Turn to the Gospel according to Matthew.
Matthew 16.
Just one verse, Matthew 16:26:
For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?
Or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear heavenly Father, we do rejoice in Thy presence. We praise and thank Thee for Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus. We thank Thee for revealing Thy Son in us.
Lord, our prayer before Thee this morning is that He may be magnified in us. We ask that Thou wouldst, through Thy Word, open our eyes, that we may see what Thy beloved Son sees and be what Thy beloved Son wants us to be.
We just commit this time into Thy hands, trusting Thee for Thy speaking and for Thy working. To Thee we give the glory. In Thy precious name, amen.
In the verse that we have just read, our Lord Jesus Himself tells us the importance of spiritual value. He says, “What does a man profit if he should gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
Here you find our Lord putting the whole world on one side. That is probably more than anyone can imagine. How much is the whole world? Probably the world that we think we know, or that we are seeking after, is only a little bit of the world; but it is already the whole world to us.
Yet here our Lord Jesus actually puts the whole world on one side—everything that the world is, whatever you can think of or even imagine. Then, on the other side, He puts your soul.
He says, “What would it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?” In other words, in the eyes of our Lord, a soul is of more value—much more valuable—than the whole world.
Spiritual things are much more valuable than earthly things. But I think, to our natural mind, it is very difficult to accept this. To our natural mind, we think the world is full of value and the soul has little value.
We usually despise things spiritual. To us, they are vague and abstract, but the world seems to us very real and very valuable. So our thinking is usually very different from the thinking of our Lord Jesus.
Now this morning, we would like to consider together before the Lord: What is value? Where does value come from? Who decides what value is?
I personally believe that God determines value. God Himself is valuable, and out of Him He created all things.
Everything that He creates has value because it manifests something of God. When we look at His created things, we can see His divinity and His power. That expression of His divinity and of His power is the value.
He created man. Why is man to Him more valuable than the whole world? Because He created man in His own image. In other words, there is more of God in man than in the other things He created. Therefore, man is more valuable than the world.
We need to understand the very concept of value. Value is not something that we put on something. True value is set by God. God puts value in a thing, and that is its intrinsic value.
Different things have different value, but there is nothing that has no value of any kind, because it comes out of God. It is very true: spiritual things have more value than earthly things because God is Spirit.
The closer a thing is to God, the more valuable it is. The more it manifests God, the greater its true value.
I believe that in the beginning all things worked together for good. There was nothing, whether spiritual or physical, that was really working against anything else.
In the beginning, everything worked together for the glory of God. Whether heavenly or earthly, whether spiritual or physical, they all worked together for the glory of God.
That is what you see in the Garden of Eden before sin entered into the world. God planted a beautiful garden, a garden of pleasure, and He put man in the garden.
In the garden, you had all kinds of fruit trees, good to look at and good to eat. God provided all these physical things for man to live and to enjoy. In the midst of the garden, God put the tree of life.
There is nothing better than the tree of life, because the tree of life is a tree that expressed the life of God. If you ate of the tree of life, you received the very divine life of God. What could be more excellent than that tree?
Also by its side was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, we often think that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a bad tree. Do you think God would put anything bad in the Garden of Eden?
As a matter of fact, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was better than all the other trees except the tree of life. All the other trees were for physical needs. God created us with a body, so He provided the means of sustaining this physical body.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was actually food for the soul. The soul is more important than the body. We need knowledge—knowledge of good and evil—which is rational and ethical.
As a matter of fact, this kind of knowledge is the highest knowledge in the world. It is higher than scientific knowledge or speculative knowledge. It is moral knowledge. That is the highest kind of knowledge, and it is food for the soul.
But of course the Lord said:
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Now, why was it so? I think the tree itself was not a bad tree, but God put it there for two reasons.
First, God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil there so that man might choose what he wanted to be. Man could decide for himself what was more valuable to him.
God set a value there, but whether man would agree with God concerning His value was another matter. God gave man a choice, an exercise of free will, to show whether he wanted the best or whether he wanted the better.
But the better becomes the enemy of the best. Without the life of God, knowledge will kill. You know what is right, yet you cannot do it. You know what is wrong, yet you do it.
How much better if you did not have that kind of knowledge! I think babies are more fortunate, because when they are doing things, they do not have that knowledge of good and evil. They are not responsible; God does not hold them responsible.
But as we grow up, that is different. God holds us responsible. In our experience, we know that knowledge really kills. It condemns us and brings us to death.
Sometimes I think—and of course this is speculative—if Adam had eaten the tree of life first, would God have continued to forbid him to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? I do not know.
But I would say that all things would work together for good. In our own experience, we find this out: without the life of God, this knowledge of good and evil kills; but with the life of God, this knowledge of good and evil brings glory to God.
So you see, God put that tree in the garden to give man an opportunity to decide for himself what was most valuable to him: God or himself.
The second reason is this: God gave such a commandment. Every tree you could eat—how wide that liberty was! But there was only one limitation.
God put that limitation upon man in order to show man that even though he was over all things, he was under God.
God gave man dominion over the fowls of the air, the animals on the earth, the creeping things, and the fishes in the sea. Man was above all God’s created things on earth, but God wanted to remind man that He was above all.
When you are above all, you tend to forget that you are below One. That is a great temptation.
Probably that was the reason Lucifer fell. In a sense, he was created the most beautiful archangel, above all; but he forgot that he was below One.
Maybe for that reason God used this commandment to remind man: “Remember this: you are below. That is your place. If you remain in your place, you will be above all; but if you do not remain in your place, you will lose everything.”
So, brothers and sisters, before sin entered into this world, everything that God created had its intrinsic value, and all worked together for the glory of God. Everything was in its proper place and proper order.
But unfortunately, our forefathers made the wrong choice. Adam and Eve chose their own lives instead of choosing God.
To them, their own soul life was more important, more valuable, than God. They wanted to develop their own soul life, to make themselves great. They did not need to depend upon God; they would be as gods themselves.
They were tempted by the enemy, and they fell into his trap. In trying to gain their soul, they lost their soul. They not only lost their soul, but they lost the world too.
Since then, you find that the enemy took hold of the world—the created things that God had entrusted to man to have dominion over, to rule for God, and to bring everything into the field of God for His glory.
Because man failed and surrendered himself to the enemy, Satan—not by right, but by a devious way—took the world from man and became the ruler of this world.
He took God’s created things, organized them together into a system, a cosmos, over which he rules. He used the things of this world that God had created to oppose God.
Under his control, the world has a negative value instead of a positive value. The value has changed.
There is nothing wrong with eating and drinking. We have to eat, and we have to drink. That is legitimate.
But the enemy has made eating and drinking into the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The world is now against our spiritual life instead of supporting it.
The nature has changed. The value has changed. It no longer has a positive value; its value is negative.
The same thing happened to our soul. Instead of using our soul to love God with all our soul, to will God’s will, and to think on the things above, the soul has fallen.
It has become self-centered, trying to enrich its soul life by seeking the things of the world. But in doing that, man not only will not have the world; he will even lose his soul life.
Our Lord Jesus said to His disciples:
Whosoever would save his life shall lose it:
And whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.
Value has changed. Our whole concept of value is not what it ought to be. Our sense of value has lost its direction.
We value the things that are hurtful to our spiritual life, and we despise the things that are helpful to our spiritual life. As far as we are concerned, brothers and sisters, I can even go further.
We may sometimes mentally agree about what is more valuable, but to really value what should be valued, we cannot do it.
Because there is value, there is a cost. Anything that has value has a price, a cost.
So here our Lord Jesus says, “What profit do you really get if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?” In other words, if you want the world, your soul will be the price for it.
You do not gain the world freely. God gave the world to us freely, but the enemy will not give you the world freely. If you want to have the world, he says, “Give me yourself.”
Even if you gain the whole world, how long will you have it? But your soul will continue. It is an exchange.
In this world today, you do not have anything free. It is an exchange. You exchange your soul for the world, and the Lord says that is a loss, not a gain.
That is the reason why our Lord Jesus came into this world. Brothers and sisters, as far as we human beings are concerned, we are fallen. Our sense of value is totally distorted—upside down.
We value the things that we should not value, and we despise the things that we should treasure. It is not just a matter of a little knowledge or a little teaching. There must be a drastic change.
That is why our Lord Jesus came into this world: to show us what real value is. His whole life is a demonstration of spiritual value.
We find that throughout His whole life, He was not seeking earthly gain. He had opportunities. Even when He was in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, Satan showed Him the whole world and all its riches.
Satan said, “Just bow to me; it is all Yours. Give me Your soul, and all this will be Yours.”
Our forefather Adam fell; he did it. But thank God for the second Man. The whole world was offered to Him, and He said:
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.
In other words, He chose God, the supreme value of the universe. He rejected the world, saving His soul.
When our Lord Jesus was on earth and began to preach, people flocked to Him. They loved to hear Him. They said He spoke differently from the Pharisees and scribes, because He spoke with authority. He healed the sick, and He was a friend of sinners.
In the beginning, they thought He was probably the Messiah. Especially when He used five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand, they said, “He must be the Messiah,” and they wanted to force Him to be king.
You do not need to force anyone to be king. They will force their way through to be king. But here they tried to force the Lord to be king, and the Lord sent them away.
He even sent His disciples away, because His disciples liked it very much that He should be king. Then He went to the mountain and prayed.
Brothers and sisters, He was demonstrating to the world what true value is. God is the supreme value.
Anything outside of God, no matter how good it may look, has no value—indeed, it has negative value. Only when things are in God is their value preserved.
You find that the whole life of our Lord Jesus was governed by one principle: “My Father’s will.” He would not lift His finger to do a thing for Himself.
During the temptation, He had fasted forty days and forty nights, and He was hungry because He was human. The enemy said, “If Thou art the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.” Of course He could have done it.
But our Lord said:
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
He would rather be hungry than do something against the will of God. Why? Because He valued God’s will more than His own life.
When the children of Israel saw that He was different—that He did not want to be king, that He had no ambition in this world, and that He was only trying to bring people to God for their spiritual good—they grew tired of Him and rejected Him.
So our Lord retreated to the border of Caesarea Philippi, which was a Gentile city. During His rejection, He asked His disciples, “Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am?”
They gave Him all the good reports. Some said that He was John the Baptist come back to life. Others said Elijah, that great prophet. Others said Jeremiah, because our Lord wept.
Is it not strange? In the Bible, you cannot find a place where the Lord laughed, but a number of times He wept and groaned. That does not mean that our Lord lived a very unhappy life, because joy and laughter are two different things.
Joy is something within. Our Lord was full of joy. Even when He was rejected by Capernaum, Chorazin, and all these places, He could turn His heart to the Father and say:
I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
That Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding,
And didst reveal them unto babes.
He was full of joy. Some people said He was the prophet that Moses prophesied in Deuteronomy: one whom God would raise up, and whoever rebelled against or disobeyed Him would perish.
But the Lord was not satisfied. He asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am? You have been with Me for three years. Who do you say that I am?”
Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The Lord said, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
What a revelation! Then, after the revelation, the Lord began to reveal to His disciples for the first time that He was going to Jerusalem, that He would be rejected, scourged, and put to death; but on the third day He would rise again.
Peter took hold of the Lord and said, “Lord, do not do it. Never. This is not necessary. You can have the world without giving up Your soul.”
The Lord turned around and said, “Get thee behind Me, Satan.” This was not Peter; this was Satan, because Peter did not set his mind on the things of God, but on the things of men.
Brothers and sisters, you see man’s concept of value. Our brother mentioned last night the value of the cross. It is very true.
Because of the sin of the world, because of our fall, the only way our Lord could redeem us back to true value was through the cross.
He would not be the Christ if He did not go to the cross. You cannot have a crossless Christ. Without the cross, He could not fulfill the mission for which the Father sent Him into this world.
The Father sent Him into this world not merely to demonstrate to the world what a true man is—a man after God’s heart, a man of God’s original design, a man who knows true value and expresses true value.
If it were only a demonstration, then on the Mount of Transfiguration He could have exited from this world, because He had the right to go to the Father. But then there would have been only one Man in heaven.
In order to deliver our souls and bring us back to true value, our Lord Jesus had to go to the cross.
There on the cross, not only were our sins borne by our Lord, and because of His shed blood our sins are forgiven—thank God for that—but it was also on the cross that His soul was poured out like water.
He gave up His soul. On the cross, our old man was crucified with Him.
This soul of man, which has fallen and has every value distorted, has to go through the cross to death. Out of that comes resurrection: the glorious life of the risen Lord.
The Lord has already accomplished the work of salvation. In other words, it is finished.
When we come to the Lord, not only are our sins forgiven, but our old man was crucified with Him. That is why the Apostle Paul could say:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
And that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Now, brothers and sisters, we who have believed in the Lord Jesus, we who have His blood sprinkled upon our conscience, we who have been saved, we who have His life in us and His Spirit in us—our problem now is this.
If we still continue to live by our old flesh, which is possible, then our whole sense of value will be upside down.
Sometimes I think that, mentally, we Christians all understand that spiritual value is more important than physical things. We all know that. But the problem is that it does not work.
We know it, but it does not work. It seems that we are knowingly going in the wrong direction. The world still has such attraction and such power over us.
The world is still working against us spiritually. It is still demanding our soul, and we are still giving in. It is a strange situation.
How can we be fully restored to the value that God has set? Or, to put it this way, how can we really value God above all these things?
The secret is what the Lord said:
Whosoever would save his life shall lose it;
And whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.
Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me. Otherwise, you cannot be My disciple.
Brothers and sisters, the work is done. The possibility is there. The power is there. But we need to respond by faith.
Yet unless the Lord opens our eyes and gives us a glimpse of His glory—if only we can see Him in His glory—then we will be able to let go of ourselves.
Otherwise, if we do not see the unseen, for us to deny ourselves is impossible.
This is true in the Old Testament as well as in New Testament times. Take Abraham. It was because the Lord of glory appeared to him that he was enabled to leave his native place and his kindred and go to the place where God had called him.
The New Testament explains to us what Abraham did. In Genesis, all we can see is that he left Ur of the Chaldees because the glory of the Lord appeared to him. He obeyed the Lord and went to Canaan, the promised land.
Throughout his life, he was only a sojourner there. Yet he believed that God had promised and would fulfill His promise, giving him the land and also the seed.
But in the New Testament, we find that his faith went further than that. Our Lord Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad.”
In other words, Abraham saw in his seed, Isaac, even the days of Christ. He was not seeking an earthly piece of land; he was waiting for the city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. He was looking forward to the New Jerusalem.
How could he do that? Because the glory of the Lord appeared to him. That enabled him to despise temporary earthly things and to seek that which is spiritual and eternal—the true value.
The same thing was true with Moses. The Bible says that Moses chose rather to suffer reproach with God’s people than to enjoy all the riches of Egypt. Why? Because he had seen the unseen.
Brothers and sisters, we need to ask the Lord to really give us a sight of Himself. If we see Him, then the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
It is not something that we force ourselves to do: “I will try not to love the world. I will try to be ascetic.” No.
It is because we have seen the Lord. In seeing Him, we cannot but follow Him.
Then you discover that when you really seek the Lord as your true value, everything will return to its normal order.
Even in eating and drinking, do not think that because you are spiritual and seek spiritual things, therefore you do not eat and do not drink.
The Lord Jesus, when He was on earth, ate and drank, even with sinners and publicans. The Pharisees said, “How can You, a holy Man, do that?”
Even the disciples of John came to the Lord and said, “Why is it that Your disciples do not fast?”
Brothers and sisters, it is true: if your value is not corrected—if you do not see the value of the spiritual, the value of God—then all these physical and earthly things will work against you. They become lusts. They become something deadly to your life.
But if you really let the Lord be your true value, your true treasure, you will eat and drink to the glory of God.
Even all these earthly things will fall into their right place. They will not be against you; they will support you. Value will be restored to its proper order.
Finally, value is according to purpose. God has a purpose, and it is out of that purpose that He created all things. Then He created us, man, according to that purpose.
That purpose is that all things will be summed up in Christ Jesus, in His Son. That is the purpose.
Whenever something is in line with His purpose, there is value—true value. If there is anything out of that line, no matter how good it may look, it has no value, no eternal value. On the contrary, it may have negative value.
So it is important in our lives to see this purpose. Brothers and sisters, we are not created for ourselves. We are created for Him.
God has created us for our Lord Jesus. We are to be His bride.
It is not good for man to be alone; God will make him a help meet for him. Brothers and sisters, we are to be His help meet. We ought to be like Him so that we can be joined to Him and be His satisfaction, His fulfillment.
That is purpose. That is the purpose of our life.
Every day we live, we live for that purpose. Everything we do, we do with that purpose in view.
Why do I eat? Why do I drink? That I may live for Him.
The way we use our time, the way we do our job, the way we live in our family, the way we live in the church, and the way we live in this world—brothers and sisters, everything that adds to that purpose has value.
Your days are not wasted. But if a day does not add to that purpose, it is a wasted day.
The Lord is coming soon. We do not have much time to waste. It is time for us to wake up.
It is time for us to see true value—spiritual value. Let us pray.
Lord, we do acknowledge that words are useless unless Thou speakest.
Lord, we pray that Thou wilt speak to each heart, that we may not only know mentally but, Lord, that experientially we will really seek only Thee.
Because all spiritual values are in Thee, may our every day count for eternity, and may Thou be glorified. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.