Seeking The World

Eddie Rickenbacker was America’s most famous army aviator during World War I. During World War II he was appointed special consultant to Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson; and it was Rickenbacker’s task to inspect the various aspects of war.

During one tour in 1942, Eddie and seven companions made a forced landing in the Pacific Ocean. There, they experienced 24 terrifying days drifting in a lifeboat until they were rescued by a Navy plane. After his recovery from the ordeal, Rickenbacker said, “Let the moment come when nothing is left but life, and you will find that you do not hesitate over the fate of material possessions.”

Eddie understood that, at such a time, one is concerned about the fate of something far more precious than material goods – a person is concerned about life itself.(1) There are likely some of us here today who feel like Rickenbacker, trapped at sea, about to sink and drown. We are lost in a sea of material things, and bills, and debt; and some of us may already feel like we’re drowning and that the very life is being sucked right out of us. When we get to this point we begin to reach out and grasp for life, because that is the only thing that really matters.

This morning we will look at the trap of “Seeking the World,” and learn how the world, along with material things and possessions, will suck the life right out of us. I hope we will begin to see that in order to have true life in the Lord, that we must seek life in Jesus instead of life in the world.

Mark 8:34-37

34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 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. 36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37 Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Jesus said, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it” (v. 35). The life that Jesus spoke of trying to save is not true life in the Son or abundant life in the Lord. Jesus defined what He meant by seeking one’s life. He said, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul” (v. 36). We lose life if we strive to gain life in the “world.” The first application of significance is this: If we seek after the pleasures of the world and continue to deny the call of Jesus to receive Him as Savior and Lord then when we will die. Our soul will be lost and we will experience spiritual death in hell for all eternity. That’s a hard, but true biblical fact!

The second application comes from a parallel passage to this one. In Luke 9:25 we can read some more of what Jesus shared. This verse declares, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?” We not only lose life in heaven by seeking the world, we can lose ourselves. We can lose life now – quality of life, our identity, our emotional stability, our relationships with other people and with the Lord – as we ourselves are destroyed, and as our own world comes crashing down around us.

Seeking the world is something that can suck the life right out of us. So, what is seeking the world? What exactly did Jesus mean when He spoke of the world? The word that Jesus used(2) is the same one from which we obtain our English words “cosmic” and “the cosmos,” whenever we speak of outer space. The word utilized in this passage means: 1.) the universe and the sum of all created being, and 2.) the “inhabited world”(3) or the earth. I think we can see that the “world” is anything and everything other than Jesus!

The world is “this present life.” In 2 Timothy 2:4, we read, “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him [or Jesus] who enlisted him as a soldier” – meaning, that if we are seeking to serve the Lord, we must keep focused on our Captain, Jesus Christ, and the battle at hand. We actually know for certain that when Jesus spoke of the world that He was referring to life in this world, for in John 12:25 we read where Jesus stated, “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”