A single lady was asked for her favorite verse of scripture. She said it was Matthew 16:24, “If any man will come after me, let him....”
She was referring, of course, to the verse in Matthew’s Gospel that reads like this in the King James Version: “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
Mark records this same teaching. It reads like this in the New International Version of the Bible: Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Then Jesus adds these powerful words, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
Sometime back a young man put his soul up for sale on eBay, the Internet auction site. Adam Burtle, a University of Washington student, sold his soul for $400 before the listing was removed and he was suspended from the site. “Please realize, I make no warranties as to the condition of the soul,” he wrote. “As of now, it is near mint condition, with only minor scratches. Due to difficulties involved with removing my soul, the winning bidder will either have to settle for a night of yummy Thai food and cool indie flicks, or wait until my natural death.’’
EBay has blocked similar auctions in the past, but somehow Burtle’s offer slipped through. The bidding started at 5 cents. Burtle’s former girlfriend bid $6.66 but she was overtaken in the final hour of the auction when a Des Moines, Iowa, woman bid the price of Burtle’s soul to $400. “I don’t think she’s going to be able to collect on my soul, to be honest,’’ Burtle said, adding he didn’t intend for the ad to be taken seriously. “I was just bored, and I’m a geek,’’ he added. “So anytime I’m bored, I go back to my Internet.’’ (1)
My guess is that over the centuries many people have sold their soul simply and solely because they were bored. Talk about a bad bargain. “What good is it,” asked Jesus, “for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”
Our text assumes that we do not live in a world that is simply material. There is a spiritual side to our universe.
A few years ago popular rock singer Madonna sang a song of praise to Material Girl. The chorus says, [We are] Living in a material world . . . And I am a material girl . . .” (2) Madonna often remarks that this is the one song she most regrets recording. Material Girl became her nickname. She has also said if she had known this, she probably would have never recorded it.
Well, it stuck and she has had to work very hard to get people to quit thinking of her in that light a material girl. Actually, to many of us, she seems to be a very confused woman. Let’s face it, though, many people in this world live as if this is only a material world.
Not long after Jesus taught about gaining the world and forfeiting one’s soul, there lived a man named Nero. You’ve heard his name before, as in “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” That may be apocryphal, but we do know that this Roman emperor lived in glorious splendor. He commanded that gorgeous porches a mile long be built around his palace. The ceiling of his banquet hall was equipped at great expense with hidden showers that lightly sprayed perfume upon all who came to visit him. His crown was worth a half million dollars, and his mules were shod with silver. Whenever he traveled, a thousand chariots accompanied him, and he refused to wear the same garment twice no matter how costly and beautiful it was. Taxing the people unmercifully, he was able to pay extravagant sums of money to anyone who could devise new methods of entertaining him. Yet with all his riches and splendor he was a peevish, gloomy, dissatisfied man. The immense wealth he had amassed could not satisfy his soul. In spite of having every pleasure this world can afford, Nero took his own life. (3)
It happens. People seek after wealth, they seek fame, they seek sensual pleasure, they seek every means of escape, but if they do not seek God, if they live only in a material world, they never attain satisfaction.
Some of you know the story of a young man who was born in a log cabin in Oregon. His parents were hippies and they named him for the river of life. Not the river of life found in scripture but the river of life found in a novel by Hermann Hesse.
River Phoenix was one of the most respected young actors of his generation. He and his siblings broke into show business at a young age, and he was soon helping to support his family, ultimately buying his parents a farm. In 1985, he starred in his first movie, Stand by Me. This was followed by several other roles. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role in 1988’s Running on Empty. He also played the young Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. For one film he won the National Society of Film Critics’ best actor award. He had it all fame, wealth, the respect of his peers and yet his life ended on a dirty curb outside the Viper Room, a trendy West Hollywood nightclub, in the wee hours of Halloween 1993 as the result of a massive drug overdose. He was only twenty‑three. Witnesses say that River was hardly noticed by passersby as he went into convulsions on the sidewalk outside the club. (4)
What happened to River Phoenix? I don’t know, but I suspect that it had something to do with the condition of his soul. Please, do not misunderstand. I am not standing in judgment. None of us has that right. But we can express our sorrow at the waste of a talented young life. Whatever River Phoenix was searching for in life, he obviously didn’t find it. “What good is it,” asked Jesus, “for a man to gain the whole world fame, fortune, adulation yet forfeit his soul?”
King Charlemagne lived from 742 to 814 A.D. He conquered much of Western Europe, including France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, parts of Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. Everywhere Charlemagne’s troops went, they spread education and the Christian religion. His rule unified and stabilized much of Europe, making him one of the most powerful rulers in history. Yet, in spite of all of Charlemagne’s power, he arranged at his death to have his body displayed with his hand resting on our verse for today: “What good is it, for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (5) Charlemagne knew such an exchange was a bad bargain indeed. This is more than a material world.
And we are more than material beings. That’s the second thing that this text implies. We are more than material beings. As the eminent philosopher Teilhard de Chardin put it so memorably, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” That sounds very New Age, but there is a measure of truth to it. “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” In other words, we have a soul. Or better yet, we are a soul.
Some of you may know the story of James Kidd. James Kidd was a lonely man. He lived on the edge of deprivation. He spent most of his life in a rugged copper mining town in Arizona. But Kidd was deeply troubled. On January 2, 1946 he sat down and wrote out his will. Four years later he disappeared and was never heard from again. Authorities responsible for the settlement of his will, sixteen years after his disappearance, discovered that he had left almost $200,000 for “research for some scientific proof of a soul of a human body which leaves at death.” (6)
Many have searched to find a spot in the body which they could identify as the soul. It is fruitless. You will find the soul in the same place you find love, hope, peace, joy and a host of other positive emotions. You can capture none of these emotions in a test tube, but we know they exist. Just because we cannot see love, for example, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We know it exists. We’ve seen love in action. And just because you cannot find a physical location for the soul within our body does not mean it does not exist.
We have a soul. Some scholars would prefer to say we are a soul. Our soul is who we really are.
Paganini, the great violinist, came out before his audience one day and made the discovery just as the applause ended that there was something wrong with his violin. He looked at it a second and then saw that it was not his famous and valuable violin, but a cheap substitute. He felt paralyzed for a moment, then turned to his audience and told them there had been some mistake and he did not have his own violin. He stepped back behind the curtain thinking that it was still where he had left it, but discovered that someone had stolen his violin and left this old secondhand one in its place. Paganini remained back of the curtain for a moment, then came out before his audience and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, I will show you that the music is not in the instrument but in the soul.” And he played as he had never played before; and out of that secondhand instrument, the music poured forth until his audience was enraptured with enthusiasm, and the applause almost lifted the roof off the building, because the man had revealed to them that the music was not in the machine but in his own soul. (7)
Don’t let anyone tell you that the soul does not exist. We were created in the image of God. That doesn’t mean God looks like us. It means there is something divine within us.
The soul is who you are. It is what makes you distinctive. You are more than a nose and a mouth and a pair of ears, etc. You have a distinct personality. Even if we could eliminate all your physical characteristics, you the real you would still exist. That’s your soul.
Pre-eminent atomic scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun once spoke these comforting words, “Science . . . tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace . . . Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. Now, if God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn’t it make sense to assume that He applies it also to the masterpiece of His creation the human soul? And everything science has taught me and continues to teach me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.”
This is more than a material world. We are more than simply material creatures. We have a soul, a soul that, by the grace of God, even survives the grave. And so Jesus says to us, take care of your soul. If your soul is all that survives you after death, you ought to take care of it. In fact taking care of your soul the real you is the most important task you and I have. Think about that for a moment. Take care of your soul. Take care of who you are.
You may remember an incident that took place in December 2005. Al Ginglen, a sixty‑four‑year‑old grandfather of seven robbed a series of small banks in Illinois to cover an ever‑deeper financial hole he had gotten himself into. The amazing part was that it was his three grown sons who turned him in after one of the sons recognized his father’s picture, taken from a bank surveillance video, on an Internet law enforcement Web site. Al Ginglen’s sons turned their father in because he had raised them to do what was right. Yet such is the power of money that he failed to do what was right himself. (8)
Isn’t that sad? A good man. A decent man. A grandfather who raised his sons right. But, in effect, he sold his soul to get himself out of debt. He didn’t gain the world in return. He was more like Esau who sold his birthright for a pot of stew (Genesis 25:24-34). When will we learn?
Contrast the story of that grandfather with another father who tells about his little girl. She was riding in the backseat of their dilapidated Honda Civic when she said, “Daddy, I wish everyone was as rich as we are. (9)
There is a family with its priorities in order. She was rich in the backseat of their dilapidated Honda Civic. It’s easy to forget, isn’t it? This is more than a material world, and we are more than material beings. We have a soul. We need to take care of that soul. Don’t sell that soul for anything. Money, power, sex don’t sell it for anything. Even if you are offered the whole world. Walk away. It’s still a bad, bad bargain.
1. The Associated Press, 2001.
2. By Peter Brown and Robert Rans, http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alan.stuart/music/madonna/material.html.
3. Illusaurus
4. Tommy Nelson, The 12 Essentials of Godly Success (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2005), pp. 61-62.
5. William Beausay II., The Leadership Genius of Jesus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997), p. 45.
6. Bruce Shelley, All The Saints Adore Thee, Baker Books, 1988, p. 46.
7. Anthony P. Castle, ed., “Go Tell Everyone,” in Quotes and Anecdotes for Preachers and Teachers, p. 207. Cited by Fuller, Gerard, O.M. I. Stories for All Seasons (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996), pp. 128-129.
8. Stephen Arterburn, The Secrets Men Keep (Nashville: TN, Integrity Publishers, 2006), pp. 4-5.
9. Annette Simmons, The Story Factor (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001).