The Ten Questions Jesus Is Asking Christians
Week 4
Question 4. What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul?
Read: Mark 8:36-37
Friends,
I want to repeat a warning our Lord Jesus spoke to his followers, "Take heed that no one deceives you". Friends, there is a great dragon behind all the world of deceptions. He is the father of lies and propaganda, and he has teams of demonic mascarading apostles of deception. Satan has dispatched these often erudite cunning academicians to dispute God's Word. Our sin as a community of faith is that we have welcomed these deceiving doubt dealing demons to live and work among us. These are them who grow, cultivate, and sell the fruits from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Devil isn't trying to help you, he's hellbent on destroying your soul.
" Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." Jesus spoke these words (Matthew 24) as he wrapped up his conversation about his second coming. He'd just completed a dissertation about the end times, and the fact that many who do not hear HIS voice will chase after false testimony about him. He finishes up by comparing these people with a corpse, dying or dead, in the false teaching. And he's saying that he won't be there, but the vultures will. He's saying the misleaders will feed upon these people, even upon their souls. They refused to know Him by his Holy Spirit inspired Word, they ignored His Holy Spirit inspired prophets. And because they lack inspired discernment, they miss even the obvious. They are easily led astray by the panicked crowd, and along with them they will become the predators prey. They'll fear the tribulations and run after all sorts of reports of a miraculous savior.
The world doesn't mind if you have faith, as long as it's of no consequence in your life today, or your witnessing. The demons aren't worried about you and other people like you if you're going along to get along. And so they'll cloak themselves from you as they work among you. They don't fear your consumer driven prayers and religious life. In fact they'll cultivate it. These predators will farm the believers who will chase after superstition and the flesh. They are growing soul food. Demons eat souls. The demons are the slumlords of despair and death. They feed upon our spiritual energies, our sinful thoughts and desires. Our spiritual soul energies, stolen by demons, makes them stronger and the believers weakened. The more evil we allow them to absorb, the more powerful they grow. They send their evil tentacles into our minds (the house of our souls), corrupting whatever they can. They'll destroy all who allow temptations to keep them from obeying God. And amongst all the sinful temptations the world has to offer, Pride is the deadliest demon. Pride feeds on our feelings of self and superiority. The devil felt himself to be equal to, or even better than God, in the same way many human beings feel superior to Jesus' Word. And the world today goes so far to even raise a flag in celebration and allegiance to that humanist Pride.
The souls of those who let themselves be overcome by sins are lost to the demonic vultures. They are forever fed upon by these demons, gnawing on them forever. For many it's probably hard to imagine, but the crowds of many a faith community are populated by carrion being farmed by vultures. Jesus spoke about these people by comparing them to the "days of Noah". They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, unaware regarding the flood around them.
So, who is the believer who can truly say "it is well with my soul"?
Jesus said:
"Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes." (Matthew 24:46)
You may say: "What does that mean?"
I admit, taken out of content it is somewhat ambiguous. Fear not, because the Word is NOT confusing for those who hear his voice. Jesus wastes no time in following up Matthew 24:46 with an explanation of what the alternative wicked servant looks like. That wicked servant beats his fellow servants, and he eats and drinks with drunkards (he's sin sick), he's wasting his gifts and not keeping watch (he's ignorant to the good teachings) and his end is he's put with the weeping and angry hypocrites. And so the explanation of how the blessed servant must live is simply, don't do what the crowds of wicked servants say you should be doing. Don't go along to get along. Don't subject yourself to those who will not accept The Lord's objective truth. The distinguishing quality of all true believers is that "they shall know the truth and the truth will set them free" (John 8:32-36).
All believers receive the same call to reorient their lifestyles around the Gospel, even at the cost of their lives. We are made of body, spirit, and soul (mind). To lose our soul is to lose ourself. The soul is the inner self, one's thought self. In some ways the soul has greater value than spirit and body, because of it's divine origin in eternity. You have a very valuable soul. Made even greater in value because of the fight fought for it, the price paid, and it's destination being prepared for, by our Lord and God Jesus Christ.
Read Hebrews 4:12
The New Testament writer shows us clearly that the spirit and the soul need to be divided and distinguished one from the other. The Holy Spirit, by the Word of God, divides the soul and the spirit to increase discernment. To make clear where human (thought) error and the flawed heart's intent is at work. Unless the soul is offered up to be subdued by the spirit and becomes submissive to the spirit, the soul is against the spirit and will more than likely contradict the spirit. The soul itself is often a contradiction to the spirit.
“The spiritless (soulish) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he is not able to know them because they are discerned spiritually." (1 Corinthians 2:14-15)
Eternal death is far more bitter than any loss of short term happiness here and now. How much earthbound happiness will countervail the loss of eternal life? The realization will be glaringly painful for those who are ashamed of Christ today, on that day when the son of man returns. When His Shekinah brightness reveals the glory of God upon his return, the sight of The King of The Universe will shame the world who rejected him. And those who couldn't sacrifice their lives for his call today, will loose everything. They will not share in his glory to come, for they refused to share in his shame today. The loss of the soul is permanent and irretrievable, it's food for the demons.
A simple litmus test:
What are you worth? What is your value? What would you trade your soul for? Is anything worth more than your soul?
Imagine yourself at the justice bar standing before the judgment seat of God. You're witnessing and listening to your own spoken excuses, and your own thoughts, being played out loud. And then, breaking into that seemingly endless collection of sound bites, you hear in a still small voice:
"What shall it have profited you to gain the whole world, but forfeit your soul?"
What are the consequences?
No exchange being offered.
Redemption rejected is no longer available.
Conclusion and our finishing prayer and blessing:
1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, “Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.
God bless you and keep you. May it forever be well with your soul.
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Jesus said:
“The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Gospel!” (Mark 1:15)
These words may be regarded as a summary of the method of salvation. Repentance and faith are the conditions for adoption into the new Christian covenant. Repentance is a special reference to God the Father and recognition of our offense against him. Faith is a special reference to our Savior Jesus Christ, our righteousness found, not in ourselves by repentance, but found in Him by his grace. Repentance of itself is not sufficient. Without faith repentance becomes despair, and without repentance faith becomes only presumption. Join the two together, and the faithful soul is born again.
Why repentance?
By repentance we give glory to our Creator whom we have offended by our sin.
Why believe (faith)?
Believe the gospel - Literally, trust in the gospel. Trust Jesus and follow him obeying his word. Jesus, the Son of God, Creator of all things, was begotten as a man to witness to the truth, and those who believe are born ...
I so agree with this message...its not unlike the kinds of messages I share in the #KairosPrisonMinistry
There once was a man named Jesus, who was speaking with a man of faith who sought answers about living out his faith, and Jesus commented to the man..."You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’”
And then a little later Jesus added another command...go and sell all your stuff, give it to the poor and follow me. He basically added "love your God" and "love your neighbor".
Notice...in the beginning of the conversation Jesus rattled off the basics that people think about when people are talking about the 10 commandments. The "do nots". The prohibitions against violence, crimes, hatred, all the true crime stuff. You know, the human condition, basically everything we see everyday everywhere all the time. But then he brought the conversation and the faithful religious man back to brass tacks. He basically asked him, "do you love me?" "Do you love my children? He turned the conversation from endless lists of ...
(Read Psalm 139)
The command to love your neighbor as yourself doesn't mean to have a positive self-image or high self-esteem. It means using the same zeal, ingenuity and perseverance to pursue your neighbor’s happiness as you do your own. And the same goes for those people who seem to do whatever it takes to get under our skin. If love among the people of God is to truly reflect God’s love, it will have to include the same love for their enemies as they freely give to friends and family, at least to some degree. This isn't just a New Testament Jesus concept, this love example is all throughout the Old Testament, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls” (Proverbs 24:17). “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat” (Proverbs 25:21). It's not for the people of God to hate their enemies so much so that it kills their joy and removes the transformative power of love.
Our enemies schemes should not so deeply, and so completely cause us to hate them that we become perfectly bitter (Psalm 139:19-22). God works on our behalf to ...
Genesis 2:16-17
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
New Testament Caution
"she who lives in pleasure [self-indulgence] is dead while she lives.
(1 Timothy 5:6)
The Fall
Genesis 3:6
"The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
Satan didn't lie completely. He said their eyes would be opened, and they were. And he wasn't wrong when he said they would be like God in that they'd know between good and evil. His lie was in the "surly die" thing. Spiritual death was the consequence of their sin. They saw the warning label, they ignored it because they desired pleasure, they saw that the tree was "delightful to look at" and they wanted it. The sin of their eyes. The ...
Jesus said:
“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."
(Matthew 24:15-16)
The color of the greatest good is often a cover for the greatest of evils. People are generally fools, they're fooling themselves oftentimes. Deceivers pretend about receiving divine inspiration, they report about an immediate need and a mission given to them by God, and a spirit of prophecy about what's coming soon.
It's not like God didn't warn us. Nothing in fact is talked about more throughout the entire Bible by more prophets than this particular event. Maybe the only more prevalent message in the Bible is the historical record of how often the people of God were caught up in idolatrous politics and lifestyles.
Disciples of Christ must take every precaution that they are not deceived by false Christs. The times will give spawn to every sort of false prophets leading ...
