EOLS: Jesus says if we live our lives focused on our own desires and plans, it will come to utter nothingness and death, but if we will trust Him and give our life to Him, we will see the true, best life that God has prepared for us.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his
cross, and follow Me.
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life
for My sake will find it.
For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
(Mat 16:24-26)
Adjunct Scripture: John 12:20-25 Jeremiah 39 and 39
In my latest journey through the Old Testament, I found myself gripped by a simple story of a shadowy character, briefly mentioned by the Prophet Jeremiah in the chronicle of the sad final days before the Babylonian Captivity.
The shadowy character was a foreigner named Ebed-Melech, the slave of King Zedekiah during those terrible trying days as the Babylonian war machine approached. Ebed-Melech was an Ethiopian eunuch. We don’t know a lot about him, but what we are shown is an amazing and instructive picture. It gripped my heart and I found tears in his story. I have returned to Jeremiah’s brief telling of his story again and again, and I find myself challenged by it to emulate this otherwise very common man who lives among very uncommon heroes of faith in the hall of Holy History.
Ebed-Melech had likely been captured, perhaps as a very young man as a spoil of war or in some political exchange. He had been castrated, forever branding him as an enslaved one. He had no chance to marry, raise a family or build a business. Ebed-Melech’s future had been decided by an ancient and barbaric practice, his hopes and dreams had been subjugated to the desires and whims of the royal class. He was bought, sold, traded and bartered like cattle. Eunuchs were considered to be “safe” from political ambition because they could not father children, and were often used as personal servants of the king. They were considered expendable because they had no family ties or history, and could be killed and replaced with no problem.
Ebed-Melech was a well-trusted and well-liked man who had the ear of the King himself. From the movies, I think of him as a towering man with bulging muscles ripping through glistening ebony skin, with a huge cutlass on his belt!
We find this loyal eunuch at a critical point in the story of God’s people. The winds of war are very near. Judgment is about to fall upon Jerusalem.
There was a man who was known as the “weeping prophet” and his name was Jeremiah. For years he had cried in the streets by the Spirit of God about the coming wrath of Jehovah upon Judah. He would weep and beg God’s people to turn to Him. As the wrath of God approached from Babylon, Jeremiah began to wail and implore the King and his subjects to surrender to Nebuchednezzar and God’s plan so that their lives might be spared.
Ignoring the warnings, Judah readied its battle apparatus as the most powerful army on earth, empowered by God’s sovereign will to exact His just judgment made its way towards the City of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah’s warnings placed him in great danger. King Zedekiah, a wicked and perverse man finally allowed his princes to cast him into a deep pit full of mud where sank into the mire. Can you imagine being in utter darkness? The stench was unbearable. Every breath must have been labored and painful as his tortured body was suspended in the most vile mixture of soil, excrement, decaying animals…he was literally dying in a vile, horrific cesspool.
As Jeremiah lay in the pit, slowly dying and forgotten, left to starve because there was no more bread in the city- the Eunuch heard of his plight. Ebed-Melech knew Jeremiah, and had likely been privy to his ministry as he had cried in the streets and prophesied by the Spirit of God.
Somewhere along the way, God had touched the heart of this foreign slave, and He knew that Jehovah was the One True God. He had heard and responded to the Word of the Lord. God’s man was in grave danger, and Ebed-Melech, the King’s personal servant whose life was considered highly expendable, knew what he had to do.
He could have been decapitated by an executioner almost instantly. He could have been consumed in a furnace and no one would have ever known or cared. The only thing that Ebed-Melech had was his own life to give. If he kept his mouth shut, he would continue in his royal position as Zedekiah’s personal servant. Yet if he obeyed the voice that he heard inside, instant death was a likely result.
He must’ve summoned every ounce of courage in his being as he approached His Majesty on that fateful day.
Ebed-Melech went out of the king’s house and spoke to the king, saying: "My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon, and he is likely to die from hunger in the place where he is. For there is no more bread in the city."
(Jeremiah 38:8-9)
Knowing that the enraged King had given Jeremiah to the princes to silence him, Ebed must have expected the very worst. To disagree with the king, or to suggest that his decree was not just was to risk life and limb. Surely he would die, possibly in the pit with his friend Jeremiah.
Yet to his delight and surprise, King Zedekiah said:
"Take from here thirty men with you, and lift Jeremiah the prophet out of the dungeon before he dies."
(Jeremiah 38:10)
Ebed-Melech wasted no time getting to the pit. Not only did he bring men and ropes, Ebed brought some old clothes so that he could fashion a cushioned lift to retrieve God’s Prophet from the mire. Some tugging would certainly be necessary and the retrieval process itself could have severely injured the frail, emaciated Jeremiah.
God’s Prophet had been spared to continue the ministry, because of the obedience of an Ethiopian Eunuch who obeyed God and laid his own life on the line for his friend.
Zedekiah spoke with Jeremiah and once again refused his counsel from God to submit to His wrath which would be brought from the hands of the Babylonians. Zedekiah saw the face of Nebuchednezzar King of Babylon as warriors killed his sons before his eyes. It was the last thing he saw-his eyes were punched out and he was led captive as the Babylonians ravaged Jerusalem.
As Nebuchednezzar oversaw the carnage and rubble of the defeated Jerusalem, he encountered this strange Prophet named Jeremiah, still imprisoned in the king’s courts.
Yet instead of killing him along with the others, he ordered that no one harm Jeremiah, and he consigned him to his captain Nebuzaradan to keep him safe. God’s favor rested upon Jeremiah and once again, God spared his life.
But as Jeremiah sat waiting in the court prison, he heard the voice of the Lord yet again. He remembered the Ethiopian who had saved his life, and God said:
"Go and speak to Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying, ’Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: "Behold, I will bring My words upon this city for adversity and not for good, and they shall be performed in that day before you.
But I will deliver you in that day," says the Lord, "and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword;
(Jeremiah 39:16-17)
Ebed-Melech had trusted in the Lord. He heard His voice, and in the face of grave danger, he counted his life as nothing! He literally gave his life away.
And because of his obedience, he reaped a prophet’s reward. And the word of the Lord came to him saying…
but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in Me," says the Lord.’ "
(Jeremiah 39:18)
Your life as a prize! The Hebrew word used is shaw-lal, it means a booty, a prey, a spoil of war.
Ebed-Melech lost his life and counted it nothing. The good life he had as the servant to King Zedekiah meant nothing to him, because he trusted God. God saved his life and gave it back to him –as a prize!
John Gill put it this way (speaking of the Ebed-Melech story)
His life shall be safe; be like a prey taken out of the hand of the mighty,
and be enjoyed beyond expectation, having been given up for lost; and therefore matter of the greater joy
An “unexpected and unlooked for gain” (Barnes) is what Ebed-Melech received. It was not a payment, it was not a work-reward system. Ebed simply trusted God with His life!
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct [3] your paths.
(Pro 3:5-6)
Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him.
(Job 13:15)
And in His infinite mercy and loving-kindness, God imparted His life to him, like a prize!
The Word which had been spoken by Jeremiah through the power of the Holy Spirit had pierced the heart of this Ethiopian. He gave his life away…
And now he would reap a prophet’s reward-a chance to live, to grow and prosper in the “God-life” that he was created for.
Can you imagine how Ebed-Melech must have lived the rest of his life? We don’t know what happened to him, but every day he lived in the knowledge that his life was not his own, that he had been brought by God to a critical point in Holy History, and that his new life was an outright gift from God!
The prophecy that Jeremiah gave him must have empowered him for the rest of his days!
Do you think Ebed-Melech testified of God’s life that he had received? Do you think that he considered any future afflictions and trouble as nothing compared to the great glory of God that was at work in his life? What a way to bring context and definition to your life!
Ebed-Melech discovered some four four hundred fifty years before Christ one of the greatest and most powerful principles of Kingdom Living that Jesus would teach-
“he who saves his life, will lose it, and he who loses it for My sake-will find it.”
God’s great counsel always amazes me.
In a journey through the Old Testament, reading of wars, judgment and a weeping prophet who is rejected and ridiculed, I find a life worth living- I find that my best life can be given to me “as a prize” just like God gave the Ethiopian Ebed-Melech his best life.
It will be something so unexpected, so undeserved, and so great-it will be the God-life that only He can impart!
I hear the Words of Jesus Christ that came forth almost five hundred years later as he walked among His people.
It is one of the most oft-repeated themes that I find in the Gospels, it is illustrated and taught by Jesus in each of the four gospels, in varying circumstances and settings.
In the Gospel of Matthew we find Christ’s challenge to take up the cross daily:
He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.
(Matthew 10:39)
and also in Matthew-
As Christ tells Peter “Get behind me Satan”…he reiterates
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
(Matthew 16:25)
In Luke, as Christ spoke of his Second Coming and judgment, He said:
Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.
(Luke 17:33)
Mark asks: “are we ashamed of him?” as he relates the story of Christ’s rebuke of Peter and says:
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.
(Mark 8:35)
And finally, just days before the Cross, John relates how Jesus would die like a grain of wheat so that many would be saved, and challenges us to die to this world-so that we may inherit eternal life:
He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
(John 12:25)
Jesus says to us that today we can discover what it takes to live the “best life”-that life that God has prepared for us as His children. That life that will elude us if we seek to hold onto the things of this world! It’s the same prize He gave Ebed-Melech!
Allow me to begin with the passage in Matthew, as God has placed several points on my heart that I would like to key off of today.
Matthew 16:25-16
I. My Desire
"If anyone desires to come after Me,
Gr. thelleo - to delight in: - desire
Jesus is saying to us “do you desire to come after me? Is it your delight to follow after me? If any man’s delight, his desire is to come after me…here’s what it will take. It’s not cheap.
Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalm 37:4)
Salvation is free, but discipleship is costly. Christ is calling us not to a life of convenient Christianity.
"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it--
(Luke 14:26-28)
Do we really desire to come after Him? How close do we want to be to Jesus?
The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get
for Christ . . . the more homesick you get for heaven . . . the more you want “all the fullness of God” . . . the more you want to be done with sin . . . the more you want the Bridegroom to come again . . . the more you want the Church revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus . . . the more you want a great awakening to God’s reality in the cities . . . the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the unreached peoples of the world . . . the more you want to see false worldviews yield to the force of Truth . . . the more you want to see pain relieved and tears wiped away and death
destroyed . . . the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.
John Piper
When My Desire takes hold of my life and Jesus becomes my sole passion, it will lead to:
II. My Denial
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
…For whoever desires to save his life
When our desire is manifested-we will desire one thing and deny its opposition.
Desire for God and desire for the things of this world are in direct opposition. They are irreconcilable. You cannot desire to have a “serving” of God and the life that He wants to impart to you while holding onto a piece of the world.
Are we ready to deny ourselves every “right” that we have to pursue our own goals, our own dreams and ambitions?
Beloved, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having wonderful things. Dreams, goals ambitions and material wealth are not somehow inherently evil or incongruent with God’s plan! God desires to bless His children and the fruit of their labor. He wants to give you the very desires of your heart. Hard work, goal-setting and business are completely compatible with the Christian life-
But the blessings of God must be held with an open hand. We are blessed to be a blessing. The Lord gives abundance so that we might use it for His glory.
When we hold those blessings in a clenched fist crying “MINE!” they quickly become a curse.
Jesus illustrated the denial when he said:
"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
(Matthew 6:24)
Mammon is an ancient word for the money-god (or devil).
The slave of mammon will obey mammon while pretending to obey God. (Robertson)
Mammon can be seen as the god of the world-system.
Money, success and prosperity and God are not mutually exclusive.
Mammon-worship and God are irreconcilable.
Which one will you deny? Do you desire yourself or Jesus?
My Desire for Jesus, My Denial of myself will bring about:
III. My Death
Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and leader of the Confessional Church that opposed Hitler said in The Cost of Discipleship
"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
Bonhoeffer was one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century and chose to leave a comfortable professorship in the States to return to Nazi Germany to oppose Hitler.
He died in a prison camp just days before the Allied liberation. He spent his final days ministering to the sick and the prison guards in the camp.
He delighted himself in the Lord and in following after him…it was his desire and delight to follow God even if it meant imprisonment and death.
Paul knew and lived this great and mighty truth in
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
(Galatians 2:20)
Losing my life I give up my bartering tool, and my “bounty”…I give up every right I have to plan and execute my own life, and pursue my own happiness in my own way.
Jesus spoke of a man who loved his life in a parable:
"The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ’What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ’I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry." ’ But God said to him, ’Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
(Luke 12:16-21)
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Romans 8:12
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
(Romans 12:1-2)
And then that which I desired, that which I denied myself for, that which I died for will be handed back to me, as a prize!
IV. My Delight
...for My sake will find it. (The prize)
My desire to come after Jesus, my desire for Him and Him alone, will result in “the prize.” I will “find” it…my purpose and my destiny and God’s best life.
Jesus, as he was within days of facing the cross, spoke of the principle of dying and receiving your life in John’s Gospel:
He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
(John 12:20-25)
The Greek word John uses for “life” here is very revealing.
“Psuche” (often translated as soul) means life’s experience, vitality, the emotions that we feel in our flesh. It refers to the temporal life-the life that James tells us is “like a vapor” because it passes by so fast. It’s our “stuff” and our attachments to it!
Jesus is saying if you love your surroundings, your attachments to the temporary things, your “stuff” you’re going to lose your life altogether.
And he doesn’t mean just enjoying the good things that your hard work has brought you. He is talking about putting the “stuff” before Him!
This life is incompatible with God and His Kingdom!
John goes on to say that we must “hate our life” in this world. Does this mean that we are supposed to be sour on life, pessimistic, not living life to the fullest?
Absolutely not! The phrase “he who hates his life in this world” is referring to the world system. The Greek word is “cosmos.”
This word and concept refers to
“the present state of human affairs, in alienation and opposition to God.”
Friends, there are two different worlds that surround us. There are two different kingdoms. To walk in one is to turn your back on the other. To attempt to walk in both leads to destruction from within!
The Two Worlds…they are polarized, they are mirror images one of the other. They are at war continuously:
In the Kingdom of God…
you receive by giving things away
You lose in order to win
You become great by being a servant of all
You decrease so that Jesus may increase
You save your life by losing it
John 2:15
15Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
I Peter 2:11
11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.
There is a stark contrast between the “psuche” life-the vitality, the experiential and temporal life within the world-system and the life of God. Jesus says if we hate that life, if we refuse to make it our end goal and our priority-then he will give it to us as
Eternal life! The Greek word for life here is zoe. It is in contrast to life in this world-it is the “God-life”:
life real and genuine, a life active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of those who put their trust in Christ, but after the resurrection to be consummated by new accessions (among them a more perfect body), and to last for ever. (Thayer)
and that brings us to a decision point: which one will we choose to pursue-the temporal, fleeting world-system life, or will we passionately pursue the eternal, the God-life?
It all comes down:
My Desire, My Denial, My Death and My Delight culminate in:
V. My Deal
For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Jesus is saying that there is no deal, there is no exchange. We believe we are in charge, yet the only decision we can make is to choose life in the world-system, or life grounded and centered in desiring Christ. The soul has no market price. You can’t just wheel and deal with it!
Think of it this way: You have a credit card with $50 left in spending limit, and you make an offer to Bill Gates for his Microsoft stock? That’s slightly more plausible than to barter with your own soul-or a “portion” of your soul.
I am in no bartering position. All I can do is give my life to Jesus, or face certain eternal death, and nothing but a vapor from the life I wasted.
Yet, I have a promise that when I give my trust, my entire being-
He will give me the best life, the prize, the zoe!
It’s not a work-reward, because we are not in charge! All we can do is trust Him with our whole heart like Ebed-Melech, like Job and know that what He returns to us will be- a prize!
It is an all or nothing proposition. You cannot give something that you do not own as though it were an exchange. It is not yours to give! Even more absurd is the notion that we can trade “parts” or pieces of our soul!
Either he is Lord, or He is nothing at all. Choose you this day…who’s in charge? Will you receive the prize? Your best life-zoe?
The magazine article summarized the life of a former winning NCAA basketball coach and network sports announcer.
Throughout his colorful coaching career he had been obsessed with the game and with winning. But years later, stricken with cancer, he came to realize the triviality of the goods and values to which he had been passionately devoted. “You get sick and you say to yourself, ‘Sports means nothing,’ and that feels terrible.”
Because he had spent little time with his wife and children, he confessed, “I figured I’d have 20 years in the big time, who knows, maybe win three national titles, then pack it in at 53 or 54.I was going to make it all up to them, all the time I’d been away. It sounds so silly now. But it went on and on, that insatiable desire to conquer the world.” Our Daily Bread, Sept.-Nov. 1997
For his final statement, Timothy McVeigh wrote the words to an immortal poem:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Earnest Henley-Invictus (final stanza)
Contrast that ode to humanism with some of the words of Jim Elliot, the 23 year old missionary to the Aucas of South America. He entered into his journal on October 28, 1949:
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
In January of 1956, Elliot and four companions landed on a beach of the Curaray River in eastern Ecuador.
Two days later, on January 8, 1956, all five men were speared and hacked to death by warriors from the Auca tribe.
