(Text Only)
Title: Who’s Life Do You Want?
(From floor)
- “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it…”
To save your life, it must first be lost.
Lost to what?
Lost to the world, lost to sin, lost to ourselves, lost to our desires. We must let go to move forward.
(Story on nature channel of the Aborigine and the monkey and how he got water.)
There are countless examples in life of how we need to let go to move forward. How we need to let go of the past (The Christian would call this turning these things over to the sovereignty of God) in order to grow and move forward.
- The death of a loved one, especially a parent or child. We must recognize that God’s timing does not always make sense to us, but he is never wrong, always just, and never ceases in his love for his children. This is truth good to remember. The reason why we mourn the loss of a 90 year old grandmother of 13 differently than we mourn the loss of a newborn is not because of death itself, it’s because of God’s timing.
- In athletic competition, we need to realize that we will never succeed if we are haunted by past failures. (Michael Jordan commercial: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games, 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot, and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”)
- In our walk with Christ! We will fail. The measure of the maturity of a believer is not how many times we fail, although that seems to be how we evaluate ourselves and each other…no, the measure of the maturity of a believer is what we do after we’ve fallen.
- Others?
Also, and this will come up again in a moment, there is a very important word in the first have of this verse that can’t be ignored. The word is WILL. This is a necessary cause and effect relationship. Because Jesus uses the world “WILL” this is an implicit statement.
In other words, Jesus could have said, “You can’t save your life without first losing it.”
POINT: So what is Jesus reminding us of in this simple, yet profound statement? It’s all about faith, about trust. We have to do something that seems horrible unnatural to the lost world: We have to relinquish control of our lives. We have to give up our own jurisdiction (and the mature believer often comes to realize that this “control” was an illusion anyway, we don’t control what happens next, God does) So we give up this jurisdiction, trusting, in faith, that God’s plan for our lives is superior to our plan for our lives.
- “…but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
Jesus next says something that is one of the most encouraging reminders in all of scripture, and I want to carefully touch on a few of these points this morning.
First of all, I want to start with a question, because I think we often miss this. We don’t necessary mean to, but it really encourages us if we stop and think about what type of statement this is.
It has to do with one simple word in this phrase…the word “will”
“…but whoever loses his life for My sake WILL find it.”
That statement is a Biblical _________. (take answers: promise)
This is a guarantee, from the Son of God, that if we “lose” ourselves for His purposes, we will find it, guaranteed.
It doesn’t say that whoever loses his life for My sake MAY find it, or PROBABLY will find it. It says WILL. It is a promise.
A promise is only as good as the promiser, right?
Well, who is most trustworthy that Christ himself?
Do you see what illogical foolishness it is to NOT lose your life for the sake of Christ? (I’ve always thought that Mr. Spock would be a brilliant Christian Theologian because of the way his mind works…)
The second point I want to highlight is the qualification of losing one’s life. The verse does not read “…but whoever loses his life will find it.” There is a clear qualifier in there. It is only those who lose their lives for the sake of Christ that will find it.
Q: Why do you think I bring this up?
A: Because there are literally billions of people on the planet right now for whom you could say, “Yes, they’ve renounced many of the same worldly selfish things that I have as well. Yes, their lives are not about themselves…but on the other hand, these people’s lives are not about Christ either.
Their lives are about:
- False religions that don’t recognize Jesus as the Son of God and only way to heaven.
- Their own, custom built philosophies.
- A belief in nothing, or a vague belief of the unknown. (Agnostics/Atheists.)
- Others?
Finally, I’d like for us to think about the word “it.” We rightly believe that what Jesus is saying is that those who lose their own lives for the sake of Jesus will find their “real” life. Or “their life in Christ.”
That is a totally acceptable conclusion, and I don’t disagree with it. But what I want us to dwell on as we close for a moment is the staggering nature of this question:
How much more fulfilling do you believe Christ’s life FOR you will be than your life for yourself.
Said another way: How much better is God’s plan for you than your own?
Well, right off the bat, I can think of one great advantage of God’s plan, and some of you are already thinking this: The end destination is quite a bit favorable under God’s plan.
And while that’s a perfectly fine conclusion, it’s not really where I want our focus to be today. I want us, knowing the perfect character of God, knowing his perfect love for his chosen children, knowing his perfect timing, to consider this reality:
The life that God desires for us, from this exact moment, to the moment of our physical death, is in every conceivable way, more fulfilling than the any life we could possibly chose for ourselves.
It will not be easy, but better.
We may be poorer, but better.
We may not reach fame, but still better.
He knows exactly who we are, and what our desires are, because he made us. He also knows exactly what we need to continue the refiner’s fire so that the impurity will burn off, and only the image of Christ remains.
What, is better than that?