of losing the esteem of your unsaved friends if you followed Christ? Are you afraid of losing a lucrative career if you followed Christ? Are you afraid of not having fun in life if you follow Christ? The pleasures, and joys, and possessions, and freedoms, what do these verses say to you? Cast those fears aside. They are the enemy of your eternal soul. Which of those things could you rightly say, "That's too big a cost for me to pay for my soul.  God, you can have anything but not that.” Is there any such thing for you?

Now, Jesus' two compelling reasons. We'll walk more thoroughly through them next week, God willing, the coming judgment and the coming glory, these are the reasons why. Verse 38, "If anyone's ashamed of me and of my words and this adulterous and sinful generation of him, will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His father's glory with the holy angels?" Matthew 16:27, "For the Son of Man is going to come in His father's glory with His angels and then He'll award each person according to what he has done." Jesus' two great arguments for wisdom about gaining the whole world are clear.  Judgment Day is coming, with the terror and threat of hell standing over every human being on the face of the earth. And secondly, eternal glory is coming. He's coming in the father's glory. The new heaven, the new earth are going to be lit up with that beauty and that glory. You don't want to miss it. Those are the inducements to making a wise choice when it comes to the gospel.

First and foremost, of course, repent and trust in Christ. That's the pressure of these verses. Trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Jesus came to save lost people. The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. That's the issue here of losing a soul. Jesus came to save your soul. Do you not see the infinite worth of Jesus' blood? How one man, the God man, in one day bought the souls, the infinite souls, of a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe, language, people, and nation. It says in Revelation 5, "By your blood, you have purchased people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation." In one day He bought them. Incredible. The worth and value of Jesus's blood. Trust in Christ. Jesus took into himself the wrath of God.

As I was driving this morning here with my daughter, Daphne, we were talking about that story about Elijah, Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. The nation was thoroughly corrupt, and pursuing Baal worship, and also Yahweh worship, depending what day of week it was, I guess. Synchrotistic, worshiping one, worshiping the other. Remember that whole story?  They're all there, Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and they're having a contest. There's been drought, drought, drought, drought on the land. Everybody's desperate for rain. Elijah had prayed that it wouldn't rain, and it didn't rain for three and a half years. Now the time has come for God to deal with the sin that led to that curse, so they're all assembled there. Elijah said, "How long are you going to limp between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him. If Baal is God, then follow him.” But the people remained quiet, kind of sitting on the fence. Disgusting.

The prophets of Baal can't do anything. Now it's Elijah's turn, now it's God's turn. Elijah builds that altar, puts the animal sacrifice on it, pours a bunch of water on it, and just leaves it there. Then he prays. You remember what happened? Fire came from heaven, fire. Now here's the interesting thing. I'd never thought of this before this morning. All the people wanted was rain, water coming down from heaven. But before the water could come, what has to come down from heaven first? Fire. The holy wrath of God on that sinful people.  Do you see where it came down? What did it come down on? It came down on the sacrifice. It came down on the substitute, not on the people, and that animal, like all animal sacrifice, represents Jesus. That's what Jesus drank for you and me on the cross, that we would not lose our souls. Should you not be thankful to Him if you're a Christian? Say, "Thank you, Jesus, for drinking fire for me."

So come to Christ, let him be your substitute. Let him drink the wrath you deserve. Let him take away the condemnation that you deserve. Examine yourself. Make certain that you have trusted in Christ, that your sins are forgiven, that you don't lose your soul on Judgment Day, that you never hear those words spoken about you.

But that's not all. Meditate on the infinite worth of every single person you meet this week. They all have infinitely valuable souls, all of them do. Most of them are on their way to hearing those words spoken about them. Do we have a responsibility toward them on behalf of their infinite souls? We're supposed to value their souls more than they apparently do. And we do that by evangelism. The very ministry we heard about today, international ministry. We can get involved in that. But there are other kinds of ministries. You don't have to wait for a ministry. You can share the gospel with your unsaved coworker this week. Say, "I heard the most interesting sermon. Can I share with you?" Just do that tomorrow. See what God does. We have a responsibility to the lost souls that are around us, each of them of infinite worth and value. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the beauty, and the perfection, and the power of your word. Word of God, living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. We pray that it would penetrate into our souls and save us. Save us from sin, save us from condemnation, oh Lord. And then Lord, send us out, unleash us. Help us to take these ideas and share them with people who need to hear them, who desperately need to hear the truth. We are accountable for the people you brought into our lives. Help us to tell them the truth. In Jesus' name. Amen.